Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide? Nations are deploying baby bonuses, subsidised childcare and parental leave

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago

Tax the fucking rich. People aren't having kids for two reasons: education and lack of money. Oh, make it 3 (as said in the article): no future.

The baby bonuses are hilariously low! Some of them are just 2-3k€ as a one time payment for having a kid. Kids can cost 100k€ until they leave the house. How is a one time payment going to finance that? And subsidised childcare, while nice, ain't going to pay for an apartment or house big enough to have the kids. Parental leave is also just a weeks or months tops. Those are just alibi measures to say "we did something", while not addressing shit.

And of course, stop poisoning the entire damn planet and vote for parties that don't want that. Who wants to bring a child on a dying planet? Tax the rich and invest in people, not corporations.

[–] running_ragged 32 points 2 months ago (2 children)

When will they stop seeing this as a problem that needs to be solved, rather than a solution a number of problems we’re currently experiencing?

[–] shalafi 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I think depopulation is the best answer to global warming, but it has serious issues for economies.

Fewer births translates into an aging population. Now you have fewer young people doing the business of the nation and more old people requiring support.

To put the icing on top, now the tax base is shrunken. So how do we support the elderly? Hell, how to we provide any social safety nets?

Taxing the wealthy is a huge part of the solution, but it's not the panacea many on here make it out to be. Fortunes rise and fall, not a stable thing to base economic policy on, that requires a predictable tax base. We still need workers, and many jobs are "youth only". How many old garbage men do you see?

[–] running_ragged 15 points 2 months ago

Depopulation through declining birthrates seems a lot better for economies than depopulation through massive drought, famines and pestilence brought on through climate change.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I think depopulation is the best answer to global warming, but it has serious issues for ~~economies~~ rich people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Depopulation, demolish all asphalt shit and eliminate polluting factories and you'd have climate change fixed by dinner time

[–] Carrolade 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure the actual solution to this one is going to be increasing automation leading to reduced working hours and thus more time. Some economic reform will also be necessary at some point.

Let's be real though, every other animal experiences population fluctuations due to environmental pressures. We probably can't be the only exception to that, where we only ever grow or remain steady, that's just not practical. If the economy requires it, then the economy is what will have to change at some point, by necessity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Some economic reform will also be necessary at some point.

Are you thinking something like [email protected]?

[–] Carrolade 5 points 2 months ago

Eventually, yeah, probably. Also going to need to reverse some of the privatization we've allowed in the past decades. Corporate-owned dystopia where money runs 100% of all things is not particularly conducive to child rearing.

[–] CheeseNoodle 17 points 2 months ago

We made everyone work 2 jobs and got rid of every social support system and places for children to exist without being run over or yelled at while doing our best to ensure everyone is as stressed as possible... why does no one want to have kids?

[–] gusgalarnyk 15 points 2 months ago

Until I trust my government to not go hard right, until I can own my housing wherever I want to live in a given decade, until work goes/stays full remote and/or reduces total working hours, until I feel like I have too much money that I could lose the cost of a child and not risk being in the danger zone - until then kids aren't something I can guarantee a good life and that's not an acceptable starting place for me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

largely to no avail

Great news. It's insane how few people seem to care about the damage occurring from overpopulation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

But the economy! It won't survive without neverending growth.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well I can tell you that none of those things are being deployed in the USA.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

yeah our government shut down abortion rights and is trying to make contraception and divorce illegal. that's the way we're "fixing" it here.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

Not true at all.

[–] KestrelAlex 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

None of these policies address that life is too expensive and difficult for people now for them to think about having kids....telling struggling people things will only get half as worse once they have children isn't motivating anybody.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They do address
This not the cause anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What's the cause then according to you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

To be frank, I don't know. I just think we are in a situation where we can rule out some of the possibilities by making comparisons between earlier societies and today, as well as different countries. For example, if we assume that bad living conditions are the root cause, then we have the problem that in earlier societies with much less wealth, that has been more demanding for the average person, people tended to have more children. In addition, we see that people in quite poor countries have a lot of children. You could save the assumption by adding a hypothesis like "if people know that life could be better but cannot achieve that better life, they are less likely to have children". While this might work, we must note that inequality was even worse in earlier societies. The difference between a peasant and a member of the nobility may have been much greater than the inequality we see today (within most socienties). Maybe the peasant wasn't aware of it, or whatever.

Anyway, you need a more complex theory in this case.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

My argument is that the shift from agrarian to industrial economy is the primary cause. It triggered all the things often cited in these articles, such as education and the cost of having babies. I would argue, that those are only secondary factors affecting birth rates, but not the initial trigger.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Oh cool. Forgot have a futurology.today instance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Sabine Hossenfelder also did a video on that, today: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bm_BGGDurd0

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Don't think so. Every country in this world wants to increase the rates again.

[–] AtHeartEngineer -1 points 2 months ago

Idiocracy 👀

Futurology