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My wife and I work a total of 4 main jobs. I think we had 10+ total forms of income for 2023.I try to get money on the side too. I can’t afford a kid. Even if I could, what time would I have to be a parent?
My in laws want us to pop out kids. We live in a 1br place. And we are just barely keeping our heads above water. They will say stuff like “well if you wait for a perfect time there will never be one,” or saying it’s our duty to let them have grandkids.
Linux is great.
My FOSS ass immediately skipped the first two paragraphs to read the last line like a monkey neuron activation meme
Got 'em.
I’m very curious what sorts of jobs?
We both are medical caregivers for the same disabled couple. Our main full time jobs are a data center analyst and college cafeteria work. We also both collected from unemployment. I have some stocks and CDs that have helped a bunch to keep afloat. I do some work on the side here as well.
It think they drew the wrong conclusions.
It’s not the high income-countries that are spearheading this decrease. It’s the high cost of living-countries.
It’s been observed for something like 70 years, across all sorts of other economic trends. I’ve heard before that the peak human population is expected to be about 11 billion and change, in a century or so, and then it will likely just hang there.
Apparently all the shit big corps are putting in the food it’s working…
Anyone else got some handmaid’s tale cold sweat vibes reading the headline?
I don’t think this is good or bad. If it’s voluntary, fine. We’re not in some Children of Men style crisis just because people are having fewer kids, the human race will survive for a long time at 1.7 kids per woman or whatever, and rates will not be the same in 500 years for all sorts of reasons.
The concern is that it’s something like microplastics or birth control washing into waterways causing lesser fertility, but if it’s something like that we can focus on fixing that specifically and rates will go back up.
One of the things that drives economic growth - which is required under capitalism - is the growth of families. Lots of things anticipate having more people alive in the future to drive demand and provide labor. If that’s not going to be the case, what will happen to companies that demand constant growth?
Even if it’s just infant and child care that level off, that’s a huge part of our economy not growing. And our economy requires growth.
Well keep on squeezing people on rent and real estate, this is what happens.
Damn I guess treating people like dogshit all the time doesn’t pay off after all
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I personally love my kid. I was so excited to be a parent. I am so surprised everyone is kind of stuck in that 18-29 mindset of “I am just not ready to be a parent”
Birth rates in the future won’t be too much of a worry mind you. Robots and humans that don’t age will make up the bulk of the workforce. The economy will just tank because there wont be a trillion people buying things.
Current metrics of the economy will show that it tanks. But we have known for ages that these metrics are at best wrong and at worst devastating to the planet and people on it - since leaders and policy-makers use them to allocate resources in ways that show up-and-to-the-right graphs.
It first occurred to me when hearing about Japan’s “lost decade”. Japan is by no means perfect, but when you visit you find a place where people have their material and social needs taken care of. If you read economists though you would think that the country was doomed.
Similarly after the housing bubble burst we had job losses and other problems in Holland the same as in other places. But looking at the metrics of wealth per capita, we basically were back in the same place as less than a decade before. Was life so horrible in 2004 that this was a huge tragedy? If you are insisting on constant improvement by some arbitrary measurement, then yes.
For me the biggest example was COVID-19. We showed that if it was important that we could have a way of life with drastically less environmental impact to the planet. We surely don’t want to live exactly like that, but we could make radical changes to have a better world for ourselves and our children (yes, even with drastically lower birthrates there will still be people on the future earth).
Luckily there are rebels in economics fighting against the orthodoxy. If you want to feel a bit of hope (mixed with a large dose of pragmatism) you can check out the Economics for Rebels podcast.
I am so surprised everyone is kind of stuck in that 18-29 mindset of “I am just not ready to be a parent”
Is u blind?
