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"It was called the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal consensus, and it was wrapped up with lots of high-flying rhetoric about this freedom and that dynamism and those

"It was called the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal consensus, and it was wrapped up with lots of high-flying rhetoric about this freedom and that dynamism and those flexibilities, but you don’t have to be that cynical to see it as good old-fashioned class war. It’s obvious who’s winning." Since Reagon was president, the US population has grown by 82 Million people (32% increase). At the same time, jobs went to China and so on. Is it certain that Reagan is to blame, and how? What if poor people just stopped having kids? Why is it assumed that there are good paying jobs for everybody, no matter how many people there are? Where do they come from?

malka 6y ago
People like having kids. Unemployment, especially future one is not a concern with this.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Are you saying it is wise to have a child if you are unemployed? I dont understand your point.
  - malka 6y ago
    No i say for a lot of people it is not a factor. They want kids. Because having a kid is an experience most human seem to want. If bad socio economic situation prevented people from making kids, humanity would have been extinct for quite a while.
- nine_k 6y ago
  People who like having kids usually plan well ahead, because they care about the kids' future life. But some people can't help but have kids, because contraception is either not uniformly applied / accessible, or due to religion prohibiting contraception. I bet that the lower is one's socioeconomic status, the harder it is to control childbirth, just because it's expensive. So even if having (one more) child would make life obviously hard(er) for the parent(s) and the child alike, there can just be not enough money to prevent it.
  - sdfsdsddsddssd 6y ago
    Some contraception is free, like not having sex to begin with. I think that "poor people can't afford contraception" is not very convincing. Contraception is not that expensive, either.
    - devchix 6y ago
      Poor people should stop having sex. Got it.
cowsandmilk 6y ago
Why are absolute numbers at all important? Why would a population with half as many people have more high paying jobs?
- rumanator 6y ago
  Because an export economy is able to generate high-paying jobs regardless of the population growth.
pm90 6y ago
Poor people not having kids is not just an ethically cruel way to structure your society, but here is absolutely no evidence that the children of poor people are any less talented than those or richer people. The hallmark of a functioning democratic society is its ability to provide for equal opportunities to most of its populace, regardless of their parents background. The US scaled back Public Spending immensely during and after Raegan and it’s effects are being acutely felt in American society today.
- sdfsdsddsddssd 6y ago
  People are not being paid for being skilled or educated, but for being useful. It's not a given that Millions of people have something useful to do. I think usually society regulates itself that way: people who prosper have kids. Because their parents are in a booming field of work, it is likely that there will also be work for their kids. Sometimes there are shifts in economics (for example coal mining going out of fashion), and millions suddenly are without a job. The economy can "buffer" some of that, but not arbitrarily high numbers. I suppose in the past this was even more obvious, as it was directly food based. I suppose as long as there was more land to convert to farmland, having kids always worked out - if they survived, they could start new farms and repeat the cycle. There are different strategies, like having as many kids as possible and hoping that some make it. Nobody is "structuring society" in a cruel way, it is bottom up, individual decisions by people.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    I think usually society regulates itself that way: people who prosper have kids No they don't - not in modern industrial societies. Please look at the data.
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      Not in pre-industrial societies either. There was just a really high maternal and childhood mortality rate to go with the really high birth rate. Modern societies also have a precipitously declining fertility rate.
mschuster91 6y ago
> What if poor people just stopped having kids? With all respect: That is one of the most disgusting, social-darwinist takes I have ever read on HN. The freedom of reproduction is seen as a basic human right across many jurisdictions - the positive freedom (i.e. the freedom to have a child) definitely, the negative freedom (i.e. the freedom to prevent reproduction by contraception or abortion) unfortunately mostly in the secular Western world. Telling poor people that they should not have children is something we saw the last time in action in the Nazi dictatorship in Germany in the Western world (and in the Communist world in China until a few years ago). This is a genie that should never ever be let back out of the bottle.
jazzyjackson 6y ago
"what if poor people just stopped having kids" is a trashy question to ask. The jobs come from our ability to be creative and find ways to improve each others lives. More people on Earth means more people to provide for and more people to provide. Anyway, I wasn't there but IIRC Reagan started diplomatic talks with China and American billionaires have been shipping jobs overseas ever since.
starfallg 6y ago
>At the same time, jobs went to China and so on. This is a direct result of policies that began in Reagan and Thatcher's era. Deng saw at that time that the West is now led by profiteers rather than statesmen, and honed his pitch perfectly.
imtringued 6y ago
Money doesn't disappear. It just changes hands. There is no limit to how much money can be spent. The only limits are the existence of products and services that people want to pay for. Considering that productivity is at an all time high there is no reason to think that we are suffering from a resource shortage right now. Right now Chinese manufactured products are more popular than American manufactured products and that is absolutely correct. You mentioned that "jobs went to China" but the way economics works is that if you keep exporting goods and maintain a trade imbalance your currency will get stronger until there is no trade imbalance anymore. This would mean that eventually the Chinese will be paid just as much as Americans and American labor costs would be competitive again. The Chinese growth phase will be remembered as a blip in history. Your strategy would be highly suboptimal. Consider the fact that the vast majority of our ancestors were poorer than us. Should they have had no children? It's so easy to just point at things humans are naturally inclined to do and then criticize them for being human. Having children might be expensive but if everyone had to guarantee 18 years of no economic misfortune before one can have a child then the human race would have died out after a single generation because nobody can make that guarantee. This is just some pipe dream so that richer people believe they will never be poor.

malka 6y ago

People like having kids. Unemployment, especially future one is not a concern with this.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Are you saying it is wise to have a child if you are unemployed? I dont understand your point.
- malka 6y ago
  No i say for a lot of people it is not a factor. They want kids. Because having a kid is an experience most human seem to want. If bad socio economic situation prevented people from making kids, humanity would have been extinct for quite a while.
nine_k 6y ago
People who like having kids usually plan well ahead, because they care about the kids' future life. But some people can't help but have kids, because contraception is either not uniformly applied / accessible, or due to religion prohibiting contraception. I bet that the lower is one's socioeconomic status, the harder it is to control childbirth, just because it's expensive. So even if having (one more) child would make life obviously hard(er) for the parent(s) and the child alike, there can just be not enough money to prevent it.
- sdfsdsddsddssd 6y ago
  Some contraception is free, like not having sex to begin with. I think that "poor people can't afford contraception" is not very convincing. Contraception is not that expensive, either.
  - devchix 6y ago
    Poor people should stop having sex. Got it.

cowsandmilk 6y ago

Why are absolute numbers at all important? Why would a population with half as many people have more high paying jobs?

rumanator 6y ago
Because an export economy is able to generate high-paying jobs regardless of the population growth.

pm90 6y ago

Poor people not having kids is not just an ethically cruel way to structure your society, but here is absolutely no evidence that the children of poor people are any less talented than those or richer people. The hallmark of a functioning democratic society is its ability to provide for equal opportunities to most of its populace, regardless of their parents background. The US scaled back Public Spending immensely during and after Raegan and it’s effects are being acutely felt in American society today.

sdfsdsddsddssd 6y ago
People are not being paid for being skilled or educated, but for being useful. It's not a given that Millions of people have something useful to do. I think usually society regulates itself that way: people who prosper have kids. Because their parents are in a booming field of work, it is likely that there will also be work for their kids. Sometimes there are shifts in economics (for example coal mining going out of fashion), and millions suddenly are without a job. The economy can "buffer" some of that, but not arbitrarily high numbers. I suppose in the past this was even more obvious, as it was directly food based. I suppose as long as there was more land to convert to farmland, having kids always worked out - if they survived, they could start new farms and repeat the cycle. There are different strategies, like having as many kids as possible and hoping that some make it. Nobody is "structuring society" in a cruel way, it is bottom up, individual decisions by people.
- lenkite 6y ago
  I think usually society regulates itself that way: people who prosper have kids No they don't - not in modern industrial societies. Please look at the data.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Not in pre-industrial societies either. There was just a really high maternal and childhood mortality rate to go with the really high birth rate. Modern societies also have a precipitously declining fertility rate.

mschuster91 6y ago

> What if poor people just stopped having kids? With all respect: That is one of the most disgusting, social-darwinist takes I have ever read on HN. The freedom of reproduction is seen as a basic human right across many jurisdictions - the positive freedom (i.e. the freedom to have a child) definitely, the negative freedom (i.e. the freedom to prevent reproduction by contraception or abortion) unfortunately mostly in the secular Western world. Telling poor people that they should not have children is something we saw the last time in action in the Nazi dictatorship in Germany in the Western world (and in the Communist world in China until a few years ago). This is a genie that should never ever be let back out of the bottle.

jazzyjackson 6y ago

"what if poor people just stopped having kids" is a trashy question to ask. The jobs come from our ability to be creative and find ways to improve each others lives. More people on Earth means more people to provide for and more people to provide. Anyway, I wasn't there but IIRC Reagan started diplomatic talks with China and American billionaires have been shipping jobs overseas ever since.

starfallg 6y ago

>At the same time, jobs went to China and so on. This is a direct result of policies that began in Reagan and Thatcher's era. Deng saw at that time that the West is now led by profiteers rather than statesmen, and honed his pitch perfectly.

imtringued 6y ago

Money doesn't disappear. It just changes hands. There is no limit to how much money can be spent. The only limits are the existence of products and services that people want to pay for. Considering that productivity is at an all time high there is no reason to think that we are suffering from a resource shortage right now. Right now Chinese manufactured products are more popular than American manufactured products and that is absolutely correct. You mentioned that "jobs went to China" but the way economics works is that if you keep exporting goods and maintain a trade imbalance your currency will get stronger until there is no trade imbalance anymore. This would mean that eventually the Chinese will be paid just as much as Americans and American labor costs would be competitive again. The Chinese growth phase will be remembered as a blip in history. Your strategy would be highly suboptimal. Consider the fact that the vast majority of our ancestors were poorer than us. Should they have had no children? It's so easy to just point at things humans are naturally inclined to do and then criticize them for being human. Having children might be expensive but if everyone had to guarantee 18 years of no economic misfortune before one can have a child then the human race would have died out after a single generation because nobody can make that guarantee. This is just some pipe dream so that richer people believe they will never be poor.