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The takeaway from all of this: employers in the U.S. do not care about mothers of young children at all, unless we’re consumers of their products. It might be m

The takeaway from all of this: employers in the U.S. do not care about mothers of young children at all, unless we’re consumers of their products. It might be more accurate to say that they view us as horrible useless burdens who need to be ushered back to full-time work as swiftly as possible. They will do anything in their power to keep employees from exercising their federally guaranteed rights to twelve weeks of MOTHERFUCKING UNPAID LEAVE, up to and including forcing employees to give up paid sick leave. Wow. She is a hero for writing this. Here's what's terrifying, and it's why our society is doomed to fail in the next 30 years if it keeps acting up this way: we need people like her to reproduce, and we're punishing them when they do. Extreme economic inequality, a bad health insurance system, an expensive education mess that puts a huge burden on parents, declining social mobility, and a corporate structure that punishes childbirth and the raising of children (especially for women) have had an anti-eugenic effect. The thoughtless, ignorant people who live in the present are having lots of children-- just as many as ever. The thoughtful, well-educated ones are having fewer kids, because they're more attuned to the cues of society and the obvious signal that they're not wanted by this world. We're seeing an adverse differential in reproduction. If something kills the U.S., it's not going to be China or the EU and it's certainly not going to be immigration, which is a good thing. It's going to be the adverse reproductive differential caused by a society that penalizes intelligent, thoughtful parents. (It also penalizes less intelligent parents, but they don't give a shit and breed anyway.) That issue is the one serious existential threat to us as a society.

scrollaway 12y ago
https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/ You guys need education, not eugenics.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  I'm not saying that anyone should be prohibited from reproducing. I'm saying that we should encourage (or, at least, avoid discouraging) thoughtful and intelligent people, through economic means, to have children if they want to do so, and not to wait until they're in their mid-40s and have their careers worked out, but might be infertile. I know intelligent people who don't want to have any kids, and I know smart people who want to have 4 or 5 kids. The latter set should be able to do so without having to either (a) make $1 million per year or (b) have a cousin who works at a top college and who can "fix" admissions to schools. Also, this isn't about some classist fear. I'm arguing that we should help intelligent people in the working and middle classes. (The rich don't need any help.) The problem is that, even when you control for social class, fertility and IQ seem to be negatively correlated. Even if you take genes out of the picture, it's still the case that thoughtless, stupid people make bad parents. Even if there's no adverse differential in genetics, there's still the risk of one in culture.
  - slapresta 12y ago
    IQ is not a neutral measure, and it is directly correlated to social class, so I'm not sure how you would control that out?
grecy 12y ago
I think it can be simplified further: employers in the U.S. do not care about employees at all, unless we’re consumers of their products. It might be more accurate to say that they view us as horrible useless burdens who need to be ushered back to full-time work as swiftly as possible. They will do anything in their power to keep employees from exercising their federally guaranteed rights to twelve weeks of MOTHERFUCKING UNPAID LEAVE, up to and including forcing employees to give up paid sick leave.
CalRobert 12y ago
My wife and I moved to the EU about two years ago on something of a lark (we're both politically left-of-center people who prefer transit to driving everywhere, and we like seeing castles in the countryside). We have every intention of staying here as long as possible, and the VASTLY superior policy and attitude towards quality of life is a huge part of it. The US hates its own people and cloaks the sentiment in language touting "economic freedom". Fortunately, the US also is home to one of the most environmentally damaging populaces in the world, so if anyone is going to have fewer babies, it should be them.
tragomaskhalos 12y ago
Also true in the UK, but for a different reason. Here, a huge raft of citizens live above the level of the welfare system but below the level of financial comfort afforded to a relatively small professional elite. This group is financially squeezed in so many ways that it is unusual now to see parents in said group with more than 2 kids. This is an extraordinarily serious problem, as effectively the engine room of society is no longer numerically self-sustaining. At present, the only de-facto solution appears to be immigration, which of course creates huge tensions and problems of its own. But it is an enormously difficult task to reform the welfare system to create the appropriate incentives (or, equally, disincentives) without also victimising the weakest members of society.
boothead 12y ago
You couldn't make this shit up! Except someone already has: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ It would be a funny film if its central premise wasn't so terrifying!
drostie 12y ago
I normally really like you and upvote your comments as thoughtful, but in this case I really have to disagree. Eugenics arguments are deeply flawed. They are based on an assumption that the nature-vs-nurture debate is decided firmly in the nature direction, and that assumption is wrong. "[A] point-of-view is worth 80 IQ points. If we're born in 10,000 BC with the IQ of Leonardo [da Vinci]... not a lot is gonna happen. Because it's not a question of being smart; we--we aren't a very smart species. We can accumulate knowledge, and that helps, but most traditional societies have accumulated a lot of knowledge. The things that make big changes are changes in our context, like the invention of reading and writing, the invention of modern science four hundred years ago. Those completely changed the way we look at the world." [1] People who are smarter individually are generally not smarter because they had smart genes, but because they've practiced more. I mean, I think talent exists, sure, but I do not think you can distinguish easily between innate talent that is somehow biological versus learned talent acquired by practice which has since been totally hidden from view (a childhood hobby of drawing, for example). Smart parents have smarter kids because they practice them more in thinking in smart ways. It occurs to me rereading your comment that you don't outright say genetic differences -- but it seems to be a present subtext. I guess this issue has hit home for me since a long time ago: it's a private peeve of mine, when people say that adopted kids are "not really your" kids. I've heard several variations of those words and each time it bugs me because of course they are your kids. I have two adopted siblings, and two biological siblings, and because we are closer in age and went to similar schools, I am much more like my adopted siblings than my biological siblings. Of course I am; we did the same things as children. It's not that genetics has nothing to say on any matter, but that its influence on your present state is much smaller than you'd think. Evolution happens over much longer time-scales and represents a slight force in an extremely noisy environment, something like a random walk with a slightly biased coin. Even if someone had a genetic predisposition to smartness, this might be based on a 'chord' of genes which need to work together, highly unlikely to be inheritable. Over the next two hundred years we don't need to watch a 'reproductive differential'; we need to watch an 'education differential' and a 'cultural differential'. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4tLxK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4tLxK8
- josho 12y ago
  If you are born poor in America the statistics show that you will stay poor. Despite the belief that there is mobility between classes in the US, that is largely decreasing. Thanks to cutbacks on public schools, a regressive tax system, etc the upward mobility in the US has been steadily decreasing. The parent's point has nothing to do with genes, but rather their hypothesis is that the poor as a % of population in the US will grow. While the educated white collar demographic will decrease.

scrollaway 12y ago

https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/ You guys need education, not eugenics.

michaelochurch 12y ago
I'm not saying that anyone should be prohibited from reproducing. I'm saying that we should encourage (or, at least, avoid discouraging) thoughtful and intelligent people, through economic means, to have children if they want to do so, and not to wait until they're in their mid-40s and have their careers worked out, but might be infertile. I know intelligent people who don't want to have any kids, and I know smart people who want to have 4 or 5 kids. The latter set should be able to do so without having to either (a) make $1 million per year or (b) have a cousin who works at a top college and who can "fix" admissions to schools. Also, this isn't about some classist fear. I'm arguing that we should help intelligent people in the working and middle classes. (The rich don't need any help.) The problem is that, even when you control for social class, fertility and IQ seem to be negatively correlated. Even if you take genes out of the picture, it's still the case that thoughtless, stupid people make bad parents. Even if there's no adverse differential in genetics, there's still the risk of one in culture.
- slapresta 12y ago
  IQ is not a neutral measure, and it is directly correlated to social class, so I'm not sure how you would control that out?

grecy 12y ago

I think it can be simplified further: employers in the U.S. do not care about employees at all, unless we’re consumers of their products. It might be more accurate to say that they view us as horrible useless burdens who need to be ushered back to full-time work as swiftly as possible. They will do anything in their power to keep employees from exercising their federally guaranteed rights to twelve weeks of MOTHERFUCKING UNPAID LEAVE, up to and including forcing employees to give up paid sick leave.

CalRobert 12y ago

My wife and I moved to the EU about two years ago on something of a lark (we're both politically left-of-center people who prefer transit to driving everywhere, and we like seeing castles in the countryside). We have every intention of staying here as long as possible, and the VASTLY superior policy and attitude towards quality of life is a huge part of it. The US hates its own people and cloaks the sentiment in language touting "economic freedom". Fortunately, the US also is home to one of the most environmentally damaging populaces in the world, so if anyone is going to have fewer babies, it should be them.

tragomaskhalos 12y ago

Also true in the UK, but for a different reason. Here, a huge raft of citizens live above the level of the welfare system but below the level of financial comfort afforded to a relatively small professional elite. This group is financially squeezed in so many ways that it is unusual now to see parents in said group with more than 2 kids. This is an extraordinarily serious problem, as effectively the engine room of society is no longer numerically self-sustaining. At present, the only de-facto solution appears to be immigration, which of course creates huge tensions and problems of its own. But it is an enormously difficult task to reform the welfare system to create the appropriate incentives (or, equally, disincentives) without also victimising the weakest members of society.

boothead 12y ago

You couldn't make this shit up! Except someone already has: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ It would be a funny film if its central premise wasn't so terrifying!

drostie 12y ago

I normally really like you and upvote your comments as thoughtful, but in this case I really have to disagree. Eugenics arguments are deeply flawed. They are based on an assumption that the nature-vs-nurture debate is decided firmly in the nature direction, and that assumption is wrong. "[A] point-of-view is worth 80 IQ points. If we're born in 10,000 BC with the IQ of Leonardo [da Vinci]... not a lot is gonna happen. Because it's not a question of being smart; we--we aren't a very smart species. We can accumulate knowledge, and that helps, but most traditional societies have accumulated a lot of knowledge. The things that make big changes are changes in our context, like the invention of reading and writing, the invention of modern science four hundred years ago. Those completely changed the way we look at the world." [1] People who are smarter individually are generally not smarter because they had smart genes, but because they've practiced more. I mean, I think talent exists, sure, but I do not think you can distinguish easily between innate talent that is somehow biological versus learned talent acquired by practice which has since been totally hidden from view (a childhood hobby of drawing, for example). Smart parents have smarter kids because they practice them more in thinking in smart ways. It occurs to me rereading your comment that you don't outright say genetic differences -- but it seems to be a present subtext. I guess this issue has hit home for me since a long time ago: it's a private peeve of mine, when people say that adopted kids are "not really your" kids. I've heard several variations of those words and each time it bugs me because of course they are your kids. I have two adopted siblings, and two biological siblings, and because we are closer in age and went to similar schools, I am much more like my adopted siblings than my biological siblings. Of course I am; we did the same things as children. It's not that genetics has nothing to say on any matter, but that its influence on your present state is much smaller than you'd think. Evolution happens over much longer time-scales and represents a slight force in an extremely noisy environment, something like a random walk with a slightly biased coin. Even if someone had a genetic predisposition to smartness, this might be based on a 'chord' of genes which need to work together, highly unlikely to be inheritable. Over the next two hundred years we don't need to watch a 'reproductive differential'; we need to watch an 'education differential' and a 'cultural differential'. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4tLxK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4tLxK8

josho 12y ago
If you are born poor in America the statistics show that you will stay poor. Despite the belief that there is mobility between classes in the US, that is largely decreasing. Thanks to cutbacks on public schools, a regressive tax system, etc the upward mobility in the US has been steadily decreasing. The parent's point has nothing to do with genes, but rather their hypothesis is that the poor as a % of population in the US will grow. While the educated white collar demographic will decrease.