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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

#881

Post by dalyons »

mjburgess wrote: post #528
Night_Thastus wrote: post #336

This is happening everywhere , including nations with great social systems/healthcare/parental leave/etc. And it happens even when nations try throwing money at the problem. While economic concerns may be worsening the issue - I don't think they're the root cause as many would like to say. I think the root cause is that we have outsmarted our biology. Once you give people education on the risks of sex and pregnancy,…

Children are pensions, that's why poorer nations have lots of children because lots are needed to look after people in their old age. Thus, many of these comments on HN and elsewhere, "make the nation better", only have led -- and will lead -- to fewer children. When the old don't need households of the young to provide for them, there won't be any. But this, and the education of women, and increasing productivity et…

poorer nations have for the most part also slipped below replacement birthrate already, or will shortly. hell, Bangladesh is at ~ 2.1

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

#882

Post by dalyons »

snowwrestler wrote: post #831
jandrewrogers wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The growing population of economically non-productive people requires a growing population of economically productive people to support them. At some point, you could take 100% of the output of the productive people and it would still not be enough to support retirees et al. At the limit, not growing the productive population puts younger generations in a position of existing solely for the purpose of serving the non…

> The growing population of economically non-productive people requires a growing population of economically productive people to support them. At some point, you could take 100% of the output of the productive people and it would still not be enough to support retirees et al. Economic growth is the result of productivity, which is the product of the number of people working, times their per-capita productivity. If e…

> In the U.S., the peak of non-productive populace is only the next decade or so.

for a contrast, look at South Korea - https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2025/

That tells a quite grim story, with an outcome thats totally inevitable but will take 20 years to play out. the die is already cast, and I cant see how the country survives.

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

#883

Post by dalyons »

arcologies1985 wrote: post #87
queuebert wrote: post #16

Why do we obsess over growing everything all the time?

Look at the problems South Korea is having, where there are not enough young people to support and care for the elderly. Elders face economic hardship and the healthcare system is buckling under load.

and its going to get so so so much worse. Look at this pyramid. https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2025/

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

#884

Post by giardini »

What's the problem? The US is simultaneously flirting with potential AI. If the AI proves to be productive, we won't need as many workers. The economy can shift from a human worker only base to a human + AI base. The solution is merely to tax the AI part too!.

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

#885

Post by thankyoufriend »

h4kunamata wrote: post #872
thankyoufriend wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe that "women/DEI" folks have ever had more political power than white males? Seems weird to me to put blame on them instead of the wealthy and ruling class.

>Do you really believe that "women/DEI" folks have ever had more political power than white males? Seems weird to me to put blame on them instead of the wealthy and ruling class. YES!!! Let me bring your knowledge up to speed. The Australian group Collective Shout went after Steam because of games "exploring kids". Steam didn't do anything. CS went after Visa and Master Card and because of CS political influence, Vis…

You have given an example of a group which affected change on a $10+ billion estimated valuation company, in a ~$43 billion PC gaming market.

You then insinuated that it was connected to age verification in the UK because it happened in the same week - not very convincing evidence. Isn't it more likely that age verification is another attempt by tech oligarchs to stockpile more of our personal data?

I think you may need to take a few steps back and widen your perspective beyond the gaming world. US GDP was $31+ trillion which puts the PC gaming market at .0014% of US GDP. So some small company used their collective power to force some larger company to do something they didn't want to do. Form your own company and do the same thing then. It's quite weird that you blame all women and DEI for this, and not the bean counters and wealthy/powerful people.

I challenge you to question WHY so many women hate men - they weren't born hating them. Maybe numerous men did something vile enough to them and earned their hatred? Generalizing that hate onto all men would merely be a survival tactic if that were true, don't you think? Sort of similar to how you seem to hate women because perhaps you were physically or emotionally hurt by them in the past.

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

#886

Post by giardini »

Balgair wrote: post #207

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, the real answer is that "It's war, famine and disease!'

If you eliminated the birth control pill tomorrow, we'd have plenty of fertility: that's what war, famine and disease do.

All the complaints we hear here about how hard it is to raise kids. etc. would evaporate b/c no one would have a choice! And if you thought women have control in these situations then you would quickly learn that women unwilling to try to produce children will not have long lifespans.

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

#887

Post by igor47 »

themaninthedark wrote: post #876
rc5150 wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don't get me started on dog/cat people who..." listen dude, you chose to have kids. You and your partner made the conscious decision to produce life, maybe instead of complaining about it, just live it and stop vilifying people who made different choices than you did. You talk about your children as if they're a burden and that's sad.

>who equate their struggles to mine... Perhaps they don't like the fact that someone is equating pet struggles to human struggles. Doesn't sound like they are talking about them being a burden, just how their life has changed and how they can't do all the things that those without kids do.

> their life has changed and how they can't do all the things that those without kids do.

This is true of people with pets, too.

Everyone's struggles are equally their struggles. I too get a little miffed when someone invokes the struggle Olympics, especially when their struggles are the consequence of their choices.

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

#888

Post by giardini »

kraig911 wrote: post #395
Balgair wrote: post #207

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…

It's just hard now. Before I had kids I had a network of friends and had a great social life. Now it's just me and my wife. If I want more friends I'll have to have more kids I guess? I have 4 now. One (my first) is severely autistic. Financially the cost? I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare. 2k a month in healthcare expenses. Then community wise. Every time I've gone to take them to the movies, or to a restaurant o…

$6000 a month for daycare? Either you're really bad at math or you're a sap!

"There's a sucker born every minute!" - P.T. Barnum

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

#890

Post by giardini »

0x000xca0xfe wrote: post #855
sp527 wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out that's mediated by the sexual impulse, and can be short-circuited via contraception.

It's not that easy to beat evolution, some will still have kids while those who only care about the fun will die out.

No need to wait: they've already fried themselves out of the evolution game with STDs. Any child they have will likely be retarded or diseased in some way.

Don't forget to include alcohol as a drug - "fetal alcohol spectrum disorders", FASDs, are a real thing.

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