4 ms·

This is going to have long-term economic and sociopolitical ramifications, and it's mainly due to the fact that we put the value of equities above all else. Th

This is going to have long-term economic and sociopolitical ramifications, and it's mainly due to the fact that we put the value of equities above all else. The next generation isn't being born, because their would-be parents are saying "I cannot afford to give my children as good or better of a life than I had". The equities that labor's value is stored in are beyond their reach. There's really only two ways to deal with this: 1) Get the older generation - the Baby Boomers - to work longer and rely on their stock-based savings less. Given that we've structured our entire society around them getting to retire to Florida for golf and wife-swapping until the dementia sets in, I don't see them being willing to stick around the office longer to produce value for the economy. 2) Import labor through immigration. Given that one candidate for President right now is running on a platform of severely curtailing certain types of immigration, and is doing so successfully, I don't see this being a viable option.

HDThoreaun 2y ago
Birthrate seems to have little correlation with income. The Scandinavian countries have made hard pushes to incentivize having children and they still wont. More likely that people just dont want kids.
- dangus 2y ago
  When half your babies aren’t dying of disease and you have life and career aspirations for yourself the idea of raising more than 1-3 kids seems pretty insane. Arguably low birth rates are a very good thing and we should adjust our society more to embrace them (like not building the economy so that it depends on being a giant pyramid scheme).
- rybosworld 2y ago
  Birth rate has generally been inversely correlated to income. AFAIK this is true in almost every country. The plot of Idiocracy was derived from this phenomenon. Humans are complicated and there are probably multiple reasons for this. But the most convincing one that I've heard is tied to education. Higher income generally means better education. And the better educated are more likely to use birth control. https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/228/pdfs/female-education-and-its-impact-on-fertility.pdf https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/228/pdfs/female-educati... I mentioned before that birth rate and income are generally inversely correlated. But that isn't completely true. The relationship is more of a j-curve. That is, past a certain income (think top 5% or more), the fertility rate begins to tick up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#:~:text=There%20is%20generally%20an%20inverse,born%20in%20any%20developed%20country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#:~:text=T.... So, the breakdown is basically this: - The lowest-income/least-educated have the most children by far. - As you climb up the middle income/college-educated ladder, fertility drops almost linearly. - The wealthiest have more kids than the upper middle income, but still a lot less than low income.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Elon has 11 kids, so it doesn't always apply.
- kaibee 2y ago
  Do you have some numbers on this? I suspect it's a couple of issues. 1. If you just give people money to pay for childcare or whatever, but there's not enough labor, then all that happens is that the price gets bid up higher. 2. I suspect that the 'hard push' wasn't arrived at by figuring out how much money it would actually take to make someone have kids, but by fighting for whatever Euros could be diverted. There is definitely an amount of money that people will have kids for, but I think it is a lot higher than governments/electorates are ready to confront.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    > 1. If you just give people money to pay for childcare or whatever, but there's not enough labor, then all that happens is that the price gets bid up higher. All of these countries have universal childcare starting at 12-18 months with over 90% attendance. I think point 2 is worth investigating, it could be a truly ludicrous number though for all I know.
UncleOxidant 2y ago
> The next generation isn't being born, because their would-be parents are saying "I cannot afford to give my children as good or better of a life than I had". I'd say it's more like they're saying "I cannot afford to raise a kid given the high cost of housing and childcare" period. > 1) Get the older generation - the Baby Boomers - to work longer and rely on their stock-based savings less. A couple problems with that: 1) As BBers close to retirement (and able to retire) tend to be in higher level positions delaying retirement blocks advancement for younger people. 2) it's not always their choice when to retire - if you're laid off in your 60s you're unlikely to be able to find another job that was paying anywhere near as well as the one you had. A lot BBers are finding they don't have a lot of choice about when they're going to retire. > Import labor through immigration This is the way. Being able to attract immigrants in a demographic environment where your population is aging is a big plus for an economy. Unfortunately large parts of the electorate don't appreciate this.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  1 is true, but 2 feels more like of a "well, tough" moment. Plenty of people have to take jobs that don't pay as well as they used to, and these layoffs often happen to inflate stock prices on already-profitable companies. Why do they want to inflate stock prices? Because we've made equities the sacred cow of wealth stores in this country, and the very same people who manage the BB's retirement portfolios demand it to make the number on the 401k go up. It's important to remember that these shifts did not come from nowhere. The shifts towards financial instability for the average person took place during a specific period of recent history, and people - including average people - who really should have known better, given all of the expert advice made it happen. There were very much people saying "shore up Social Security", "don't offshore manufacturing", "increase capital gains taxes", "invest in more sustainable infrastructure", "increase wages at the expense of equities prices", etc. and these people were all ignored, at least in the United States.
  - UncleOxidant 2y ago
    > There were very much people saying "shore up Social Security" And there's the solution. It's not making people work longer - many can't for health reasons or due to ageism. The easy way to shore up social security is to significantly raise the wage base limit (which is currently $168,600). Double or triple that.
Adiqq 2y ago
Or you know, there's this crazy idea, every country or city can just invest into affordable housing and make it so that you can actually get some place to live, even if you're in poverty. In practice it's just reasonable, it works in places like Vienna, it doesn't have to be luxurious housing, but it should be relatively ok, cheap to maintain, but also safe to live, with enough space to have children. Why can't we regulate and subsidize such fundamental stuff? Everyone needs some place to live, some food, some water, some way to move, some basic services and utilities. What's the reason that some wealthiest countries in the world can't provide even bare minimum for most people? It's only greed of the wealthy. It's too expensive for them to treat us all as humans, with some empathy. They prefer to keep things as it is, so about 2000 people controls about 90% of all capital.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

Birthrate seems to have little correlation with income. The Scandinavian countries have made hard pushes to incentivize having children and they still wont. More likely that people just dont want kids.

dangus 2y ago
When half your babies aren’t dying of disease and you have life and career aspirations for yourself the idea of raising more than 1-3 kids seems pretty insane. Arguably low birth rates are a very good thing and we should adjust our society more to embrace them (like not building the economy so that it depends on being a giant pyramid scheme).
rybosworld 2y ago
Birth rate has generally been inversely correlated to income. AFAIK this is true in almost every country. The plot of Idiocracy was derived from this phenomenon. Humans are complicated and there are probably multiple reasons for this. But the most convincing one that I've heard is tied to education. Higher income generally means better education. And the better educated are more likely to use birth control. https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/228/pdfs/female-education-and-its-impact-on-fertility.pdf https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/228/pdfs/female-educati... I mentioned before that birth rate and income are generally inversely correlated. But that isn't completely true. The relationship is more of a j-curve. That is, past a certain income (think top 5% or more), the fertility rate begins to tick up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#:~:text=There%20is%20generally%20an%20inverse,born%20in%20any%20developed%20country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#:~:text=T.... So, the breakdown is basically this: - The lowest-income/least-educated have the most children by far. - As you climb up the middle income/college-educated ladder, fertility drops almost linearly. - The wealthiest have more kids than the upper middle income, but still a lot less than low income.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Elon has 11 kids, so it doesn't always apply.
kaibee 2y ago
Do you have some numbers on this? I suspect it's a couple of issues. 1. If you just give people money to pay for childcare or whatever, but there's not enough labor, then all that happens is that the price gets bid up higher. 2. I suspect that the 'hard push' wasn't arrived at by figuring out how much money it would actually take to make someone have kids, but by fighting for whatever Euros could be diverted. There is definitely an amount of money that people will have kids for, but I think it is a lot higher than governments/electorates are ready to confront.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  > 1. If you just give people money to pay for childcare or whatever, but there's not enough labor, then all that happens is that the price gets bid up higher. All of these countries have universal childcare starting at 12-18 months with over 90% attendance. I think point 2 is worth investigating, it could be a truly ludicrous number though for all I know.

UncleOxidant 2y ago

> The next generation isn't being born, because their would-be parents are saying "I cannot afford to give my children as good or better of a life than I had". I'd say it's more like they're saying "I cannot afford to raise a kid given the high cost of housing and childcare" period. > 1) Get the older generation - the Baby Boomers - to work longer and rely on their stock-based savings less. A couple problems with that: 1) As BBers close to retirement (and able to retire) tend to be in higher level positions delaying retirement blocks advancement for younger people. 2) it's not always their choice when to retire - if you're laid off in your 60s you're unlikely to be able to find another job that was paying anywhere near as well as the one you had. A lot BBers are finding they don't have a lot of choice about when they're going to retire. > Import labor through immigration This is the way. Being able to attract immigrants in a demographic environment where your population is aging is a big plus for an economy. Unfortunately large parts of the electorate don't appreciate this.

lenerdenator 2y ago
1 is true, but 2 feels more like of a "well, tough" moment. Plenty of people have to take jobs that don't pay as well as they used to, and these layoffs often happen to inflate stock prices on already-profitable companies. Why do they want to inflate stock prices? Because we've made equities the sacred cow of wealth stores in this country, and the very same people who manage the BB's retirement portfolios demand it to make the number on the 401k go up. It's important to remember that these shifts did not come from nowhere. The shifts towards financial instability for the average person took place during a specific period of recent history, and people - including average people - who really should have known better, given all of the expert advice made it happen. There were very much people saying "shore up Social Security", "don't offshore manufacturing", "increase capital gains taxes", "invest in more sustainable infrastructure", "increase wages at the expense of equities prices", etc. and these people were all ignored, at least in the United States.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  > There were very much people saying "shore up Social Security" And there's the solution. It's not making people work longer - many can't for health reasons or due to ageism. The easy way to shore up social security is to significantly raise the wage base limit (which is currently $168,600). Double or triple that.

Adiqq 2y ago

Or you know, there's this crazy idea, every country or city can just invest into affordable housing and make it so that you can actually get some place to live, even if you're in poverty. In practice it's just reasonable, it works in places like Vienna, it doesn't have to be luxurious housing, but it should be relatively ok, cheap to maintain, but also safe to live, with enough space to have children. Why can't we regulate and subsidize such fundamental stuff? Everyone needs some place to live, some food, some water, some way to move, some basic services and utilities. What's the reason that some wealthiest countries in the world can't provide even bare minimum for most people? It's only greed of the wealthy. It's too expensive for them to treat us all as humans, with some empathy. They prefer to keep things as it is, so about 2000 people controls about 90% of all capital.