On a more personal level, I suspect you chose to had kids because you wanted kids. This is fine. But you're not doing this for the good of society.
Lastly, in the developed world we WAY overspend on child-rearing. Like... it's ridiculous. It may well be that in the US each child will cost nigh on $1m to raise. That's... ludicrous. But it also comes about from making a bunch of unessential choices (eg private school). Again, if that's what you want to do, fine. But it's another choice.
No, we could easily support 10 times this many people. The problem is that people are "selfish" and will starve, steal, and kill others for power or property. Starvation isn't because of the lack of food or resources - its the governments, rebels, gangs, and guerrilla fighters.
About the closest approximation to a shrinking population society, is Japan. They have negative native growth and also don't bring in immigrants. And as a result they have widespread consolidation, aging, and ghost towns. And also the really unanswered questions about how to deal with an aging population with so few youth to care for the old, and where the money comes from to maintain standard of living. The main way they've done this is technological advances as an offset. OK, so is there a limit to such advances as compensatory elements of a shrinking society? Uncertain, but there probably is, and then what happens?
There's way more known what happens with societies that have strong population growth than what happens to shrinking ones that also survive. Typically the shrinking societies end up in the realm of anthropology and archaeology.
- Expensive health care. And no plan to fix it.
- Climbing college costs.
- High housing costs.
Most tech people are not in SV.
>http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in...
I'm not saying saving 10% is bad. It may be good enough to retire depending on when you start out. But it won't take you out of the middle class.
For most developers in my city, 10% means saving $7-10K a year.
To become a more sophisticated investor, you'll need to start reading books (uh-oh!) on investing, accounting, and business.
That wasn't in dispute. The issue in contention is moving out of the middle class.
Having $1.3 million in retirement when you're 65 puts you squarely in the middle class, if you go by the 4% withdrawal rate.
* buy a car you can pay cash for, not one you have to make payments on
It turns out that your local thrift store is a great place for both of those cheap. I bought a very nice sound system for about $40 including speakers, one that a couple decades ago would have cost a couple grand. You can get real nice flat panel TVs from the pawn shop for next to nothing, too, as well as computer equipment.
Warren Buffet literally describes inflation as a tax - I agree with that. Taxes are [should be] a way of redistributing wealth more fairly.
Responding to your later edit: yes, wealthy people have more opportunities that come from wealth, and therefore can expect their wealth to collect more wealth disproportionately quickly. Inflation does work to correct this.
A legal change to make minimum wage track inflation and dramatically increase (double?) the currently unlivable federal minimum wage would also be helpful though, as would restoring workers' rights (especially collective bargaining rights) which have been gradually but systematically eroded for the past 40 years.
You thought about it long and hard and decided "what society really, really needs, more than anything, is another one of me"?
>the choice I made to contribute to society by having a family
In this case with what little I know about seymour333's situation (one HN comment) I would call it a net positive because these kids grew up in an environment where they or their parents experienced upward social mobility. Perhaps mom and dad can't break the middle class ceiling, but since the kids know escaping poverty is a thing that gives them incentive to elevate past middle class.
The population of the world has doubled in just my lifetime. The risk of the species dying out is negligible.