We don’t need more slaves to capitalism.
And a falling human birth rate is good for the environment
Yeah as long as that loss in workforce isn’t replaced by massive AI computing. Corporations are far worse for the environment than people.
Ah, just noticed which instance this post was on.
A man working an average job used to earn enough to buy an average house and comfortably support his wife and kids.
Now you need two people in full-time work just to pay rent to the landlord.
The problem is inequality of wealth and the solution is make work pay.
No no, you’re wrong. The problem is taxes are too high and the people on the absolute top don’t get enough money. If we just make them a bit richer, the wealth will finally start trickling down on us.
Wait! I think I feel it trickling down right now!
Nope. Just piss. Again.
And too many immigrants. Surely if we keep them out, all those low wage manual labor jobs will still get done, and our population will increase
Yeah, Florida just did it wrong. They’re not having major farming and trucking issues because they scared away a bunch of immigrants. It’ll work this time everywhere else.
Urine luck!
The problem is that we aren’t sending enough money to the wealthy … we need to send them more money because they haven’t been able to trickle some back to us.
/s sarcasm, this is sarcasm if anyone is wondering
Yacht tax deductions were a good start! Now we need coal and gas subsidies. Those poor capitalists haven’t had new subsidies in over 4 years!
Executives: AI is the answer. We’ll replace people and won’t have to listen to them whining about how hungry they are.
I keep hearing stories about falling birth rates, USA, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and on and on.
The articles often pose many questions about why younger generations dont seem to care about having kids, but very few articles actually say the real reasons:- Being able to afford a house or stable long term rent without either option competing for money to buy food or other essentials
- Further to this the cost of a child once you can get by with enough money for the above
- Climate change & future conditions for their children anxiety
The first one is the main reason we could afford to have kids.
We were able to buy our first house because of three things. First the housing market crash in 2008-9. My wife’s car was totaled by a rich bitch in a Mercedes. Our rented duplex was robbed and we had renters insurance. The combination of insurance payments and cheaper prices allowed us to purchase our first home.
My house payment hasn’t changed since 2009. It made up 36% of our take-home income then. Today it makes up less than 11%. I pay less per month than it costs to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.
The older I get the more I see that landlords are a parasite on society. They extract huge amounts of wealth from the suffering of others.
I bought an old home in ~2016, I’m 100% conditionally with the VA so was looking at fitting expenses to my budget. After recently upping my payment to pay it off for my 50th bday (36 now) its only $600/mo. $632 or something right now cause insurance sucks at the moment.
Ive watched as people have gone from happy for me, to jokingly jealous, to jealous, to cranky jealous, to “I’m going to off you and steal your identity.” 🤣
This market sucks and we HAVE to get institutional investors out of housing. We HAVE to start building. In order to do that, we HAVE to stop this cultural bullshit of housing being the prime investment/retirement vehicle for Americans.
Totally jealous, but I’m happy for you. I’m glad you get to own a home.
A big one is that pregnancy and child birth SUUUUUCK. Women finally have the ability to avoid it entirely, and I don’t blame them.
Honestly I don’t think that’s the biggest factor. I think a lot more people would be willing to go through the process of having kids, if they felt financially stable enough to properly care for them afterwards.
im not sure I would call the last point anxiety. As existential threats go its not like nuclear war. Which might or might not happen based on our actions. Its something that is definately happening and extreme good action by us might mitigate it but we by and large have been taking worse actions or at best our beneficial vs non beneficial actions cancel each other out. Heck even without climate change pollution alone has the same ending.
The real reason is more educated people worry to much, and less educated people just go for it.
A lot of women I meet dating think there is no point to having a kid unless you can you are a 8 figure millionaire. it’s absurd to me, since i grew up on a family income of like 30K.
After having a kid, I can confirm younger is better. 5 years ago would have gave me a lot more energy, and not significantly less money.
Too much? 🤣
They have 17 kids.
education and healthcare costs too
Also, wouldn’t increasing the population cause more inflation. Like if you look at Japans decline in Japanese born citizens it overlaps with the “lost years” of economic growth, which was a surprisingly stable period where depreciation ruled the economy… Prices for every day items were stable for decades on end.
Lol. How much does it cost to have a child in the hospital in the USA again? Oh, $18,865 you say? Huh. What if they need an ambulance to get there? Oh, $500 to $3000 depending on distance you say? And you say also that US Bureau of Labor and Statistics is letting us know that in four short years our grocery prices have risen 22.04% and are expected to rise another 5.11% per year indefinitely? Meanwhile corporate profits increase every single year and minimum wage has been stagnant for decades? Someone should get them quick!!! I think I figured out why no one wants to have babies anymore! I would like to also comment on how obscenely expensive daycare is and how fucked up it is we have to put children in school 40 hours a week just so we can keep working more than half our lives away but I feel like anyone reading this gets the idea. They will be begging your ass to have babies in the next 100 to 200 years if we make it that long and I’ll bet you all those obscene expenses will be an even greater cost to income ratio then, too. I mean if birthrates are a problem you have to ask yourself are they just fucking stupid or just fucking greedy?
While the cost of children, lack of support and stagnant wages are definately a factor, birth rates have declined even in countries where income inequality is lower and support for parents is higher.
It is not going to be an easy problem to solve.
For us and everyone we know it was under $200. I’m not saying that everyone is going to have our levels of insurance but you are greatly exaggerating.
The biggest cost by far is childcare hands down.
Edit: I know I know, a $2500 median out of pocket expense hurts everyone’s head cannon.
is this written into the law as covered before deductible and maximum out of pocket?
Yes and yes although the latter can be quite high. I’m not saying our healthcare isn’t insane, I’m just saying it costs nowhere near 18k outside of edge cases. In reality full time daycare will run you 22k/yr for a moderate cost of living area and is, by a long shot the most expensive portion until college.
I mean if i get to maximum out of pocket its a bit over 7 grand now which tends to be about the same as my monthly cost on the insurance for the year and one kid will raise my monthly cost from spouse only to family (although keep em coming as after that they are all free). One decent surgery can pretty much push to max out of pocket. Of course that is max out of pocket for what is covered. Like this machine that automatically ices and puts pressure on an area and is proven to have better outcomes from surgery is not covered (one of the many health insurance chicken contests. sure we will pay more because you will have more issues if you don’t get it but you will have to live with lower quality of life). Anyway just some perspective on cost because while not 22k it can get up there.
Yes, in edge cases. None of it, even the extreme edge case, adds up to the 80k in daycare until college. For the large majority birth is a trivial concern vs the loss of income or daycare.
This is basic math.
well im not sure I consider myself and edge case but I get your point.
Hey GOP assholes, taking away bodily autonomy doesn’t get you more babies.
The capitalist class only cares about birthrate for productivity. Don’t blame us for not caring about reduced productivity when most of us get a tiny fraction of the benefits of productivity. Also, what happened to all the shrieking about overpopulation? It’s all just fearmongering to drive people to act in ways to benefit the capitalist class. I’m tired, leave me alone.
It’s also dumb legacy thinking.
We’re in the process of creating a labor force that threatens to put the majority of people already existing out of work such that we need to figure out how to restructure society in a post-labor era.
What the fuck do we need a high birthrate for?
you want more kids make houses affordable and give people time off from work.
If you want to further subjugate women so rich people can get away with more creepy sex crimes then you do what the GOP is currently doing.
Hey, falling birth rate means lots of empty houses. House prices will go down. Problem solved!
Bullshit, we have lots of empty houses now because they are owned by corporations to pad out their balance sheets.
It was a joke.
I can’t understand why anyone would expect most people to want to have kids. I can hardly afford to take care of myself, things look like they’re only likely to get worse, and all indicators are that if I did have kids, they would be facing an even worse future when they hit adulthood. Why would I do that to them?
I have kids. I love my kids, and being a parent is the best decision I ever made for myself.
I can’t say I would recommend it, though.
I am also a parent who dearly loves my daughter (it’s her 14th birthday tomorrow!) but I don’t want anyone to have kids who isn’t willing to take the time and the effort and spend the money.
No child should be unloved or neglected.
Wealthy employers shrug over falling standard of living and lack of affordable housing and food
My kids don’t want kids. I’m cool with that. It’s not my decision and I’m definitely not interested in playing grandma daycare.
Neither me nor my sister really want kids, but my parents want to be grandparents. Makes for some awkward family dinners
The decision is much too big to let anyone pressure you one way or another. It’s totally okay for you to want what you want, and it’s okay for that to change throughout your life.
Same, but they only want grandchildren as facebook sex trophies. No interest in babysitting or being supportive in any other meaningful way.
They were able to raise children on a single salary without leaning on family for childcare, so why can’t we? Surely nothing has changed over the last 30-40 years.
Even if I could afford to have kids (which I can’t) or believed in forcing anyone to have to be alive without consent (which is impossible), there’s no way I could ethically justify making somebody have to live in what is probably The last century ever of human civilization.
If young Americans had financial stability, better mental health, hope for the future, etc. I’m sure that birth rate would go back up.
It’s not like people don’t enjoy fucking anymore. It’s just that they’re more careful than ever not to reproduce, because they can’t afford parenthood.
If politicians want people to have more children, maybe they could do something to make having kids less ruinously-expensive.
Fewer people means increased wages. Fuck em.
I’m very happy that I don’t have kids. I still have no idea what compels people to have kids these days. They must not know the things I know.
Every now and then I see a parent having a tender moment with their child and I smile. I then reflect on whether my vasectomy/shirk of parenthood was the right choice.
I always come to the conclusion that it was. Perhaps when I’m older I will feel differently but I just can’t imagine that in my life for a long time.
Completely agree.
Look at an ocean temperature graph if you are even entertaining the idea of bringing new life into the world.
