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Having children is more important to society than having workers. It is a grim fact that the calculus of life in almost any Western country is that you can have
by toxik 6y ago
Having children is more important to society than having workers. It is a grim fact that the calculus of life in almost any Western country is that you can have maybe one child, but better none, if you want to have a decent life.
We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction, we’re wholly unable to even have a conversation about the problem.
- ido 6y agoalmost any Western country That's a ridiculous overstatement. We live in Germany & have a lot of relatives in Austria. We have 2 kids & know lots of people in both countries with kids, it is very possible to have a decent life while having more than 1 child & earning median German/Austrian income (last I checked our household income is almost exactly at the 50th percentile for German households with 2 adults and 2 children). I suspect the same is true to a lot of other western countries. (this doesn't mean I'm otherwise of a different opinion than you regarding whose welfare to optimize - a state is for its people not its corporations)
- toxik 6y agoCuriously your anecdata does not change the fact that reproductive numbers are below replacement in basically every democratic market economy.
- ido 6y agoThe reason is not only - or even mainly - because people can't afford to have kids. In fact the poorer the country the more kids people tend to have. Surely people in poor countries can afford to have kids even less than people in rich countries?
- afthonos 6y agoTwo kids is still below replacement, which hovers, IIRC, around 2.1. Does the math still hold for 3 kids?
- ido 6y agoIf we really wanted to we could afford to have 4 as well. The reason we don't isn't money. Nevertheless OP made their claim about more than 0-1 kids, not >2.
- skrause 6y ago> We are literally a dying breed, and on our way to extinction Yes, of course, humanity's biggest problem is currently that we're basically going extinct because we're not reproducing enough.
- xornox 6y agoWhat is our target? 20 billion? Will we be still a dying breed?
- Barrin92 6y agoI think what's important to society is for individuals to have free and self-determined lives, we're not rabbits on a farm. People in Western countries don't do any calculus because they can't afford children, they have fewer children because that's what people want if they're not under pressure. In fact economically speaking, the opposite is true, the birth rate is high precisely in places in which people are poor, because children are the social safety net as well as the work force for manual labour. Also if we reproduce at say, a modest rate of 1.7 there will be still more people in 2200 than there were in the 1950s. How are we heading for extinction exactly?