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This is a teenager

pudding.cool

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Re: This is a teenager

#211

Post by lancesells »

somenameforme wrote: post #189
toomuchtodo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that humanity will die out so long as only willing, intentional parents have children? That is an interesting thesis and conclusion to come to (total fertility rate = 0 vs somewhere between 0 and 2.1 [replacement rate]). We should empower people who want children to succeed, and empower people who don't want children to never have them. What happens after that, we can solve for.

I think many people have a misunderstanding of what lower fertility means. Imagine a country has a fertility rate of 1. It doesn't seem that bad because it's pretty close to replacement. But fertility is an exponential system. So a fertility rate of means that each following generation (~20 years) will be half as large as the one that came before it (the formula is simply a ratio of fertility_rate/2). So you won't se…

> imagine the state of society when that starts happening

The state of my own personal society is my apartment costs $1000 more than it did two years ago and my food costs about 25-30% more than it did two years ago. I definitely wouldn't consider having another kid, nor would I encourage my own to have one.

Re: This is a teenager

#212

Post by lancesells »

somenameforme wrote: post #204
prmoustache wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was the case, would it be a problem? What is more important, having less humans being happy or more humans having a crappy life. Why should specie survival be more important than overall happiness of those that would have lived?

This is a tangent, but when in the world did "happiness" become a desirable metric? If you think about it, it's really quite absurd. Happiness is a brief liminal state that should be triggered by relatively infrequent events. It is not a normal, nor desirable, default state. Contentedness, satisfaction, at-peace, and so on - there endlessly more rational, logical, desirable, and attainable things to aim for. Yet ever…

> Contentedness, satisfaction, at-peace, and so on

Could you explain to me how this is not another name for happiness?

Re: This is a teenager

#213

Post by VyseofArcadia »

michaelt wrote: post #33
aidenn0 wrote: post #20

Just clicking randomly shows a (to me) unexpectedly low age for first sex. If I understand right, the people in here were born in 1984, so they are younger than me (late Gen-X), and i keep hearing that Millennials are having less sex than all previous generations, but these numbers look on the young side. Sampling 11 across cohorts I got a median of 15, which is lower than I found for one all-generations measure I fo…

> i keep hearing that Millennials are having less sex than all previous generations This article is about a longitudinal study; it follows "Alex" who was age 13 in 1997, i.e. born in 1984. US teen birth rates have been falling a lot - 61 births per 1000 in 1991 fell to ~48 births per 1000 in 2002 (When Alex would have been 18) and continued falling to just 13.9 births per 1000 today according to https://www.statista.…

Why are some statistics awkwardly phrased in terms of "per 1000", "per 10k", "per 100k", etc. when we have a perfectly good shorthand for that?

13.9 per 1000 is 1.39%.

Just to be clear, this is not directed at parent, because it is phrased that way on the web page they cited. I'm just hoping someone here has the answer.

Re: This is a teenager

#214

Post by pants2 »

bsimpson wrote: post #158
throwway120385 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also help if more people that are doing marginal work could receive a wage that they felt secure with. Money is one of the biggest stressors for couples and families.

I don't understand how to practically make this work. There's a strong case to be made that a minimum wage helps people whose value approaches the minimum while hurting people above or below (e.g. $12 and $18 wages in an unlimited market both round to $15 with a minimum, while someone who only produces $7 of value is no longer employable). Similarly with cash infusions - giving people more money is inflationary. Nobo…

I have a family member that is severely disabled. She used to be on a program where the government would supplement her wages - she worked at Jack in the Box, where her employer would pay like $3/hr and the government would top that up to $10/hr.

Now that program is gone and minimum wage for fast food is $20/hr. She simply cannot perform $20/hr worth of work, so she's unemployed (and living on government assistance).

The previous arrangement was fantastic because the work gave her a purpose and something to do all day, and she contributed to society while saving the government money. Now she stays home and watches TV endlessly.

This has informed my ideas - I think supplementing minimum wages could be a better alternative to UBI (with some exceptions).

Re: This is a teenager

#215

Post by thefourthchime »

Cockbrand wrote: post #67

For a different approach on the socio-economic background's influence on growing up (and eventually growing old), check out the very interesting "Up Series" [0]. It's a British documentary series that starts out with interviews with kids at age 7 from different backgrounds, and then interviews the same group of people every 7 years (14 Up, 21 Up, you get the idea). They've come to "63 Up" so far. [0] https://en.wikip…

I agree, fantastic series

Re: This is a teenager

#216

Post by bsimpson »

Misdicorl wrote: post #197
bsimpson wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how to practically make this work. There's a strong case to be made that a minimum wage helps people whose value approaches the minimum while hurting people above or below (e.g. $12 and $18 wages in an unlimited market both round to $15 with a minimum, while someone who only produces $7 of value is no longer employable). Similarly with cash infusions - giving people more money is inflationary. Nobo…

My personal position is to abolish the minimum wage and update the tax scale with negative tax rates that support a reasonable quality of life at all income levels. The market will find its own balance for what a true minimum wage is in that environment (and not have weird perverse incentives like you state). Yes, this is UBI. But phrased as a tax cut makes it politically viable (at least in the US).

I would be interested to see this modeled.

One of the classic unintended consequences of social welfare is making someone at the bottom unwilling to work. We saw this during the pandemic when people in formerly low-wage jobs got a lot of cash assistance and stopped being interested in low-wage jobs. (Remember all the "help wanted" signs and early closing hours at local restaurants?)

I'm curious to see an example scale that would continue to incentivize social behavior the whole way up the chain - avoiding the "oh I don't want to make $100 more dollars because I'm in a sweet spot now and bad things happen at $99."

You can certainly argue that many of the current disincentives are bugs in the bureaucracy. I'd like to see a proposal for the UBI tax scale you describe that doesn't have any bugs (that is, bumps in the distribution where people are afraid to reach for state C from state A, because the intermediary state B is worse than A).

Re: This is a teenager

#218

Post by fzeindl »

subpixel wrote: post #6

Positive relationships with adults is shown to be means of counteracting adverse childhood experiences. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8237477/ I volunteer in a local school. It's not always fun, but something has to change.

This is old news.

Basically children in bad situations need just one reliable person who believes in them in their lives.

What it does is making them realize that it’s not them who are doing something wrong but that their surroundings are flawed. The problem begins when children start to believe everything is their own fault.

Re: This is a teenager

#219

Post by et-al »

somenameforme wrote: post #189
toomuchtodo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that humanity will die out so long as only willing, intentional parents have children? That is an interesting thesis and conclusion to come to (total fertility rate = 0 vs somewhere between 0 and 2.1 [replacement rate]). We should empower people who want children to succeed, and empower people who don't want children to never have them. What happens after that, we can solve for.

I think many people have a misunderstanding of what lower fertility means. Imagine a country has a fertility rate of 1. It doesn't seem that bad because it's pretty close to replacement. But fertility is an exponential system. So a fertility rate of means that each following generation (~20 years) will be half as large as the one that came before it (the formula is simply a ratio of fertility_rate/2). So you won't se…

We understand the implications, but I would not want anyone to bring forth children that are unwanted, thus bringing more unhappiness into those parents' lives (and their surrounding community).

Our society needs to treat children as a gift and not just "thoughts and prayers" about raising them.

Re: This is a teenager

#220

Post by zeroonetwothree »

elil17 wrote: post #25

Anyone else notice how those with the most adverse experiences were both more likely to be depressed and more likely to be happy "all of the time" for the past month? Is this a flaw in the data? What is the causal explanation for this?

it’s self reported data so it’s not super reliable

It could be people with more adverse experiences are less likely to take care in answering survey questions

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