We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by motohagiography » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #339

motohagiography wrote: post #64

Birthrates are a powerful, but lagging/post-hoc indicator of public policy effects. It's worth noting that we tend to associate high birthrates with poverty and negative social outcomes. Except, when rates are low we (western countries) use immigration from high-birthrate societies to shore up the population replacement rate, as the article notes. When you look at who is having kids in the US and Canada, the families…

I have neither the "Malthusian or environmentalist worldview" nor the opposite, which seems to be dangerously close to a "nationalist or eugenics worldview". In other words: any grievances about birth rate on a population-wide level run the risk of spurning legislation or other changes with the purpose of forcing (with varying level of vehemence) individuals to make reproductive choices they otherwise wouldn't. Speci…

Perhaps this is a marker of the divide in worldviews.

If we can't develop a country and a society people willingly want to have kids in, what is it for?

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

#362

Post by nradov » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

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…

Those dollars have been used to buy houses. Residential real estate prices are up in most areas.

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

#363

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

jasode wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Couples are spending a lot of time together [...], so I'd expected that to result in more baby making But a counteracting force is that some couples think 9 months ahead and are afraid of delivering their baby in a COVID-overloaded hospital. COVID makes the opportunities for conception easier but adds to the stress and uncertainties of delivery and postnatal care. (So maybe more sex activity but also more contra cep…

> But a counteracting force is that some couples think 9 months ahead and are afraid of delivering their baby in a COVID-overloaded hospital. My wife works in a maternity ward. Babies are a high priority. They're fully prepared to deliver babies from covid-positive mothers. (And, yes, there's been plenty of covid-positive mothers.) And, because visitors are strictly limited, it's actually quite easy in the maternity…

[deleted]

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

#364

Post by nradov » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

lurquer wrote: post #309

UncleOxidant wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been to the grocery store, ordered takeout or tried to buy a house lately? The prices of electronics (calculators, watches) fell consistently throughout the 70s which was a period of very high inflation. You can't cherry pick one sector.

Of course. It is very difficult to get a good number across all sectors. Despite my post, I’m not all that convinced we are in a deflationary period. The bell-weather asset for me would be Gold, and its price since I’ve been alive wouldn’t make me lean towards deflation. If anything would, I suppose it would be the number of hours worked. That is, how much labor does it take to support a reasonable lifestyle. In my e…

Gold prices aren't highly correlated with inflation so that would be a poor indicator. If you look at the actual historical data, gold isn't a very effective inflation hedge.

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

#365

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

lurquer wrote: post #309

UncleOxidant wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been to the grocery store, ordered takeout or tried to buy a house lately? The prices of electronics (calculators, watches) fell consistently throughout the 70s which was a period of very high inflation. You can't cherry pick one sector.

Of course. It is very difficult to get a good number across all sectors. Despite my post, I’m not all that convinced we are in a deflationary period. The bell-weather asset for me would be Gold, and its price since I’ve been alive wouldn’t make me lean towards deflation. If anything would, I suppose it would be the number of hours worked. That is, how much labor does it take to support a reasonable lifestyle. In my e…

>> It is very difficult to get a good number across all sectors.

That's what cost of living indexes are for.

>> The bell-weather asset for me would be Gold

You probably mean to say gold futures or gold-based derivatives. There are more people who think they own "gold" than there is physical gold on this planet. Unless you have a bar in your hand, you own a contract tied to the price of gold, ie paper.

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

#366

Post by treis » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #314

shortandsweet wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel we're living in deflationary times?

I also would like to hear rsync's answer. But I'll make a guess: The (world) population is no longer growing (much). But productivity growth hasn't stopped. The result is that stuff gets cheaper, that is, the same number of dollars buys more. That's deflation. Worse, we've gotten to the point where many people have what they need - not necessarily everything they want, but most of what they need. (I'm not going to bu…

>The result is that stuff gets cheaper, that is, the same number of dollars buys more. That's deflation.

It's more about the number of dollars out there. Fractional reserve means that a dollar saved leads to dollars being created. Boomers saving up for retirement meant lots of dollars being created. Boomers withdrawing and buying stuff means lots of dollars will be destroyed. Fewer dollars means dollars become more valuable i.e. deflation.

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

#367

Post by notsureaboutpg » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #236

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. There were ancient, relatively effective methods of birth control. And if you really couldn't care for kids they became orphans. Also with larger extended families and closer knit societies many people would "gift" their kids to others who were barren. 5 out of my mother's 15 cousins were adopted (without their parents dying).

Hey, you're dead, though I'm seeing a lot of perfectly fine comments from you that contribute valuable things to discussions. You might want to do something about that.

Thanks for letting me know. I may create a new account :)

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

#368

Post by nradov » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #282

lurquer wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t mean to butt in, but personally, the fact that I’m typing this on a piece of $300 hardware (phone) that would have cost millions in the 80’s, hundreds of thousands in the 90’s, and definitely over a thousand in the 00’s is a good indicator.

And despite the same technological improvements, gasoline is decisively more expensive. Technology is purely deflationary, so the situation with phone cost isn't very telling. What is more impactful is the cost of phone service vs median income across those decades, despite technology's deflationary forces.

Gasoline pump prices are highly impacted by taxes and regulations so those don't tell us much about core inflation or deflation. Look at the spot price of crude oil on international markets. The price today is still well below previous peaks.

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

#369

Post by hntrader » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

thesagan wrote: post #347

keiferski wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely not.

The average life expectancy in Africa today, the poorest continent, is over 60.

The average life expectancy of hunter gatherers was about 30, give or take 5 years.

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

#370

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

samr71 wrote: post #253

rimiform wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids might make your life better, but they probably would have been better off had you stuck to your plan of not having them.

Such doom and gloom! You really believe the future is gonna be so bad that children would be better off not existing at all? The world has huge issues, sure, but it's still far better to be alive now than any time in human history. The only way the future could be worse is if this idea becomes mainstream and the prophecy self-fulfilling.

>The world has huge issues, sure, but it's still far better to be alive now than any time in human history. The only way the future could be worse is if this idea becomes mainstream and the prophecy self-fulfilling.

What if automation and outsourcing to cheaper countries leads to a widening income/wealth gap such that you're always scraping by and any hiccup along the way will cause you to have to start depending on very unreliable social safety nets?

I think people earning $20 an hour commuting 2 hours each day to work are capable of doing the calculations of figuring out they will probably never build wealth such that they don't have to worry about sacrificing a vacation if their kid breaks their arm or losing their job because their kid became sick and having no family around to help shoulder the burden.

People's wages didn't stagnate because the idea of a worse future became mainstream, wages stagnated because the supply and demand equation for labor shifted negatively for wage earners. People then started thinking about a worse future once they saw friends and family de railed by unexpected medical expenses, or laid off and never rehired at a comparable wage, etc.