Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 461 posts

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

#381

Post by EVdotIO »

r00fus wrote: post #345
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is pretty much the crux of why we see unrest and increased polarization. There are the afore mentioned CPAs with just too much stimulus money to spend, people buying houses faster than they can be built, or the high net wealth individuals that might as well be aliens on mars (and coincidentally can't wait to do). Meanwhile people are falling deeper behind on rent payments with delinquency figures at 25% in NYC, unemployment figures hovering around 10%, small businesses forced into insolvency, and a radically different landscape when this is all said and done.

Those at the very top made out like a bandit, and there are a cohort of the PMC that will to be fine. For this group to be so out of touch with reality to downplay or outright ignore these issues is a direct path to a very angry segment on society.

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

#382

Post by rayiner »

boh wrote: post #142
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…

Unfortunately much of the financial system (in the US anyway) is highly dependent on population growth. Many existing entitlements were created during periods of uncommon birth-rates with the expectation that the babies being born will grow and reproduce at the same rate as their parents. This growth hasn't materialized, and much of the existing growth can be attributed to immigrant inflows. Regardless of the environ…

> Unfortunately much of the financial system (in the US anyway) is highly dependent on population growth

It's not the financial system, it's the underlying economy. Back in the day, people had to have kids so there was someone to take care of them in their old age. The financial system abstract, but does not eliminate, that structural feature of the underlying economy. You still need young bodies producing goods and performing services for the elderly non-working population.

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

#383

Post by toss1 »

0xfaded wrote: post #334
toss1 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thought experiment Not nearly as much inflation as you might think Most of everyone's newfound Billion would sit idle The inflation would come from the $200K/year everyone was spending, as in if you just gave everyone $200K*expectedRemainingLifeExpectancy, you'd get the same consumer inflation The extra billions would go into inflating assets. The key concept here is velocity of money - really interesting concep…

Unless everyone moves to protect their new found billion by buying assets, in which case asset prices shoot the roof. This is not a problem, since most assets these days are unproductive, and like you say, no one would notice a difference in their day to day lives. The one place people would notice is housing. The fix is to see somehow make houses a toxic asset that cost exactly the value the provide in the form of a…

>> somehow make houses a toxic asset that cost exactly the value the provide in the form of a roof, and no more.

Wow, that seems like a plan just bulging with answers to the question: "What Could Go Wrong?". Yikes

Pretty clearly, rent control doesn't work either, it just creates two distorted markets. Homeless shelters don't work except for a few cold nights. Housing projects don't usually create good conditions either.

With housing, the problem is like cars - there is no answer to "what is best?" because everyone needs/wants something different. It is not just 'transportation' or just 'a roof and walls'. I want a sportscar and a 3-bay garage to work on it; you want a pickup truck to haul bursh and supplies for the small cabin you want, and That Guy wants just a lot of Lyft credits and airline miles and a bedroom in a shared apartment because he's rarely there...

It might be better to approach the demand side, just ensure that the regional minimum wages are enough that a full time job is over the poverty level, so people can afford to get housed.

Edit: Moreover, and maybe more on point:

Housing costs are MANY more things than a mere dry bed, hot shower, and place to cook. Housing is different for everyone, from individuals to families. And the cost includes everything -- the rawaccommodations, the quality, the environment & neighborhood, the convenience, the school district, the expectation that more housing and/or amenities and/or jobs will or won't be built or destroyed in the future, and more.

And so the solution is to either ignore all of that, or destroy it?

Moreover, how would you even do it?

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

#384

Post by rayiner »

shortandsweet wrote: post #170
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Similar to you, the house I grew up in is much more less affordable now than it was when my parents bought it. However, in my case it’s not really the same house any more. At the time, the location was thought to be on the outskirts of town, away from the desirable areas. As the city grew, this location became the desirable area. If I look to what is now considered the outskirts,…

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

In the U.S.

1) Population continues to grow due to immigration and higher birth rates among immigrants.

2) Population is growing in some areas and declining in others, which is matched by housing prices increasing in some places but falling in others.

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

#385

Post by samr71 »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #266
samr71 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is a rather short-sighted view; The future is not guaranteed to be better, especially not when we have lots of evidence of impending (1) massive climate disruption (2) water shortage (3) political polarization (4) economic imbalance, the list goes on. Saying "the only way" the world gets worse is if we don't have children is to ignore the potential for all of those effects to grow worse. It's certainly p…

All of the things you listed are solvable problems, with hundreds of thousands of people working tirelessly to solve them. Fear porn about the impending collapse of everything helps no one, and is the reason why that the 9 year old is having an existential crisis about polar bears at all.

Should we worry about these things? Absolutely! But the incessant hysteria is counter productive. Us ceasing having children in a form of civilizational suicide is not a solution.

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

#386

Post by jjav »

yortpyperty wrote: post #97
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…

As a new father, I share this perspective. To get an anecdotal sense of our financial struggle, we have 2-4x the net worth that my parents when they were our age, but cannot afford the same house that I grew up in and doubt we ever will.

Indeed. We make some 25x what my parents did, but with them I grew up in a property with a wonderfully large house and many acres of land. Yet here I am stuck in tiny house with no yard to speak of and couldn't possibly afford anything more given current cost of housing and land.

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

#387

Post by rayiner »

wcarss wrote: post #156
lastofthemojito wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always feels like a weird argument. In the part of Maryland (USA) that I live in, quite a few areas are named after families who lived here in colonial times, and they were granted huge swaths of land. But a descendant from one of those families today can't reasonably expect an estate of hundreds of acres. There's just not enough land to go around with the size of today's population. Obviously, that's taking it…

This mostly makes sense if real estate is already fully utilised, but it isn't. I can't speak to India, but there's a feeling broadly in North America of having "new development" and "expansion" over time. Cities are much, much larger now than they were 40 years ago, and people imagine that the new farm land subsumed and developed should be available for a similar price relative to income to what it was 'back then'.…

> The XXX-acre rural farmland wasn't as valuable as the same space in town when purchased as a lot, but now it holds as many homes as that downtown space used to. Is it worth the same today, relatively, as that space was then?

Yes, they are. It's hard to make a direct comparison, because falling interest rates have caused housing prices to go up, and as people have gained income they have chosen to buy much bigger houses. But the per square foot price of a median-sized new home has been stagnant at the $100-120 range (based on CPI) since 1973: https://donsnotes.com/financial/real-estate.html. And falling interest rates have meant that the monthly mortgage payment per square foot has actually gone down over that time.

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

#388

Post by frongpik »

bobthepanda wrote: post #337
mgolawala wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home prices keep reaching new heights in some areas due to: 1) Migration. Immigration from outside the country, but also internal immigration within the country from less economically vibrant parts to more economically vibrant regions. 2) Falling interest rates keeping the monthly mortgage payment the same or lower despite higher principals 3) Expectations that the price trend for homes will continue to look like the…

Also add; limited housing development. Most new housing development after the war was gotten by turning farmlands and nature into single family houses. A lot of places have reached the limits of how far one can expand and run into some combination of geographical barriers, legal barriers (e.g. protected park or farmlands), or the barrier posed by time (most people have an upper limit of how long they are willing to c…

Ban building new office space in overcrowded areas. Big corps will be forced to build their offices elsewhere, in remote areas with plenty of land, workers will follow and so do small businesses.

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

#389

Post by jjav »

mgolawala wrote: post #299
shortandsweet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

Home prices keep reaching new heights in some areas due to: 1) Migration. Immigration from outside the country, but also internal immigration within the country from less economically vibrant parts to more economically vibrant regions. 2) Falling interest rates keeping the monthly mortgage payment the same or lower despite higher principals 3) Expectations that the price trend for homes will continue to look like the…

> Larger house sizes. From a median of about 1000 sq ft in 1950 to 2300 sq ft today.

Maybe it's a California thing, but not so sure about that.

House I grew up in was over 3000sqft and can't think of any friends that had houses smaller than (estimating here) about 2500sqft (in the 70s to 80s). Myself and friends were all lower middle class families. Land and housing was just so cheap then that it was normal.

And yet today, not a single house in this (much more recently built) neighborhood is over 2000sqft. Most of the models are 1300-1500sqft. And of course these houses cost ~40x what my parents paid for the house.

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

#390

Post by solosoyokaze »

beaconstudios wrote: post #296
solosoyokaze wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an ideology you have correctly identified an inequity in treatment by law enforcement based on race, but the lack of systems theory and postmodern understanding leads you (as an ideology) to ascribe this to human perpetrators who actually want this to happen. I'm sure there are racist police out there, but systemic racism is not caused by racist individuals; its caused by the behaviour of systems (the justice sy…

> Weren't all of those systems designed, implemented and enforced by individuals? Racist policy makers, racist voters... from a systems perspective, systemic racism is the function of individual racism aggregated over time. No, that's not always the case. Take for instance, the racially biased outcome that webcams more easily recognise white than black faces. That probably happened because the webcam was built and te…

> There are clearly instances where policy is wilfully racist - slavery, redlining, and so on. But even once the system is gone, the repercussions continue until corrective systems are put in place.

I’d argue this has far more impact than poorly trained AI.

Post reply on HN