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.
Fewer people means increased wages. Fuck em.
Wealthy employers shrug over falling standard of living and lack of affordable housing and food
🤷♀️🤷♂️
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.
We have an endless supply of illegal emigrants we don’t need to have kids.
plastic is stored in the balls, my dude
Believe it or not, Earth’s population is not ∞ and most of the people who live in places other than the U.S. don’t plan to come to the U.S.
It is endless enough for us. We literally need to put up walls and barbed wire to keep people out.
Is it? Because I don’t know where you live, but there’s plenty of space around here.
It’s not endless. Birth rate is declining everywhere and standards of living are generally rising, meaning fewer people with incentive to uproot their lives for another place they’ll be treated as criminals. That flow could easily stop and any interruption switches us instantly from growth to serious shrinkage
Don’t play the game if it’s rigged
You don’t want to pay ever increasing prices on one of the most expensive undertakings a person (or couple) can do… An undertaking which may also act to increase inflation its self!?
Shrug©®™
Yours for only fordy-naaan low low payments of nanteen nandy-naaaan
I’d love to have kids. I think it would be wonderful to be able to be a foster parent as another option.
I can’t afford it. Its impossible. We can barely afford living as it is. How the fuck am I supposed to raise a kid?
I’m shrugging at falling birth rates not out of indifference, but out of a lack of ability to do anything about it.
Hope? Things could improve, or at least hope that the next generation will be able to improve things. At the very least I see movement to try to do something about housing and college expenses. Maybe they’ll succeed. Renewable energy and electrification seem to be coming, regardless of active resistance. Too slow and too late, but maybe they’ll succeed. We’re in the middle of a wave of enthusiasm about high speed rail. Maybe they’ll succeed
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.
Its not a problem. A consistent population is much easier to plan for financially and socially.
But declining birth rates won’t lead to a consistent population, it will lead to a falling population.
The replacement level birth rate is 2.1 children per woman. The US is at 1.6 but the yearly population growth rate is trending back up due to immigration. Worldwide the birth rate is still at 2.6. Experts estimate that the population will continue to increase up until 2060 before it will start to plateau or gently fall to a homeostasis.
Yea it’s only a problem when you need to perpetuate a pirimid scheme.
The future is bleak. The least I can do is not create another person to inflict it on.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Executives: AI is the answer. We’ll replace people and won’t have to listen to them whining about how hungry they are.
Now let’s see 2022 and 2023.
Edit. Oh wait! It’s back down.
https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) stood at 119.1 points in April 2024, up 0.3 points (0.3 percent) from its revised March level, as an increase in the price index for meat and smaller upturns of vegetable oil and cereal indices slightly more than offset decreases in those for sugar and dairy products. Although it registered a second monthly uptick in April following a seven-month long declining trend, the FFPI was down 9.6 points (7.4 percent) from its corresponding value one year ago.
It’s not back down to 2019 prices
Never said that but you’re right.
Just providing even more context than you did
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.
Completely agree.
Look at an ocean temperature graph if you are even entertaining the idea of bringing new life into the world.
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.
having a tender moment with their child and I smile
Worst case scenario for me is I go “kidnap” my niece and nephew for a weekend and get it out of my system.
We don’t need more slaves to capitalism.
And that is exactly what they’re concerned about.
And yet, not concerned enough to make the quality of life any better where people want to have children. Its like the greed is getting in the way of their ability to be more greedy in the future.
Cheaper to just force you to have children
Its like the greed is getting in the way of their ability to be more greedy in the future.
late-stage capitalism in a nutshell
We’ve been at the point where the people at the top (who are there only from nepotism/luck) are heavily rewarded for screwing over the thing they’re a part of (and everyone in it) in the long term. And our government fuels the cycle by spending trillions in subsidies and bailouts and stuff for companies after executives & stockholders make them implode.
The people who control for-profit organizations generally don’t have much of an incentive to do what’s best for the company. Just to do what’s best for them and jump ship when things start to go south.
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.
If politicians want people to have more children, maybe they could do something to make having kids less ruinously-expensive.
