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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#241

Post by postflopclarity »

acheron wrote: post #201
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is housing really that expensive? When you price out a loan on a starter house it really ain't that bad. I'm a recent first time homebuyer and I don't understand why people think they aren't affordable. There were plenty of cheaper homes that I looked at and even with rates at their highest would be cheaper than my rent. Do people expect a palace? Are there more unmarried people today who can't afford it alone?

In general the “housing is too expensive” people mean “I looked at every available house in both San Francisco and New York City, and didn’t find anything cheap!”

such annoying pedantry to point out that "akshually houses are cheap in southern missouri"

I mean, sure. but then there are 0 jobs and 0 community.

the housing shortage is a shortage of housing in the same places that there is industry and opportunity. the fact that there are ample plots of land upon which one could theoretically erect a tent is irrelevant

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#242

Post by Aurornis »

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

> They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources.

I’ve had glimpses of this part of Twitter spill into my feed. It was always obvious that everyone was just using fertility as an excuse to push their chosen hobby horse. The logic barely mattered, they just used it as a reason to push their ideas.

From hanging out with younger generations (tech biased) I have a different perspective: A lot of the younger people I talk to just have no idea what it’s like to have kids or a family in reality. They grew up when Reddit was hardcore anti-kid and /r/childfree (remember that cesspool?) was hitting the front page and their feeds every single day with unhinged takes about parenting and child raising from angry people who weren’t parents.

When I had kids a lot of the younger people I was around acted like they needed to give me condolences because my life was over. Then when I was actually happy and fulfilled they thought I was lying to them or secretly harboring resentment that I couldn’t share for social reasons. Like they genuinely couldn’t believe that I liked my kids and spending time with them. Years of Reddit has convinced them that all parents were unhappy and full of regret.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#243

Post by koolba »

fooker wrote: post #155
koolba wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has endless backlog of people waiting in line to legally enter the country. It doesn’t need to keep any illegal aliens to meet its immigration goals.

This logic would fly a couple of years ago. Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules. And a bizzare hate campaign against H1B. And court judgements explicitly enabling masked government agents to target someone solely on the basis of skin color.

> Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules.

I'm not aware of any such thing, especially anything "indiscriminate". For sure there are causalities when protests go from speech to violence or directly interfere with the ability of law enforcement to enforce the law. But your framing makes it sound like roving bands of beat down squads.

> And a bizzare hate campaign against H1B.

There's nothing bizarre about workers being angry at a system that is being abused to drive down wages. The reality is that there are segments of workforce in the USA that will only hire H1Bs workers because they know they can treat them illegally. This happens all over the place but is particularly prevalent at larger orgs (both in tech and finance). The behavior is implicitly authorized by the companies as they outsource the "being the jerk" to those managers.

The non-H1B workers rightfully feel angered by this because it directly lowers their wages. It's like scabs flooding a union shop. Only worse as the scabs are scared of not only losing their jobs, but their visas.

> And court judgements explicitly enabling masked government agents to target someone solely on the basis of skin color.

If there was not a concerted effort to interfere with law enforcement or dox the people that work at those places, the masks would not be necessary.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#244

Post by myrmidon »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #103
myrmidon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong, and not even plausible (anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings, and they could not even afford proper sunday shoes for all of them, much less current living standards). I think the biggest impact is from kids being obsolete/net negative as both workforce (when young) and retirement scheme (when the parents are old). But there is no reverting…

I'm not going to find sources right now, but from my understanding the research shows that the greatest impact on number of children is education of girls. Once women have more options, staying home their whole life popping out babies seems less desirable. There will no doubt be a push by some of the most conservative idiots to stop educating girls.

I'd argue that the minimum education level rising in general is already strongly correlated itself, because it indicates that "uneducated" children are economically worthless (=> parents need to pay more to educate and children take longer until self-sustainable and economic "worth" of adolescents is relatively lower).

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#246

Post by scottious »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #35
GiorgioG wrote: post #2

Maybe if young folks could afford housing they'd have kids...there's a thought.

Is housing really that expensive? When you price out a loan on a starter house it really ain't that bad. I'm a recent first time homebuyer and I don't understand why people think they aren't affordable. There were plenty of cheaper homes that I looked at and even with rates at their highest would be cheaper than my rent. Do people expect a palace? Are there more unmarried people today who can't afford it alone?

Housing for the boomers used to cost 3x the median salary. Now it's more like 6x the median salary. These are nationwide numbers. Wage growth isn't keeping up to pace with housing prices

Sure people can just move to a remote dying town and get a house for super cheap, but turns out people want to live within a reasonable distance to jobs.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#247

Post by bombcar »

tomp wrote: post #219
ashishb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One really common that myth this article busts is about child care. "Child care is virtually free in Vienna and extremely expensive in Zurich, but the Austrians and the Swiss have the same fertility rate."

Just to expand a bit on Zurich and comparing with Slovenia (another "very socialist" country). Childcare in/around Zurich is (was 2 years ago) 2500 - 3000 CHF / month (lower prices after ~18 months). This is and isn't expensive. The list prices are high, but so are salaries (and taxes are low), and this is cheaper than rent (for 1 kid). Not subsidized. In Slovenia, the full price is about 700 EUR / month, subsidised…

In the USA there's a definite "kid gap" around 4k-1st grade - before that, childcare if used is "open late" and flexible (if you have the cash) - and after 1st the kid is often mature enough to do simple movements on their own if school doesn't go long enough (walk to the library, or get into extra curricular activities, etc).

At 4k-1st you often have shortened hours, so if you're a working parent you need to arrange for transportation or be able to take long lunches, etc to move children from one place to another.

This "gap of annoyance" happens right about when you'd naturally be looking at a second or third kid as a possibility - I wonder how much effect it has on people.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#248

Post by biophysboy »

Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

What do you make of the birth rates being much higher and stable among married couples, and of the birth rates among women in their 30s increasing? These don't really correspond to your take.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#249

Post by showerst »

brightball wrote: post #162
whatever1 wrote: post #100

Most of the developed countries are facing this. I think our financial/defense systems are not prepared for population decline, so I foresee a lot of turbulence. The new left will call for more immigration and more globalism to avoid wars, but will have to deal with integration of swaths of immigrants. The new right will call for closing of the borders and double down on AI doing the work of producing and defending,…

I've watched most of my life as narratives have been pushed in popular culture, TV, music, magazines, online articles, etc that go out of their way to convince people not to have children. Just some examples of trends I've observed personally. - Scare media about the cost of having children - Scare media about the environmental impact of having children, even calling it irresponsible for the planet - Scare media abou…

I have a small child. It's awesome!

It's also enormously stressful and expensive. We're stopping at one where in past times a family like ours might've had 2-3. There are a variety of reasons, but cost in money, time, and housing are big factors. I'm very well off compared to most Americans, so I can see why if you're even marginally on the fence it has tipped into a no.

"Make it work" is a great thing to say on the internet, but not very good advice to people who are one broken down car or health issue away from not making rent, which is a LOT of young Americans.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#250

Post by inetknght »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #214
Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

I think there are two steps: 1) Make people want to have kids. 2) Make it feasible for them to do so. People already want more kids than they're having, so focussing on (2) at the moment is probably the best approach.

> People already want more kids than they're having

Maybe some people. But nobody I know wants more children. They want a better future for the children they already have. They want to have hope for their future.

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