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Making babies is easy, raising them into productive members of society is hard. Unless the government can ensure the latter, incentivizing the former is only go

by paxys 2y ago

Making babies is easy, raising them into productive members of society is hard. Unless the government can ensure the latter, incentivizing the former is only going to lead to disaster.

willcipriano 2y ago
This is why the "We will bring in a billion immigrants" strategy is going to fail. You don't need a billion unskilled laborers, you need a hundred million people who can take part in an advanced economy.
- paxys 2y ago
  > You don't need a billion unskilled laborers, you need a hundred million people who can take part in an advanced economy You need both
- rayiner 2y ago
  Correct. What makes western societies work is the way children are socialized. You can’t outsource the socialization process to developing countries and import the adults. Most of my adult family members immigrated to the U.S./Canada/Australia as adults. They are still Bangladeshis. If you imported 50 million of them, and allowed them to vote and participate in civic institutions, you would turn Canada or Australia into Bangladesh.
- tivert 2y ago
  > This is why the "We will bring in a billion immigrants" strategy is going to fail. That strategy is going to fail from simple math. Birthrates are dropping everywhere, and IIRC world fertility is at replacement or maybe even a little bit below it today. Immigrants have be born somewhere, and if that policy works at all, it will only amount to exporting the problem to places even less equipped to deal with it. Do liberals really want to do what it takes to implement the immigration strategy (e.g. hold down Africa and keep it really poor, so its birthrates remain high and Western countries [and China, and India!] can raid it for population forever)?
rayiner 2y ago
Western civilization was built on people a lot less educated than the ones we have today having babies! The generation that raised the Apollo astronauts and scientists had less than 50% of the population having high school diplomas.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- red015 2y ago
  They were probably more literate in the 19-20th century regardless of diploma.

by paxys 2y ago

Making babies is easy, raising them into productive members of society is hard. Unless the government can ensure the latter, incentivizing the former is only going to lead to disaster.

willcipriano 2y ago

This is why the "We will bring in a billion immigrants" strategy is going to fail. You don't need a billion unskilled laborers, you need a hundred million people who can take part in an advanced economy.

paxys 2y ago
> You don't need a billion unskilled laborers, you need a hundred million people who can take part in an advanced economy You need both
rayiner 2y ago
Correct. What makes western societies work is the way children are socialized. You can’t outsource the socialization process to developing countries and import the adults. Most of my adult family members immigrated to the U.S./Canada/Australia as adults. They are still Bangladeshis. If you imported 50 million of them, and allowed them to vote and participate in civic institutions, you would turn Canada or Australia into Bangladesh.
tivert 2y ago
> This is why the "We will bring in a billion immigrants" strategy is going to fail. That strategy is going to fail from simple math. Birthrates are dropping everywhere, and IIRC world fertility is at replacement or maybe even a little bit below it today. Immigrants have be born somewhere, and if that policy works at all, it will only amount to exporting the problem to places even less equipped to deal with it. Do liberals really want to do what it takes to implement the immigration strategy (e.g. hold down Africa and keep it really poor, so its birthrates remain high and Western countries [and China, and India!] can raid it for population forever)?

rayiner 2y ago

Western civilization was built on people a lot less educated than the ones we have today having babies! The generation that raised the Apollo astronauts and scientists had less than 50% of the population having high school diplomas.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
red015 2y ago
They were probably more literate in the 19-20th century regardless of diploma.