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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

#371

Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…

I certainly don’t agree with the things the administration is doing, but this seems like just hysteria. You are putting off your family growth plans because they might deport a theoretical future undocumented nanny? It is strange to me how generalized partisan fear has become.

What?

This happened a few blocks from my home: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/17/dc-arrest...

As did this: https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-goons-tear-down-pro-immigr...

These neighborhoods are high income, predominantly white, and filled with families.

My oldest has come home terrified because he turned a corner while playing outside and physically bumped in a guardsman carry a rifle.

I get it that some of you don't live in places that are immediately impacted by this administration, but some of us have to confront this on a daily basis.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don’t agree with the things the administration is doing, but this seems like just hysteria. You are putting off your family growth plans because they might deport a theoretical future undocumented nanny? It is strange to me how generalized partisan fear has become.

I guess you don't live in Minneapolis, or another targeted metro area. It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in a city where 3000 masked and poorly trained people cos-playing special forces are specifically tasked with arresting as many people as they can and told that they have full immunity. you haven't seen the effect on schools when federal agents enter school grounds and take kids away. you haven't seen…

There have been several raids in my city, but it is definitely nothing like what is going on in Minneapolis.

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

#373
post #243
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 campaig…

> I'm not aware of any such thing, especially anything "indiscriminate".

You are wilfully unaware.

> 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.

The protests and other resistance to the crackdowns have been amazingly disciplined in maintaining nonviolence. Shockingly good at it.

Almost all of the violence that's actually happened has been both started and finished by ICE/CBP/etc.

Not to mention the fact that the structure of the operations, and the organizational culture in which they are conducted, are obviously intended, at a command level, to create conditions for violence on both (all?) sides. And, yes, Those In Charge are absolutely responsible for that.

When Noem, Bondi, Homan, Miller, Trump, and friends talk about "violent riots", "domestic terrorism", "ramming agents with cars", or whatever, they are lying. It's not a difference of interpretation. They are intentionally lying (except maybe Trump, who probably doesn't have enough of a sense of reality to be strictly lying). They have lots of allies who systematically spread their lies and add more. Don't believe anything they say unless you have personally seen and authenticated video. You have to authenticate it, because one of their favorite tricks is to use video of things that happened years ago, sometimes in other countries, and claim it's what their agents are reacting to. AI video isn't quite good enough yet, but they'll use that where they can. And of course they're also all about selective editing. And after all that they still ask you to ignore the evidence of your own eyes.

If you are failing to be skeptical of notorious baldfaced liars, that's motivated ignorance on your part.

> But your framing makes it sound like roving bands of beat down squads.

In Minneapolis, yes. But those squads are mostly aimed at intimidating anybody resisting the agenda, not at actual potential deportees.

The more on-topic problem is revoking every completely legal status in sight, and then acting as though the people whose status got revoked had done something wrong.

> 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.

You know, normal cops frequently deal with actual violent criminals who may be inclined to violent vengeance. But they don't wear masks.

ICE agents are just going to have to deal with the fact that, so long as they keep doing what they're doing, decent people who find out who they are are going to shun them. They might even get heckled on the streets. Comes with the territory. Does not justify trying to conceal your identity.

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

#374

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…

> No amount of baby cash, or white picket fences, or coercion, or lack of birth control, or whatever other set of schemes you can make, none of that matters.

This is a profoundly unscientific statement. All of these things matter, you just aren't willing (or rather think, correctly, that our society is not willing) to try them in earnest.

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

#375
incels blame women, femcels blame men, the left blames cost of living, the right blames lack of values, journalists blame the current thing. it's all so tiresome.

the real reason is both boring and obvious: a very significant percentage of educated urban people in the developed world don't want children. both sexes have a very high number of very valid reasons for that, and it's very pointless to examine any particular one.

and no, importing uneducated rural people from the undeveloped world won't fix shit, because their children too will be educated urban people. I think our young global leaders are beginning to realize that, hence the very recent shift from ubiquitous antinatalism of the previous decades to frantic nagging about our unwillingness to breed.

it would take extremely dystopian measures to "fix" the birth rates, and no one, not even Russia and China are presently willing to go that far. Russia is, however, rapidly ramping up its authoritarianism to North Korea levels, so I assume it will be them who will be the first to ban contraception - the least insane measure that can make significant difference. and given how eagerly the West has been embracing Internet censorship, political violence against dissidents, social credit, and other hallmarks of authoritarian regimes in the past decade, I assume that after a few years of pearl clutching, they will follow suit.

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free childcare makes it so much easier. Can’t imagine leaving 80% of my salary at the daycare, but some in the UK do that.

Tax payer paid childcare is known for its low quality. There was an article in The Economist about it.

That sounds like a distribution problem. They should mail out checks and let the parents decide how to utilize it: au pair, group childcare home, professional daycare facility, paying grandma to stay in the third bedroom.

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

#377
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe that their children will have good lives, then will they have them." Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? Nobody had to meet this bar you set before. Let's just be honest here. There were three recent developments, all of which were, by themselves, good things…

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? > The birth control pill decoupling sex from pregnancy. Boom. Done. You had the answer already and just didn't reconcile your own thoughts. You really need to interpret the comment you're replying to in the context of here and now, not 100 years ago before people had a…

I think your point is correct about the lack of optionality for women being in the workforce, but there are entire regions of the United States where it absolutely is optional. I live in one of them (Lynchburg, VA, which is filled with young evangelical Christian families that live in apartments and the mother stays at home) and my coworkers live in another (Salt Lake City, Utah which also has a ton of young moms staying at home).

I'm not foolish enough to think it's remotely possible in all places, but I do think an element of this is humans in the 21st century demanding a standard of living that far exceeds what they wanted in the 1970s, especially when it comes to vacations, automobiles, houses, etc.

My wife and I raised my first son (born when i was 23) in a 1 bedroom apartment, and my second child was born right after we moved into a 2 bedroom apartment. Most of my colleagues were shocked that I "didn't have a REAL HOUSE TO RAISE THE KIDS IN!!!! GASP!!!". And I realized then that many Americans have utterly warped ideas about the level of assets you need to have to enable family formation.

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

#378
post #264

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…

"Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe that their children will have good lives, then will they have them." Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? Nobody had to meet this bar you set before. Let's just be honest here. There were three recent developments, all of which were, by themselves, good things…

If, as another comment states, the countries with highest birth rates are Chad, Somalia, Congo, Afghanistan and Yemen, how does that square with your "Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe" assertion?

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

#379

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…

> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones. It's funny to me that of all the crazy crackpot theories on fertility Twitter, you picked the craziest and crackpotiest. I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic…

Their life are pretty stable - consistently bad, you can say. They know what their kid have is more or less same as what they did - not improving, but not getting worse either

Can you say the the same in a city where housing is getting less and less affordable,?

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

#380

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…

Let’s be honest: children are usually forced on people. It was simply an expectation of your family and society in general for you to have children. This pressure is gone in western societies. "How dare you asking me when I will have children?" It’s also not necessary to have kids for retirement anymore. Look at the top 3 countries with the highest fertility rates over the last 10 years: - Chad - Somalia - DR Congo O…

I think if artificial wombs ever succeed it will turn the world upside down
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