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We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

nytimes.com

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Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#341

Post by PeterStuer »

dantheman wrote: post #269
brandmeyer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was true, then the monetary policies of the 2008 financial crash and the 2020 pandemic would both have created consumer price inflation. They haven't. We've seen some asset price inflation instead. In effect we did create a bunch of dollars and credited them to people's home equity and mutual funds... where it just sat there doing a whole bunch of nothing to consumer prices and wages.

Have you seen the stock market, housing, and education -- there is a huge amount of inflation. Technology is keeping it in check for a lot of consumer goods but the dollar has lost a huge amount of its value.

You're forgetting the war backed petrodollar

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#342

Post by draw_down »

andi999 wrote: post #19
Scandiravian wrote: post #3

I'm surprised by this, as I had expected the opposite. Couples are spending a lot of time together being confined to their home without much entertainment, so I'd expected that to result in more baby making I guess the stress from the uncertainty of the future and lack of personal space more than countered that Time for me to adjust my assumptions about the world... And probably check my privilege, since I'm massivel…

Actually how does one actually do that 'check your privilege'? Is it like a checklist for takeoff:'privilege on? check!'

It's just something people say. It doesn't mean anything real.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#343

Post by nitrogen »

nathancahill wrote: post #289
tenacious_tuna wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious how the logic works for that. I’ve always assumed that there’s effectively no way for an individual human to net-negative their own emissions/energy consumption/whatnot, just because of the sheer amount of material they need/use/consume (at least, in a Western society). A few outliers (Greta Thornberg?) may be able to effect sufficient policy to counteract their own environmental impact, but in the genera…

I've given a lot of thought to this. Here's a few points I think about: 0. Your own environmental impact is significantly reduced, so the baseline to "counteract" is lower than "Western society". 1. Change happens incrementally. Moving the needle in small ways slowly changes the big picture. Greta is moving the needle in big ways within her lifetime, but like you say, that's not the norm. 2. Raising awareness and lea…

7. Inventing and supporting new sources of energy, materials, and efficiency.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#344

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #292
oflannabhra wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm sorry about your family. I'm not trying to discount your experiences, just bring the GP comment proper context). I don't think you understood the parent comment. They weren't saying that everything is rosy, they were saying that the economic doom and gloom portrayed in the media (especially surrounding COVID) does not make the current economic reality. The context was not social polarization.

Ultimately people are the cause and our media is a symptom. Folks want to hear doom, outrage, oversimplified & radical takes, and the reinforcement of their beliefs. That sells. Supply and demand. So your outlet can play ball or get steamrolled by someone who will. I think mywittyname is right to focus on the people, not the media symptom.

I'd argue doom and gloom isn't what people want to hear.

It's a weakness in our psychology, we're entertained by drama and it sells well.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#345

Post by r00fus »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #147
ianai wrote: post #41

This is probably mostly covid related. But I personally don’t even consider kids. Kids are a life long commitment. I’d only make that commitment if I felt long term stability or at least optimism. Austerity and cynicism dominate the US right now though. It’s a recipe for strife, struggle, and things that rip families and countries apart. It doesn’t have to be this way in the US.

> Austerity and cynicism dominate the US right now though. This is greatly exaggerated by news media and social media, especially with everyone stuck at home. The contrast between what I read online and what I see in the real world has never felt larger. Austerity refers to reduced government spending, which is the opposite of what we’re experiencing right now. We’re spending so much that my CPA friends are working o…

> We’re spending so much that my CPA friends are working overtime to help businesses figure out what to do with their stimulus money.

So really what you and @lanai are talking about seem to identify you both are in completely different strata.

As the US experiences more and more social/economic stratification, these separate realities become more divergent (canonical YMMV).

It's peak ignorance to pretend everyone has the same conditions as you. Stats show many people are suffering.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#346

Post by beaconstudios »

nineplay wrote: post #323
beaconstudios wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets interesting when the status quo becomes "everything is corrupt, including the status quo". See also: selling of expensive anticapitalist clothing, revolution as a brand, etc. Self referentiality and the emptying of meaning from symbols is an important symptom of postmodernism. > People on all sides of the political spectrum are eating up stories about who's to blame, whether it's the government or the billion…

I sometimes go through the thought exercise of making myself responsible of decisions with wide-ranging consequences. I'm sitting here architecting a little project here and I had plenty of bad ideas and assumptions. In my space, that's fine, it's part of the design process. If I was head of the CDC and trying to figure out how to handle this unprecedented global pandemic I'd also make plenty of mistakes and missteps…

yes being a decisionmaker in charger of a large organisation must be hard because you are given responsibility for its failings, and you aren't directly in control - you are in that you can make rules and whatnot, but rules are really just guidelines and fall apart when they make contact with reality.

But we all know this is true, but we still act the same way and then get mad when the leader fails to perform magic. It's 21st century scapegoating.

Sadly we do actually have tools for fixing big problems but we seem to prefer scapegoating to actually doing anything.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#347

Post by thesagan »

keiferski wrote: post #244
carapace wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cold War is still going on. We are still at risk of nuclear destruction. Not only are the old weapons still around but we are making new ones for some crazy reason. (Check the Doomsday Clock, I'm not the only person who has noticed that atomic war is still threatening this planet.) You have to take the long view: For approximately a million years we lived in very stable societies (as judged by the artifacts and a…

You are dramatically underestimating the difficulty of hunter gatherer life.

Don't many hunter gatherers have easier lives?

See: "According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well."

Citation: "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", Man the Hunter. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 85–89. Published in 1966.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#348

Post by frongpik »

willcipriano wrote: post #290
brandmeyer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was true, then the monetary policies of the 2008 financial crash and the 2020 pandemic would both have created consumer price inflation. They haven't. We've seen some asset price inflation instead. In effect we did create a bunch of dollars and credited them to people's home equity and mutual funds... where it just sat there doing a whole bunch of nothing to consumer prices and wages.

Thought experiment: You print a trillion dollar bill and throw it in a underground vault. You look around. "Hey no inflation" so you print some more. You keep this up for a while. Years pass and someone finds the vault and begins to spend the money inside, what happens? Right now much of that printed money is sitting in stocks and bonds, what happens when that is no longer a great place to be? What if those dollars d…

There's too few building permits being issued these days.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#350

Post by deelowe »

pojzon wrote: post #287
deelowe wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we are. Without taking action to curb it, the US will start to see deflation take hold. This is due to an overall aging demographic who are beginning to leave the workforce, an overall increase in savings/investment across the population, lowered rates of consumption, the younger demographic having less children, higher rates of education and on and on. This has already begun to in both Germany and Japan. In…

On the contrary the price of up-keeping a household has increased dramatically. 30-40y ago it was not uncommon for a single pension to cover all expenses of: - food - car or two - paying a mortage - having 4 kids going to school - other household expenses - saving up money / Currently it is not possible. How in such a case do you still think we live in deflation times? I would rather say that “some things” became che…

A fairly simplistic empirical examination of the monetary policy since 2009 proves this:

- Historically low mortgage rates

- Decreasing bond yields

- Increasing withdrawals from 401k and other retirement funds

- Increased savings rates for the younger demographic

- Reduction in consumer spending

- Over a decade of QE

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