They just need to work hard like me.

You don't have kids because it's too expensive.

I don't have kids because I'm immature, irresponsible, would screw it up like everything else in my life, can't even take care of myself let alone another human, these genes aren't worth passing on, climate change will almost certainly never be taken as seriously as it should be, and it's not like there's anyone that would want to have my kids anyway.

We are not the same.

And also it's too expensive.

I don't have kids because I find fulfillment in life without them. I get to travel, spend time on hobbies, and have a social life. I know you can technically do those things while having kids, but generally not to the same degree.
Also, I think letting our population decline a bit is probably better for our species and our planet.
- I get to travel, spend time on hobbies, and have a social life.
  I have kids, travel, hobby, and have a social life. Introducing kids to new places, ideas, and people has given me a new perspective on them and made these activities more fun.
  Also, I think letting our population decline a bit is probably better for our species and our planet.
  The biggest waste producers on our planet aren't the areas with the most people. They're the areas with the access to the most money and the least political consequence.
  The OpenAI project is a great example of this. Phenomenal consumption of domestic resources - land, minerals, energy, water - at the hands of a few thousand people. If everyone in Brazil stopped existing tomorrow, Sam Altman would still be pumping out huge plumes of CO2 and sucking up hectares of water to cool his data centers.
  Similarly, the assorted wars in Europe and the Middle East - Russia/Ukraine, Israel's genocide in Palestine, the US/Afghanistan and US/Iraq missions - have been resource hogs that vastly outstripped anything a comparable number of civilians would have consumed.
  Idk what the "correct" number of humans is, but the notion that we can end the ecological degradation if the population gets cut in half really underweight the biggest drivers of the harm.
I grew up in a family with over a dozen siblings.
I didn't have space to myself nor a quiet Saturday morning until I was 21 years old, and I did a shit-ton of parenting without my consent.
Kids suck. Childrearing sucks. My dogs are nicer, cleaner, more loving, and cuter than human children. You couldn't pay men enough to give up my quiet, clean condo on a Saturday morning.
Also it's too expensive.

Yeah, actually having the coefficient of 1.4-1.7 is OK: look at France or Germany: they had these values for nearly 40 years and the population only increases
- A big driver of that population increase is war and climate refugees.

Who cares, let population decline for a generation or so. Maybe we will stop producing so much shit and scale back

let population decline for a generation or so
But that's bad for the Big GDP Number
- Oh no, not the economy!
  Anyways...
- Would that be the worst thing in the world? Probably not
that's not how capitalism works. if you're not selling enough shit you find a way to make the same people buy more or pay more. line must go up. no scaling back. line must go up.

Maybe you can solve the problem by letting immigrants in

Our leaders wouldn't mind that except that immigrants might come from countries where they grew up with access to banned books...
- I don't think that racism boils down to red scare or whatever you are implying. Racism has a long tradition like the Asian Exclamation Act from 1924
Short term solution. As countries become more affluent the birth rate tends to drop. Globally countries are generally becoming more affluent. So you'll just shift the problem and run out of immigrants.
- India has 1.8 BEEELLION population. Do you want a flood ? Almost no Indian would voluntarily giveup migrating to the US or any Western country. Indian politics and situation is corrupt and terrible. And not many people are willing to go through the pain and crap that is living day-to-day in India.
- At least there is no reason to build higher fences

After a century of telling people work, career, consumption and wealth are the most important thing in their life, business leaders are now shocked people will prioritize work, career, consumption and wealth over having many children.

Furthermore, after cutting programs for making child care, health care and education affordable, politicians are wondering why people don't bring as much children into the world that need a lot of health care, child care and education.

There was a time when a man with a highschool education could work a single full-time job to buy a house and support a stay at home partner and 2 children. Bring that back and you'll probably get more babies.

Government in the 1940s: "Here, we're demolishing black and rural neighborhoods to give returning veterans a cheap suburban housing stock. Also, we're doing big industrial jobs programs and ramping up our domestic manufacturing base."

Baby Boom Happens

Government in 2020s: "Here, we're larding you up with debt all through your twenties and turning every facet of life into a micro payment we can ratchet upwards on a whim."

Baby Bust Happens

Hmm, will Gen Z become known as the Busters?
I kinda like that

Now you know why the corporate backers of Republicans want to use their platform to outlaw abortion and birth control.

I always thought about it as a way to secretly promote gay agenda. If contraceptives were to be banned, I would've become celibate or gay
- You don't "become" gay for outside reasons. It just doesn't work what way. You might be bi now, but due to societal pressure you haven't felt safe to explore it.
Ask Nicolae Ceaușescu what happens next

GOP: "that's okay, just trap them to have children and make abortion illegal."

Remember JD Vance said that childless individuals "should not have as much of a voice."

Remember JD Vance said that childless individuals "should not have as much of a voice."
So the reasoning behind this is probably "childless individuals don't have to think about the future as much".
The natural extension of that reasoning is that older people should have their voting/political power diminished (since they won't be around as long)
I gotta say, a part of me sees the latter as being worth the former... I know it goes against many principles of government, etc. etc. but it certainly is tempting. Any armchair political scientists want to chime in?

Reminds me of the CEO who took a giant paycut so everyone in his company can earn 70k/yr minimum. Guess what some of his employees started doing. They started to have kids.

People like him should be the norm, not an anomaly. In a system in full support of greed, only the greedy are meant to thrive unfortunately.
I'd just adopt more dogs. Who would want drooling grimlins running around draining your bank account destroyed your social life.
- As if dogs aren't this.
- Our parents. good for them that most of us make it through that stage eventually.

Where can I get some of that $1200 rent that isn’t in the middle of some hillbilly backwater?

I had a 2 bedroom in Albuquerque for 1100 last year, with horrible noise pollution but still.
- I'm stuck in my 2 bedroom townhouse apartment hybrid for 1125 because a studio around me is 1200 a month (or anywhere in range of my office). I live alone, and sleep on my couch, I don't need the rooms, but I can't leave.
  Great job capitalism!
Lots of great smaller towns in the middle of the country. Usually pretty progressive too if you stay in town.
- Name them

Ignoring the elephant in the room called "Child Care." Often that's more expensive than housing.

Happy post-soviet country noises
Got some good child care stuff.

When did we go from “baby boom” to “this is the correct population level we should sustain”. A boom eventually gets a correction

when it became clear that the people who "weren’t having enough kids" were white, it’s been white supremacy this whole time

jokes on billionaires, because of your shitty greed there wont be anyone left to buy your worthless junk

They will be long dead before any of this matters, so I doubt they will care.
- I think they have other plans like seeding mars with their semen, transporting their consciousness to a robot or cryofreezing themselves until infinite life becomes available to billionaires.

Republicans: the solution is fascism!

The baby boom generation is dying off and you're supposed to replace that?

Who writes these articles? Do they even think? Do they pause for one moment to think?

AI. AI writes these articles.
The I stands for 'Incompetence'.
- The A stands for absolute

The few babies born in this generation will eventually be called “busters” from the “baby bust generation”

If I get rich I'm knocking up everyone.

Sooooo, Elon Musk?

Hey look! They're talking about me!

Liberalism and capitalism making it hard to make families.

My recommendation is to pool everyone's money between you, your siblings and your friends who want to live together and buy a house. Do it as a business and live there for a while until you all can afford to buy another and another. You can rent the second, third and such extra ones for a few years. That may help you guys float yourselves up to house affordability. The economy is a stupid game that we all are forced to play. Once you get far ahead, then go after the rich. Fuck them up good 👍. A good simple way to legally fuck up the rich is to become employed by them and simply cause expenses. I'm not saying to go and ruin your career. I'm saying... Hey look here are two items we need, one is 50 bucks more, it's made in the US, buy that one.

Oh god, the r/fluentinfinance spambot found lemmy and is now spamming their posts here too

I'm not a bot though.
- That’s exactly what a bot would say