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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

#401

Post by beaconstudios »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #390
beaconstudios wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

obviously. The point being, the effects last even when the racist policy makers aren't there any more and the policies have been removed.

You can't just oust all the racists and expect things to start getting better. It's a good start, but you're not going to solve systemic racism that way. You have to look at the system itself, not the people who exist within it.

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

#402

Post by tenacious_tuna »

samr71 wrote: post #385
tenacious_tuna wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> All of the things you listed are solvable problems [...] But the incessant hysteria is counter productive. Us ceasing having children in a form of civilizational suicide is not a solution.

I absolutely agree! I'm not an anti-natalist, nor do I think not having children is necessarily the correct choice, either morally or for these hypothetical childrens' well-being: my point was merely that the issue is more complex than "just have kids and sort the problems out" or "don't have any kids because these problems are impossible to sort out." I apologize if I failed in this, but I was just seeking to highlight the empathy needed to understand the reluctance many (myself included) have around the idea of having kids.

Too often I think those who have reservations about having children are told "Oh just get over it," or "You're being dramatic," which does nothing to address the underlying concerns these would-be parents have, and in fact can just make those concerns worse because they feel like nobody is truly paying attention to those concerns. Which just exacerbates them.

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

#403

Post by solosoyokaze »

beaconstudios wrote: post #401
solosoyokaze wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

obviously. The point being, the effects last even when the racist policy makers aren't there any more and the policies have been removed. You can't just oust all the racists and expect things to start getting better. It's a good start, but you're not going to solve systemic racism that way. You have to look at the system itself, not the people who exist within it.

The systems only exists because people continue to prop them up though, which often does require explicit racist intent. This is why I say that your point is more modern than post-modern. It’s placing humans external to the systems they create and maintain.

I agree that systems can have a racist effect without the participants realizing it. Progressivism is in large part creating awareness of these systems so people can actively realize their own role in perpetuating them. I don’t think we’re actually disagreeing on much other than degree of implicit vs explicit participation in systems.

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

#404

Post by mindslight »

rsync wrote: post #166
boh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." I came to this discussion ctrl-f'ing for "deflation" and while I got zero hits, your comment is close enough ... I will abstract one level deeper and rephrase what you said as: "Much of the financial system is highly dependent on economic growth." There continues to be fervent discussion of the results of QE over…

> however: the world we are living in is massively deflationary and even dramatic and innovative attempts to maintain (low) inflation are barely keeping us above water

That reflection isn't looking down at the surface of the water, but rather up at the air that we need to head towards to stop drowning. Monetary inflation is a large part of what's killing the middle class. All that offshoring was supposed to cause lower prices to compensate for decreased need for domestic labor. Instead a whole bunch of monetary inflation was induced to force everyone to keep working the same amount, at jobs that no longer exist. As long as the Fed continues with its maladaptive policy that is directly opposed to technological progress, most all productivity gains will continue accruing to the upper class.

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

#405

Post by carapace »

gruez wrote: post #265
carapace wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reflecting just this morning how glad I am that I don't have children. (And I don't follow the 24/7 newscycle or use Twitter.) You want perspective? The Doomsday Clock is still set to 100 seconds before midnight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock > Aside from Covid ... Covid isn't the last virus. And the tools we use to fight it are also the tools we could use to make worse ones. (Every tool is also…

>The Doomsday Clock is still set to 100 seconds before midnight. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock The same article points out it's not exactly objective, and I'm inclined to agree. It's more of a political (ie. subjective) statement that the world is fucked rather than an objective measure. >Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker harshly criticized the Doomsday Clock as a political stunt, pointing to the…

It's not like I can link to an objective measure, eh? There's no actual Doom-o-meter?

The point is that serious thinkers (not just talking heads or twitterers) see cause for concern, so it's not all hysteria and click bait.

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

#406

Post by imtringued »

rsync wrote: post #166
boh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." I came to this discussion ctrl-f'ing for "deflation" and while I got zero hits, your comment is close enough ... I will abstract one level deeper and rephrase what you said as: "Much of the financial system is highly dependent on economic growth." There continues to be fervent discussion of the results of QE over…

If we were truly suffering from an aging society then where is all the inflation? Where are all the rich old people spending their money but not finding enough workers to do everything they saved their money up for?

It's probably because retirement has to be financed by the individuals themselves. Nowadays retirement means cutting spending today so that you can spend tomorrow. There are rich old people who aren't cutting down on spending but simply keep saving their wealth and there are poor old people who are cutting down on spending to build up savings, even though they are officially above the retirement age. This leads to a savings glut which is something you cannot fix by adding even more money into asset markets.

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

#407

Post by imtringued »

agent008t wrote: post #205
rsync wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unfortunately much of the financial system (in the US anyway) is highly dependent on population growth." I came to this discussion ctrl-f'ing for "deflation" and while I got zero hits, your comment is close enough ... I will abstract one level deeper and rephrase what you said as: "Much of the financial system is highly dependent on economic growth." There continues to be fervent discussion of the results of QE over…

What do you mean? Inflation can be easily created - just create more dollars and credit them to people's bank accounts; you will soon see all kinds of prices going up.

Yes, but you have to give the dollars to the right people.

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

#408

Post by imtringued »

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…

You know, the idea that we have run out of profitable investments is absurd when you consider the massive housing shortage in major cities. Is the truth that we simply banned all those investments and companies like Uber are trying to work around that backwards legislation?

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

#409

Post by imtringued »

mikem170 wrote: post #398
toss1 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 eith…

Fiddling with the demand side causes problems. Better would be to lift the restrictions on supply, loosen the zoning laws. /Soapbox (not aimed at you): I've been reading zoning regulations in several localities. "Land of the free" my ass! More like control and conformity. It doesn't make sense to me why accessory dwelling units are not allowed in areas with high demand, or more duplexes, triplexes, and walkups. There…

It's the obvious solution. There is a problem with a lack of jobs in rural communities. These people need a temporary solution that lets them get back to their feet. Doing demand side stimulus does help them but in a completely different way and this has absolutely nothing to do with the housing market which is the biggest concern right now.

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

#410

Post by JoeAltmaier »

mikem170 wrote: post #398
toss1 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 eith…

Fiddling with the demand side causes problems. Better would be to lift the restrictions on supply, loosen the zoning laws. /Soapbox (not aimed at you): I've been reading zoning regulations in several localities. "Land of the free" my ass! More like control and conformity. It doesn't make sense to me why accessory dwelling units are not allowed in areas with high demand, or more duplexes, triplexes, and walkups. There…

You can call it selfish. But a city becomes a crowded warren without any rules. What is the middle ground?
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