US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
npr.org
npr.org
With the recent reduction in immigration, accelerated by the party in power now, the US is going to face the same low birth rate problems as other advanced economies.
And the people leading immigration suppression in the US know this.
Paul Ryan in December: This is going to be the new economic challenge for America: people. Baby boomers are retiring—I did my part, but we need to have higher birth rates in this country,” Ryan told reporters on Thursday. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and current Speaker of the House, “did [his] part” by having three children. http://www.newsweek.com/paul-ryan-wants-you-have-more-kids-7...
It's also worth adding: the political environment in the US for decades means that one party wants to make it hard for two-parent working families to have more kids (because those two-parent families tend to vote for the other party, and one-earner families have kids that vote for their party). That's a big part of the reason the US has poor child care and maternity leave support -- because those policies are a political football in the US.
With a potentially large wave of automation coming, the US shouldn't straddled itself with lots of unemployable drivers, farm workers, etc.
I hope we can move to a much more sensible immigration system, similar to Canada's, for example.
Not a sleight, just facts.
13% of unauthorized immigrants have completed college, as compared to 31% of US-born and 30% of authorized immigrants.
[1] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-an-immigrat...
If you don’t believe me, go clean a slaughterhouse one night, or pick strawberries in the hot sun for a day.
Edit: Automate these jobs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-06/crops-rot....
Your choice is not between illegal immigrants and working-class citizens getting that work, it's been illegal immigrants getting the work and nobody doing it.
And it makes sense. We pay for everyone to go to 12 years of public school, learning calculus, history, chemistry, literature, etc.., only to work picking strawberries for the rest of their lives?
Fuck that.
The American labor force isn't designed for these kinds of jobs. I can't imagine any smartphone addicted millennial to do manual labor. In fact, we'd be more honest about our economy if we actually banned these jobs for Americans, and only allowed unskilled immigrants to do them, and deal with it from there.
I provided sources showing that this is, empirically, what happens, no matter what you would like to believe.
> If the pay is right, you will find plenty of people to pick produce.
Obviously! But once you do that, the produce costs so much that no one wants to buy it. That is the fundamental issue here.
I can’t read the second one, but I’ve seen the arguments in the first one a million times — a whole lot of whining about how it’s absolutely impossible to find workers. No, you can’t find them at the price you want. Show me the farmer offering $30/hour plus benefits. You can’t. Even in the first article they peg “skilled” labor at $15-20/hour with the unskilled earning less. Guess what, I can get that a McDonald’s so try harder Mr. Farmer.
> Obviously! But once you do that, the produce costs so much that no one wants to buy it.
So I take it you were against the recent ~doubling of fast food wages in some localities to $15/hour then? Nah, probably not, I’m guessing you used the same argument so many others did: “what’s your problem, it’ll add like three cents to the cost of your Big Mac.” Well, I’d argue that doubling or tripling farm labor costs would only add a dime to the price of a basket of strawberries. Who cares? Pay real wages for real work and stop making excuses for what amounts to modern day slave labor.
Whether people should be willing to may more for their produce, and whether the treatment of these workers is ethically defensible - those are separate questions. I would be totally fine with paying real wages for produce-picking and then subsequently tightening immigration, but there's the paying market we'd like to have and the one we've actually got.
the market will correct itself.
why would anyone want to pick raspberry for $10 an hour when I can get paid more working at in & out. Basically we should support shitty working conditions and black market labor because people dont wanna pay more for their produce?
...and the market of voters will "correct" the elected politicians. Which is why no politician is foolish enough to do this, and they have a monopoly on making laws.
In the long-term, automation may help.
We can also pay a tiny bit more for our strawberries. At retail level, the cost of farm labor is is tiny portion of the total cost.
Crops don't rot on the vine if farmers know the labor situation in advance. Some will decide not to grow that crop. Others will find labor, paying more if required.
Whenever the supply of illegal aliens is reduced, wages rise. The "living wage" can not happen in the presence of illegal aliens. Once wages rise, Americans take the jobs. You can even see this today in the record-low unemployment rates.
I actually agree with this, but society has decided that "food security" is an important component of national security and that the country would like to maintain domestic food production even if it is uneconomical. And that's fine, if that's what the public wants, but once you do that you have to live with the consequences, like being forced to choose between illegal labor and rotting crops.
> In the long-term, automation may help.
Maybe, but a lot of the produce-picking that can be automated already has been. What's left is crops that, for whatever reason, are much harder to automate.
> At retail level, the cost of farm labor is is tiny portion of the total cost.
I'd like to see a source for this.
> Crops don't rot on the vine if farmers know the labor situation in advance
Please actually read my two links. The first is from 2012, and the second is about how the situation persisted through 2016. You're saying four years of Georgia's law wasn't enough advance notice?
Also, I should have said "crops MOSTLY don't rot on the vine" because:
Even if the labor supply is stable, some crops will still be left to rot. The production of the land and the demands of the consumers are both subject to change. This affects the price. Given the current price, some farms may decide to not bother harvesting.
Farms aren't always 100% serious. Lots of them are almost a hobby, or for tax reasons. (if you can claim your home is a farm, you may pay lower property taxes, and there are even income tax advantages)
> Whenever the supply of illegal aliens is reduced, wages rise. The "living wage" can not happen in the presence of illegal aliens. Once wages rise, Americans take the jobs. You can even see this today in the record-low unemployment rates.
So we import our strawberries and wages will rise? How can both of these things be true? And the alternative is we won't eat strawberries anymore?
What you're proposing is setting our country up to be a worse place on the individual level "hey, why can't I find strawberries in my grocery store?" and on the national level, because we'll be beholden to whoever we're importing from.
There's a reason why a country should grow its own food. It's critical for our national security that we not be dependent on outsiders for something so basic.
Whoever told you they're doing this to "Make America Great Again" was lying to you. Not being able to buy strawberries would make America worse.
But that doesn't mean these jobs are in any way desirable.
In another instance, I see people who complain about Amazon's cashierless stores taking away jobs that people could do, but they don't seem to have an answer about how this situation could free those people up to do some other, potentially less menial job.
We do have a mismatch -- lots of employers simply aren't yet paying enough to get employees. And agricultural employers can't get any Americans, white or not white, to work for them, in part because the seasonality of the jobs and lack of health insurance makes the pay immaterial. If you work for 6 weeks you could lose eligibility for some benefits, and what are you going to do for the other 46 weeks in the year? Providing benefits not tied to employment would mitigate this problem. But it still wouldn't solve the problem of all the Americans not even looking for work because they're out on disability. These people, again, are not competing with immigrant labor, because by and large they really can't do any sort of physical labor.
There is really no competition for ag jobs. Americans really, really don't want to do them, for some rational economic reasons and some reasons of expectations/feelings about what they deserve.
That has been the case for a mere 12-18 months out of the last decade.
You know why liberals used to be against allowing vast inflows of unskilled labor? They fully understood the obvious consequences to the workers their party represented, as it pertained to wages & employment prospects. Make that labor more scarce and wages rise. It's the reason Bernie Sanders used to openly advocate against allowing large amounts of unskilled labor immigration.
No other developed nation uses the immigration approach that the US uses. Everyone else favors a merit based system and favors immigrants that can pay for their social benefits. This is why Canada is so annoyed with the US right now on immigrants crossing the border into Canada. [1] A few thousand illegal immigrants cross over each month and Canada is begging the US to make it stop. Out of the entire planet, only the US is held to a different standard, everyone else is allowed to restrict unskilled labor immigration. The US is uniquely backwards in its approach to heavily limiting skilled labor and simultaneously allowing unlimited amounts of unskilled labor.
Where's the international condemnation for Canada's approach to restricting hispanic immigration into their nation? Why are they not called racist for it? They're a mere 1.5% hispanic, specifically because they won't allow unskilled labor from Latin America into the country.
That's an extremely ugly, hypocritical double standard. If the US behaves exactly as Canada does, it's called racist, xenophobic, etc.
I'll note that the sole reason the Republicans are supporting / allowing the low skill immigration approach (and why they've blocked Trump's attempt to shift to a merit system), is that it benefits business margins: they want as much cheap labor as they can get to suppress wages. It's why the Koch brothers are such big proponents of it.
The vast, endless supply of unskilled labor that has flooded the US for decades is partially responsible for low wage growth among lower skilled workers in the US over that time. If there's always more low-skilled labor, wages will not rise for low-skilled laborers. It's basic supply and demand. As automation increasingly hammers low-skill laborers, that effect will get dramatically worse.
The other critical reason why the US is going to be forced to end its immigration policies: you can't support an increasingly generous welfare state matched against vast inflows of unskilled labor that can't pay for its own benefits programs. This is why other developed nations follow a pay-your-way merit system. If you can't support yourself, Canada generally isn't letting you in. A couple million low-skill immigrants coming into their nation would bankrupt their welfare system and collapse their healthcare system. The US welfare state is now more generous than Canada's, so how is the US expected to continue to afford it? You want universal healthcare? You can never have that unless you change the immigration system to restrict inflows of unskilled labor.
The US should flip its policies: continue to allow in some reasonable amount of low-skill labor, and allow in a lot more high-skill labor (which helps pay for the benefits cost of the low-skill labor). As the US moves gradually toward universal healthcare, and continues to increase the generosity of its welfare state, this will become a fiscal necessity, just as it is in all other developed nations and for the exact same reason.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-immigration-border...
The only difference is we can't move all our food factories abroad, so the labor travels here.
But yah, open the borders. That's the only immediate solution.
The 90's had our greatest economic growth, and the borders were basically wide open then.
[0] http://www.newsweek.com/ann-coulter-shooting-immigrants-ille...
The current US policy by this administration is causing even documented immigrants to reconsider or just give up and leave.
I'm what you would call a (potential) high-skilled immigrant (STEM Phd soon completed at top tier college). Clearly, the current policies don't make me want to stay. The path to permanent residency (i.e. proper immigration) is getting harder and harder.
No longer that two days ago we got an email about "public charges" (i.e. -legal- public help that would make Dhs/State consider us a burden to the US) and how we should be careful not to use those while in the US, otherwise we can get denied entry/visa. Yikes.
Hardly any are undocumented. Of course, for many the documents are forged. Maybe they have your social security number; hope you don't mind! BTW, identity theft is illegal.
Oh, also, in all states and countries an unregistered firearm is not illegal. It is undocumented. If I enter your home without permission, I'm an undocumented resident.
We have a decent immigration system in terms of getting the right kinds of advanced folks.
The problem is we are also unwilling to do what needs to be done to stem the tide of unskilled illegal labor that flows into the nation.
Who will pick strawberries? Who will clean your hotel room? Etc.
It's the classic who will do "X" dirty job argument.
All you're doing by continuing the exploitation is keeping such automation from being developed, as you rob it of it's market.
It is so predictable that the whole "but what about the farmers" is touted as a reason to flaunt immigration laws. The farmers are not owed such a subsidy by the American people. They will adapt if they are forced to. They would be stupid to do so before they are forced to.
Sure, and who cares about the people who can't afford food in the meantime while we wait for the new Eli Whitney? You are proposing fixing one problem by creating numerous more problems.
You also shouldn't treat poor people as a single group. Yes, some poor people will be receiving these higher wages but no all. There are still people lost in the transition just like there would be people lost in the transition waiting for innovation from Eli Whitney.
Let's frame this a different way...
"Who will actually spend the money to develop a strawberry picking machine when there are piles of people that are willing to do it for below minimum wage and no health care?"
Having some group you use at near slave labor status can hold back technological innovation.
There is a seasonal / migrant worker visa for this reason. For instance, near me, Kiawah Island's resorts are partly staffed with Jamaican guest workers because the seasonal nature of the job. In high school I worked as a bagger at a grocery store on another island that was incredibly seasonal, so we had Russian guest workers during the summers.
Some jobs probably just wouldn't get done without either A) a wage increase or B) guest workers, e.g. particularly brutal agricultural tasks. We can allow the necessary workforce in for these tasks if need be.
> It's the classic who will do "X" dirty job argument.
The poor.
Having grown up in an area with a large Hispanic influx, they did. I currently live in an area with little to no Hispanics, but we do have a lot of poor African-Americans. They do the jobs I grew up seeing Central and South Americans work.
The problem with the illegal influx from southern nations, is they can also crowd out native blue collar markets by working for less, and are willing to live an impoverished standard of living. We should not be forsaking our own countrymen so we can get cheap lawn care from a wage-slave underclass living in third-world conditions on American soil.
The poor here just aren't willing to do that work at that price. The supermarkets aren't willing to pay more for the produce. Something has to give and in both countries I'm sure it's going to be the rules on visas.
1859: But who will pick cotton? Perform household chores?
We will either develop a technological solution or gasp the wages and benefits for picking strawberries will rise to such a point that it makes sense to pick that up as a career choice.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-21/the-myth-...
The biggest reason for that IMO is because Mexico has been doing relatively well over the past couple of decades. You don't attempt a very risky illegal crossing if you can get a job and support your family where you are.
The repeal of NAFTA will restart the immigration wave as the Mexican economy tanks.
Though I would add that doing it via a more realistic temporary work visa program would be preferable to encouraging an illegal crossing industry to flourish.
You're not at all wrong, I grew up with a lot of illegal friends. Good number of them have since gone on to become American citizens through hard work and determination and have built good lives for themselves.
Maternally, I'm a second generation American. My grandparents came to America post-WWII with nothing but an offer of employment, and ended up retired with the classic condo beach life. The classic story of rags to middle class American riches. There's a reason that's been the American tale, coming to a faraway land in search of prosperity takes drive. We filter for hard workers.
The problem is the black-market / underbelly aspects of this pool, and that very desperation and drive that drove them here has them put up with conditions we should be ashamed of be it in California, Iowa, or Appalachia. Businesses exploiting that cheap source of labor drive down the ability for those trying to live a basic American life.
America’s secret superpower is the ability to assimilate pretty much any people within four generations give or take
The Muslims will (continue to) integrate as well. It takes a couple of generations.
Japanese Americans? Chinese Americans? Indian Americans?
Plus, the very concept of some sort of empirical “cultural incompatibility” seems highly questionable. I mean, it’s not like cultures change over time or anything like that.
If any Catholic actually thinks this, they must be deeply ignorant of Catholic theology. According to the Catholic Church, anyone baptised using water and with a Trinitarian formula is Christian. Most Protestant denominations baptise people in this way, so most baptised Protestants are Christians according to traditional Catholic theology.
(And this is not something new introduced with Vatican II either, it historically dates back to the Donatist schism in 4th century North Africa.)
So, from the viewpoint of traditional Catholic theology, Protestants are heretics, but their beliefs about baptism are close enough to the Catholic belief that their heresy doesn't invalidate their baptisms. (Different story for ordination and the eucharist, since Protestant theology on those topics is further away from Catholic theology.) Whereas, non-Trinitarian Christians, the Catholic Church views their beliefs to directly touch on what the sacrament of baptism is about, so their non-Trinitarianism invalidates their baptisms from the Catholic viewpoint.
This is largely an issue of apostolic succession; regardless of the theology of the communities about ordination and the eucharist (which do differ critically), the sacraments cannot be valid because they are valid, in Catholic doctrine, only when performed by a validly ordained bishop (ordination) or consecrated by a validly ordained priest (Eucharist); the absence of episcopal apostolic succession (or, in much of protestantism, even the episcopal office) means that there are no validly ordained bishops and priests around. Now that is intimately tied to the doctrine around ordination, but even if the doctrine around the substance of the sacrament of the eucharist were identical, the absence of a valid minister of the sacrament would be critical.
> Whereas, non-Trinitarian Christians, the Catholic Church views their beliefs to directly touch on what the sacrament of baptism is about, so their non-Trinitarianism invalidates their baptisms from the Catholic viewpoint.
Well, there's two issues there. Sure, it's debatable whether a non-Trinitarian would have the requisite intent to validly (if, necessarily, illicitly) perform a baptism in the eyes of the Catholic Church, but what is more certainly fatal of most baptism by non-Trinitarians would be the failure to baptise using a Trinitarian formula, which is required for the sacrament to be valid, whether or not it is licit.
> This is largely an issue of apostolic succession
There are two different cases here. Protestants differ in their ecclesiology; some retain belief in episcopal apostolic succession, others reject it. Of course, those Protestants who reject episcopal apostolic succession, there are (from the Catholic viewpoint) no valid bishops, and hence no valid priests, and hence no valid Eucharist. On the other hand, the Anglicans, and some (but not all) of the Lutheran churches, claim to have bishops with valid apostolic succession. In the case of the Anglicans, the Catholic Church has decided that their eucharistic theology is so different that their episcopal consecrations and ordinations are invalid as a result (Apostolicae curae, 1896). Presumably, the same judgement would apply to other Protestant denominations claiming episcopal apostolic succession also.
From the doctrinal point of view, there are no non-Catholic Christians, just Catholics of various degrees of imperfection, is and everyone who intends to join Christianity, or to join someone else to it, intends joining to the Catholic Church as the two are identical and coextensive.
[0] it does recognize particular churches, but they are part of rather than separate from the universal Church; in addition to those in full communion with Rome, these include Christian communities who are out of Communion with Rome but who retain valid episcopal apostolic succession, including the various Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, among others.
> Generally Protestants don't recognize the authority of the church at all (i.e. Sola scriptura).
Sola scriptura is a doctrine of a subset of protestantism; there are Protestants who don't adhere to it but instead to prima scriptura, or to doctrines that aren't clearly either. It is certainly not the case that Protestants as a whole reject ecclesiastical authority.
I'm pretty sure you know about this, but for laymen who may not be familiar with the terminology.
The word "catholic" (little c) literally means "universal". And it is a strong doctrine of the "Catholic church" (big C) that the group of worshipers is singular and universal.
I guess Protestants have a harder time deciding who's a Christian; probably acceptance of the Nicean Creed is a popular standard, though I prefer "anyone who seeks to imitate Christ".
Rome absolutely accepts them as Christians.
It views them as wrong, but it does that for plenty of Christians that don't completely reject it's authority, too.
> The central point of Lutheran Protestantism is that it's open source: anybody with a Bible can decide for themselves how to implement it without asking for permission.
It would seem to me that the central point of Lutheran Protestantism is that there is a right way to implement Christianity, that right way is clear in Scripture, and having intermediaries between the believer and the Scripture is a barrier to the believer finding the truth in Scripture.
Lutheranism also seems generally pretty strongly defined by a particular opinion on what the right answers are, or at least a wide range of them, though somewhat internally divided by the degree of certainty ascribed to those answers.
Also I think you are right that many Protestants believe their opinions are clearly implicated by scripture, but it should be obvious on reflection that Scripture is not self-interpreting.
Strictly speaking, there is a distinction between "sponsor" and "witness". The sponsor must be a Catholic, the witnesses can be non-Catholic Christians. However, in my personal experience (having had one child baptised Catholic, and the other will be baptised soon), everyone just collectively treats the "sponsor" and "witnesses" as "godparents". The parish just tells people "one godparent must be a Catholic". The sponsor is just the first godparent listed on the baptism certificate.
As far as parents go, technically there is no requirement that either parent be Catholic, or even Christian. A Buddhist couple could ask for their child to be baptised as Catholic. Now, in practice, priests will be extremely hesitant about fulfilling such a request, but strictly speaking it is allowed.
One Catholic parent is the usual heuristic but it isn't actually the rule so isn't absolutely binding. For example, if a non-Catholic is known to regularly attend Catholic services, but for whatever reason is hesitating in formally converting, a priest may very well agree to such a parent's request to baptise their child.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is religion.
Lets cut through the code words then and have a direct counterexample to what you're trying to say.
Nigerians are primarily Muslims. They are also highly educated and among the most entrepreneurial immigrants to the USA. And while there's a "Nigerian prince" joke every now and then, they really are doing relatively well in the USA. Like, "better than Asians" with regards to college education statistics.
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Data-show-Nigerians-the-m...
Nigerians are basically the perfect counterexample to the "Religion" (aka: Islam) problem that is so often brought up. High rates of college completion, high rates of business / entrepreneurs, high-rates of integration. Overall, clearly net-positive to the USA.
> Other Asian immigrants in the US were also either not religious, or (like with Koreans and Filipinos) adopted the same religion as the dominant culture.
What about Indians? Who are usually either Hindu or Muslim? Indians are also highly educated and start a large number of businesses.
I'm personally Catholic. I'd obviously prefer it if immigrants would come with the same Religion as me, but the statistics are in. Nigerians, Indians, and a whole host of other immigrants kind of do perfectly fine in America. There's no need for them to be Christian or otherwise "mainstream".
Indeed, bringing in immigrants on the basis of religion is severely anti-American IMO. America is certainly big enough to sustain Hindu, Muslims, and other religious groups. Especially if those people are coming in highly-skilled, highly educated, and overall are a benefit to our society.
So maybe it is religion, just not the whole religion, but rather particular sects. All Christians are not like the Pentecostals or the Mormons, and similarly all Muslims are not the same.
The sect of Osama Bin Laden was "Wahhabism", which is relatively rare outside of Saudi Arabia. And even then, the Saudi Princes who work with the USA are often pro-Wahabbism, so the USA can't even deride that sect (even if its the primary sect of Al-Qaeda). Because there's still "good guys" who follow that particular sect.
Note that the "Bin Laden" family was a very rich and entrepreneurial group of people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family) Some of them were huge investors in the US before their "black sheep" messed up their family name forever.
The Middle East is complicated. Like, super super complicated. Honestly, the bin Ladens in general (aside from the infamous one) should be welcome to the USA. A bit unfortunate about their "black sheep" sibling.
-----------
Besides, if "Religion" was the problem, why did the USA DESTROY the only secular, maybe even atheist, group in the Middle East? (aka: Iraq Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athists).
Reason: the world is complicated. And thinking about it in terms of Religion only is a mistake. ISIS for example is a combination of yes, Wahhabism, but ALSO has the support of former Ba'athists.
And the Ba'athists believe in Secularism and secular law. They seemed to have joined in the ISIS fun not because of religious reasons, but because they wished to take over Iraq and saw aligning themselves with the fundamentalist Wahhabists as the best path forward and creating a unified Arab State.
So yes, we are fighting secular (arguably an atheist) groups in the Middle East. The world is a very complicated place. Yes, we have enemies some places, but Muslims exist across the entire world. You can't paint the issues of one region as a blight on all Muslims.
Even then: I'd imagine that we should welcome the many Iraqis who have helped the USA and are now getting targetted by ISIS in their country. We have friends in the region and we are turning them away with our immigration policies. We've turned our back on our closest supporters of that region, and I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of them have died because of their pro-US support or actions.
TL;DR: Immigration policy is hard.
Nigeria is split close to 50-50 between Muslims and Christians. The north is majority Muslim, the south is majority Christian.
More like 50%/50%
> What about Indians? Who are usually either Hindu or Muslim?
Most are Hindu or Sikh
Oh right, Pakistan is where the Muslims come from. Apologies, its sometimes hard to remember everything about the world.
But yeah, neither of those are Christian. Both are IIRC Polythistic religions, about as different from Christianity as possible. Muslims for example believe in Abraham and the existence of Jesus. Their story is... very different but Allah is clearly the God of Abraham / Yahweh.
So if anything, Muslims are "closer" to the mainstream religion of the USA than Hindu's or Sikhs
Many Hindus believe that the numerous deities are different forms or aspects of one ultimate deity. As such, they are much closer to monotheism than you think. It can be described as "inclusive monotheism", as opposed to the "exclusive monotheism" of the Abrahamic religions.
Sikhism is not polytheistic at all, it is very monotheistic.
Christianity itself has been accused of polytheism. Many Jews, Muslims, and non-Trinitarian Christians argue that there is no real difference between Trinity and tritheism. Many Protestants accuse the Catholic and Orthodox cult of Mary and the Saints of bordering on polytheism. Mormonism (admittedly on the fringe of Christianity) sees the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three separate "beings", although it redefines the word "God" to refer to those three beings collectively. Mormon theology also implies that God the Father has a wife (the Heavenly Mother), and of other gods ruling over other universes (or parts of the universe.)
Of course, part of this could just be physical proximity: these warring groups tend to be neighbors or even in the same places, causing friction. But, for now at least, we have lots of Indians (Sikhs and Hindus) here in the US and don't have the problems with them that we do with others.
This seems to be more true of mutually exclusive religions that are historically geographically close together for an extended period of time than ones which happen merely to be doctrinally similar, and to be more (but certainly not exclusively) true of political conflicts between religious communities rather than theological conflicts.
> But, for now at least, we have lots of Indians (Sikhs and Hindus) here in the US and don't have the problems with them that we do with others
Part of that is because the people who would have problems are still mistaking South Asians with Middle Easterners and also (whether or not they do that) assuming they are Muslim. Give it some time, they’ll get their own targeted hate. (Hinduism already gets some through the Christian anti-yoga movement.)
You mean like European Christian colonizers and the indigenous peoples of North and South America?
They shared neither language nor religion (US was overwhelmingly protestant). At the time, they were considered a distinct race from your typical white American due to their Sicilian heritage. Their diet was also significantly different, to the point where some states actually sent out social workers teaching Italian families to cook "American" foods -- the fear being their pasta-heavy diets would prevent them from integrating. Politically, they were far more pro-labor and were viewed as agitators, socialists and anarchists -- far removed from the political mainstream during the roaring 20s. They were hated and feared enough that there was a mass lynching of 11 Italian-Americans in Louisiana.
Seriously, though, Catholics and Protestants? There was a reason it was a big deal that Kennedy was the first Catholic president.
And that was the secularized, polite face of the common religious belief that both the Papacy as an office and the particular occupants of that office were the literal referent of the biblical Antichrist, and that “Papists” were, therefore, followers of the Antichrist.
And do you agree with the observers? If so, do you have sources to back up the claim? I ask you not to accuse you of anything but because I watched a Kurzgesagt video a while back saying most of the immigrants have integrated well over the next few generations.
It just takes time to integrate, and I'd say those who argue that Europe isn't integrated are looking st more recent immigrants, or older generations, and not the ones who would most likely be integrated already.
Each definition changes the answers significantly, I'd think.
California has never been "straddled" with unemployable farm workers over winter...
YMMV
Your argument is that the jobs these people do might be automated away so they shouldn't come here. Is that correct?
I would counter that many of these jobs can't easily be automated and that these workers are much more adaptable than you give them credit for. You just aren't going to see robots picking strawberries or hanging sheetrock on a large scale anytime soon for economic and technical reasons. Delivery drivers and dishwashers have very low cpaex vs robots that could do the same. These immigrants also start small companies at higher rates than native born Americans.
I guess I just don't get the rationale for keeping out low skill workers. The pay for goods an services, provide labor, start businesses, and generally do quite well.
There is economics in the cultural change - as people get wealthier and government welfare becomes more reliable the forces behind maintaining and growing the family decreases. Wealthy people in the past still had many more kids than they do now though, so there's probably a bigger explanation.
It should be acceptable for any population to ebb and flow, as changes in internal and external forces occur. Deciding to import warm bodies because your economic ponzi appears to require it seems like short term thinking. It would be better if the ponzi itself was addressed and the population allowed to ebb for awhile.
People are easy to attract to your country when you really need them ... unless you've managed to make that country undesirable.
Women are the ones who have to sacrifice the most for children, so now that they have a choice, they don't do it nearly as much: some have none, others only have 1 or 2 and they've had enough. For replacement rate, every woman needs to have 2.1 kids on average, and not nearly enough women want to have 3+ kids to make up for all the women having fewer (which also includes infertile women don't forget).
And also with men and women being much more equal, men are expected to invest much more effort in child-rearing now, instead of just banging their wives and then letting them deal with the consequences while they do other stuff with their time. Well they don't want to deal with 6 kids either, and many don't want to deal with any.
It may sound stupid but it was not obvious a hundred years ago. The wife is pregnant again, well, must be an act of god.
Try to imagine. There is no google search to find out how to make children. The closest library is far away and it's not that common to go to school and learn to read. That leaves you with the opinions of the family, the neighbors and the priest, who don't know much either and offer contradictory explanations.
I have to assume you're trolling, but to be charitable, here[0] is the Wikipedia article on the history of birth control. It starts in 1800 BC with ancient Egyptian writings describing the use of acacia and honey as a spermicide.
People knew where babies came from way before the internet.
I think you missed the GP's primary point. Just because someone in the entire world had the requisite knowledge might mean nothing at all to another someone a mere few hours of travel away, let alone on the other side of the world.
That's why written language was such a huge invention[1]. Then the printing press. Then the telegraph, radio, and telephone. Finally, the Internet. I'm sure I missed a few, but you get the idea.
[1] A moment of silence for the Libary at Alexandria, please
For example, here's an article on Samuel Pepys and a sexual manual from 1680 which quite clearly demonstrates that the nature of carnal knowledge was generally known at the time[0]. Along with death and mortal fear, sex and birth comprises one of the archetypal constants of the human experience. It's everywhere. It also happens to be knowledge that's necessary to continue the species, which humans have proven quite good at.
I guarantee that our parents knew how babby was formed, as did their parents, as did their parents, etc. Even our hominid ancestors before the formation of language understood it, because even animals understand it at an instinctive level.
[0]http://theappendix.net/posts/2013/06/this-misterie-of-fuckin...
The problem for something like contraception, which is the context here, is in understanding the details. Those details are sorely lacking in plays, songs, fairy tales, and old wives' tales.
> It also happens to be knowledge that's necessary to continue the species
No knowledge is actually necessary, as mere ignorant performance of the act is sufficient.
It's pretty easy to read this thread and see how much dislike there is toward children.
The only people who can afford kids are either extremely rich or extremely poor.
Yeah, but most don't focus on it. Paul Ryan is parroting his father and is not particularly brave or interesting. He's just a guy looking for a new cause to champion, because then he can just be the first, rather than compete. It has little to do with the "issue", which is a non-issue.
> US is going to face the same low birth rate problems as other advanced economies
Weaseling in "advanced economies" (which means countries without vast natural resources to exploit or what?) is not compelling as part of a narrative, as much as it's a nonsequitor.
This confuses cause and effect. Two-earner families tend to be two-earner families because you need two incomes in expensive cities (which vote D regardless of familial status). Single-earner families get much on much less in smaller cities and rural areas that tend to be more conservative.
we're full-on protectionists now. immigrants threaten what we got (a high-status nation dominated by wealthy white people), so they got to go, despite being the primary driver of our properity.
as a bonus, wealth disparity will only accelerate as the economic pie stops growing, because the existing capital holders have great advantage in capturing the remaining income streams, further driving down birth rates.
meanwhile, countries like china and india have tons of economic headroom because their populations are 4-5 times that of the US, but at lower economic levels. those countries will eventually eclipse the US if we stay on this path.
> With the recent reduction in immigration[...]
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-abou...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/us/politics/u...
However, this does expose a gaping hole in capitalism, that it can only deliver improvements to the masses under conditions of growth. With falling birthrates and immigration, we will need to find a more sustainable political economy.
Nonetheless, immigration is falling for dystopic reasons, not good ones (i.e. other countries are more attractive in a positive sense). It's falling because of authoritarianism, xenophobia, and a program of ethnic cleansing targeted at the most vulnerable people that is being performed by ICE.
EDIT: The last paragraph is justified because there are 325M people in the US and 11M undocumented people. There may be a marginal effect on jobs, but the bulk of the economy is made up of everyone else. We're talking about 3% of the population.
Wait what? Are we talking child credits, abortion, progressive income taxes, mortgage tax credit?
The only people who are coming in are reasonably well off, but desperate to move.
If it's what your priorities are you can have a home, cars, max out your 401k and be paying back student loans on a single entry level tech salary.
This requires that you put up with a long commute, beater cars, an old house and DIYing a good chunk of skilled trade work that you could hire someone for. You'll be bringing your own lunch to work, drinking beer from a can and not building much cash savings at that stage. Nevertheless it's sustainable on a single entry level tech income in a major urban area and living a couple hours away.
I think that increased spending on luxury things has by implication de-prioritized the "life milestone" things.
Generations ago people bought a house and started a family first. Now people accumulate wealth first and settle down later (which is probably a reflection on the fact that the lifestyle needed to accumulate wealth is not very compatible with settling down).
Their birth rates are also declining and doing it with increasing speed.
- lack of birth control and related education - desire for “free” manual labor to work stuff such as farm fields - desire to ensure continuity of one’s family tree (i.e. high mortality rates for infants and children due dangerous conditions and/or lack of healthcare)
The reason for this may be that, in the absence of public social safety net, family (and particularly close family) serve as a safety net, and particularly children, once they are able to be productive, can be a kind of safety net against infirmity for their parents.
I dunno, fungi usually don't produce mushrooms until right before their host is about to die or their substrate is about to be depleted. Reproducing takes a lot of energy, so individuals usually wait until they have no other choice.
Humans seem to be the same way. E.g. low-income kids go through puberty sooner, presumably due to having poorer health. And usually if someone starts drinking a lot or otherwise abusing drugs, they get really hot for a year or two before they start looking sickly and terrible.
At the population level species keep reproducing until they use up all the available resources, and then the populations collapse, but on the level of individuals the dynamics seem to work in almost the opposite way.
if we had a more fair economic system, more families would feel economically secure enough to have children.
the minimum level of economical security required rises proportionally with wealth and income disparity, because our economic outcomes are inextricably tied to each other through inflation and the like.
Sure, but they're far cheaper in both Sweden and Finland than in the US, yet people are still having fewer children there, so it can't simply be a cost issue.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/22/books.famil...
I also don't want to leave my wife and I without a child but all I envision are bars of my own making.
There's also the whole "not being aware contraception exists because you couldn't go to school" thing.
Sex is free, fun, and easy. The less education you have the less likely you are to understand effective birth control. The less wealthy you are the less you have to spend on contraception. Those things together with the easiest and cheapest form of entertainment would seem to cirrelate with a higher birthrate in lower income brackets.
I cant find any studies that support what Im saying right now, but the logic holds.
I know that my plan is two max at the moment strictly because total cost per head is roughly $500k in today's dollars (including total private college costs, which account for half of that).
So double the kids for same price assuming they go to a public university? Sounds like a good deal to me.
FYI, you can cut that down even further if you go to a community college for the first year or two and then transfer.
But yes if you only gain admission to the long tail of private colleges, then you would almost certainly be wiser to go to a low-cost public school.
I wouldn't want my kids to consider community college unless they had to. By definition, I'd like them to have the same academic opportunities I had, if possible.
Depending on how you define it, children are actually a much more reliable way to have a reasonably enduring legacy than businesses/foundations/accomplishments/fame/etc, though both approaches are ultimately ephemeral. You probably have to successfully make it at least three levels down an ancestor tree, rooted at yourself and with an average replacement rate around 2, in order for your own genetic legacy to have a high statistical likelihood of enduring through anything short of a species-level catastrophe.
If your kids are too stupid to get tuition assistance, private college isn't going to do any more good for them than a regular local uni.
I also assume you'd only go to a private college that ranks highly, which means low access to meaningful amounts of income/wealth-independent scholarship money. A low-ranked private college is usually no better than many public ones.
Is that true, though? A few months ago, I was reading a few articles about more competitive (highly-ranked) universities directing significant portion of their own aid dollars to wealthier students in order to lure them in.
Now, much of these schools' motivation for doing so is that those aid dollars spread more thinly among more (wealthy) students means more revenue than focusing those dollars on "need based" (poor) students, especially if the poor students don't stay the whole 4 years because they can't afford even the subsidized tuition. That may not mean much for your ultimate calculation, since it could be as little as 10% discount, but it's still something.
There is likely also merit-based money out there, which may be what the parent comment was referring to, but I have no idea if that's anything but trivial in amount.
Well, people in the US made way more children when they made very few money, and lived 10 together in tiny houses and apartments.
And they still do in the developing world.
So it can't be just costs.
Most people don't live with grandma anymore, and the government will happily take your children away if you don't keep every second of their lives supervised by an adult, prior to the age of 13.
Today's mom, on the other hand, moved to San Francisco to get her data scientist/devops/whatever job (there were not any in her area of northern Minnesota and she kind of liked CA after going to Stanford) and Grandma doesn't want to move to CA because it's going to fall into the ocean, you know.
Back then: Have kid when 18-24, Grandma is 36-42.
Now: Have kid when 35, Grandma is 70.
Boarding houses have become illegal, and their modern equivalent of micro apartments are in danger of becoming illegal [0].
To add a personal story, when I was college we had about 20-30 people living in a medium sized single family home. We were mostly students, but there were a couple of kids, and a grandmother too. Our neighbors hated us, and constantly tried to report us for overcrowding. However in our locality there was no cap on the number of residents, so long as conditions are sanitary and safe. But we'd have the zoning person come through frequently to ensure we didn't have things like too many ovens or broken bathrooms.
0: http://www.sightline.org/2016/09/06/how-seattle-killed-micro...
How many bed rooms and how did the actual sleeping work?
A "standard" 3-bedroom house would have 7-8 people in it per room (assuming you use the family room as a bedroom too) which means either bunk beds or wall to wall sleeping bags? Also 30 people sharing two bathrooms doesn't sound fun.
First world problems...
In the past, kids could work on the farm or in a factory and generate money, now you have to send them to daycare and buy them toys and they cost money.
Previously, more people would jump straight out of high school into blue collar jobs and raising families. Now, men and women are delaying kids to focus on college and building a career.
And mothers would more often stay home to raise kids. Now both parents are working more, and there's less time to spend raising children.
Our expected spending on children has also grown dramatically. For example back then there was an expectation that someone would always stay home an look after the kids, now we expect them to go to day care. Back then 4 kids sharing a room their entire childhood was normal, now each kid is expected to get their own room. Back then kids where expected to entertain themselves, now we expect them to attend all sorts of after school activities. Back then they where expected to either go straight to work after high school or pay their own way through college either by working or scholarships, now the parents are expected to help pay for college, and so on.
Basically it's not that having kids per se is more expensive, it's that providing kids with the quality of life we've come to be expected to provide them with is expensive.
Hypothetically, though, if previous generations (a) did not need as many farm hands, (b) did not need as many factory workers, (c) had access to cheap birth control and (d) enjoyed low child mortality rates, do you think their high birth rates would've stayed as high?
[...] the shrinking arable land beset by frequent drought, is supporting a rapidly expanding population. [...] expected to grow from some 16 million today to 55 million in 2050, reaching 140 million by the end of the century
A 10x increase in population, decreasing farmland, and then add the effects of climate change on top...
Those things actually contribute to the problem. They drive up taxes, causing more families to feel that they need two incomes and overtime and a bit more waiting.
Ah yes, back when one (1) unexceptional salary could actually support a few humans, shelter, etc.
> They drive up taxes, causing more families to feel they need two incomes...
I’m pretty sure the stagnation of wages while costs of living kept increasing played a way bigger part of this than a few percentage points of tax changes.
Also interesting: China's fertility rate is apparently lower than the US's.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
Of course, who knows if the chinese data is even accurate.
If a couple wants kids, and they can't pull it off in the Bay Area and it's a high priority item, you can bet they are on the way out.
It's not as if SV is the only place in the world with a job market. Though if you're early 20's and have nothing to lose in the world then it might be a good spot to start simply because what you make there in a couple of years can buy you a home cash somewhere else if you play it smart and keep your costs way down.
The trick is that reestablishing an entire friend network and getting comfortable in an area takes time. The first year or two in a place is usually more difficult and I suspect this gets even harder as you get older and people are paired off.
If you live in the bay area in your 20s with roommates and then pick up and move to Austin or Boulder at 30 it's probably hard to make friends (though I'd guess dating is probably a lot easier).
There are jobs in other cities. The idea that there is "little or no job market" outside of NYC and San Francisco is -- I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it -- absurd. The fact that you forward this claim with such smugness -- "rrrright" -- makes it all the more baffling.
Where are you getting these ideas? Click-bait articles about the Rust Belt?
A few figures on median income. These cities were chosen at random:
- Cincinnati-Middletown Ohio metro area was $60,260
- Indianapolis-Carmel Indiana metro area was $56,750
- Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro-Franklin Tennessee metro area was $60,030
Compare to:
- Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Washington metro area was $78,612
- San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area was $96,677
- New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area was $71,897
So, look, San Francisco is an outlier, even by the standards of big, growing cities with lots of jobs. But look at those others. The median income in Cincinnati is about $10k less than in New York City.
Do you think the cost of living in New York City is only about $10k more per year than in Cincinnati? Of course not.
The cost of living differences between the cities in that first group and the cities in the second group far, far, far outpace those earnings differences. So, you're wrong on both counts. The cheaper cities aren't "slightly less expensive;" they are vastly less expensive.
But that's never what these guys mean.
It's always casually advanced as a blanket statement about the hopelessness of living somewhere that you can't smell the ocean. I don't know why it became popular to demonstrate such obvious ignorance about the job markets of inland cities, but here we are.
I, for example, know precisely nothing about the job market in, say, Salt Lake City, but that's why I don't make statements on the internet about the job market in Salt Lake City.
Technology is everywhere, it is almost impossible to find a place where there are no tech jobs. But the bigger cities tend to have more of them and for better pay and Silicon Valley, New York, DC, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and so on will have the best paid jobs but also the highest cost of living.
Silicon Valley is an outlier in many respects, you should not calibrate your worldview by it. If you mean by tech job: a place where I can sit in a chair and make 7 figures easily then indeed, there are no tech jobs outside of SV and Seattle.
It makes the people who claim it look ridiculous, but they seem to think it makes them look — I don’t know what — something not ridiculous. They don’t merely say it; they say it with aplomb and even contempt. (Maybe because they get universal agreement every time they bring this up with people in their real life?)
The person we’re responding to in this thread is an almost archetypical example. Is this some sort of “winner take all” bias? It’s very weird.
Programmers in the most expensive cities are doing fine. But this cultural wisdom is doing very real harm to people who would be much better off in cheaper cities. They think, “well, sheesh, it’s hard here, but I probably couldn’t even find a job in Pittsburgh.”
And that’s factually, dangerously wrong.
Part of this could be a need to feel that one's own choice was rational or ideal. People make decisions based on emotion, and then invent reasons to justify the decisions.
A related factor could be the fact that a person could be compelled to move if they knew of a better place, but moving is a pain.
Another possibility is being unreasonably picky. Maybe somebody feels they need to be near all of the big internet giants, not that they can simultaneously work at them all.
A failure to consider cost-of-living may lead one to an unreasonable cut-off point. If a person does normal software development and sets a minimum salary of $300,000 then yes, there are "no jobs" in nearly every location.
If you accept that the South and the Midwest are legitimate places to live, then you're forced to really consider it, which is difficult -- moving long distances is hard! It's much easier to conclude that those places aren't real options.
If you want to talk about quality of life, that's another issue.
If you're not a gun-loving church-going conservative, you're not going to be very happy relocating to the South. It's already horribly hard to make friends over the age of 30 (this comes up here on HN often), and moving someplace where the locals are diametrically opposed to your worldview is not going to help with that.
This response isn’t like a little wrong, or a bit of hyperbole — it’s egregiously and embarrassingly wrong. It’s not just, like, your opinion, man. It’s a factually absurd, untravelled, ignorant comparison.
For my specialty, there's lots of places where I could go to get a job. But it might be the only job there. I had some silly company try to recruit me to La Crosse, Wisconsin not long ago. The work sounded really interesting and was a good fit for me, but it's most likely the only company in that town that would have such a job for me. That town isn't near anything. So if I were to relocate there, and the job didn't work out, I'd be screwed: I'd be forced to relocate again (at my own expense most likely) to someplace else. I've seen quite a few jobs like this: these jobs try hard to recruit people like me, thinking that because I'm older and experienced that surely I have a family (nope) and want to "settle down" in some nice small town (nope) and will be happy to take a low salary because the cost of living is supposedly so low (it really isn't, only housing prices are low in places like that, and they're not that much lower).
You forgot many options, such as slightly less expensive area with good job market. Or much less expensive area with reasonable job market. I'm not even sure I know of a place that's only slightly less expensive but has little to no job market.
That is, uh, about 10% of the San Francisco cost or 20% of the general Bay Area cost. Salaries are more like 50%, and of course that also means a lower income tax bracket. Other stuff is cheaper too, like food and gasoline. Last I checked, the price of gasoline was about 50% of what you have to pay.
The finances work out fine. I have 11 kids.
At age 35, probably 2/3 of the childbearing years are gone. (could be all gone, could have another dozen years) You'd better hurry.
This is a 4-bedroom house, supposedly for $275,000 but likely to go cheaper:
https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/indialantic/421-e-riviera-blvd-i...
There are a couple smaller places, a tad cheaper, on neighboring streets.
One can work for Raytheon, Northrop Grummen, Harris, Lockheed Martin, Thales, GE (trains), and several cybersecurity startups. All of those are doing well. Doing less well I think, there is also: Intersil (a wireless chip company), DRS (a military optics company), NASA contractors, etc.
I don't believe this place is particularly special. All across America, there are smallish cities in which the finances work out for tech professionals.
Happy because we have plenty of people on Earth and in the US. We don't need more people.
Scared because so many of our economic structures assume infinite population growth.
With the productivity gains of the last few decades this shouldn't be a problem. That is, if those productivity gains actually went into something useful, instead of appreciating my 401K.
I would love for governments all over the world to finally reach a scarcity mindset. Unfortunately, the earliest governments to try that were pwned by imperialists.
But these days power dynamics aren't so linear anymore due to WMDs.
Most of the earth is empty now due to desert belts, and we almost have the technology for terraforming them but do not have enough people to need that.
Losing people instead is really scary because that will mean we won't have large enough economy to afford large geoengineering projects, and will be caught in runaway effects of permafrost melting without possibility to do anything.
There are two things that give me hope that number of people on earth will keep increasing: first is technologies for increasing lifespan, and reproductive age, second is that subcultures that encourage not having children, will die off naturally.
Yes, having kids brings some limitations with it, but it's also one of the very best experiences that one can have.
I hear a lot of young professionals express fear that they can't afford "a big enough house" or that "the city isn't good for kids." Here's the thing, the kids do not care. They don't think they they live in a small apartment. They just think their home is next door to the bakery that sells their favorite oatmeal cookies. That they can walk to beautiful parks and libraries and schools. It's just normal to them, they're happy, and they aren't comparing themselves to the 50's era stereotypes of what "lifestyle" is "healthy" for kids.
SF is a great place for kids. All the parks and rec programs are so much fun and so cheap, the kids here have access to the abundant cultural and educational resources that aren't available at any price in most of the world.
I say this not because anyone should be convinced to have a kid. But, if you want to have children and the thing that is holding you back is a materialistic fear that you won't be able to "provide a good enough life" for them, or that the city "won't be a good place for them," just know that isn't necessarily true.
The best way I know how to express this for young urban professionals is to compare it to world travel. You probably know people from your home town who have never left, and how their world view is kind of small. It's not that they need to move away from home, but you know from experience how much traveling has opened your mind and enriched your life, and you wish they would choose to have that experience too. If they say to you "oh, but travel is so expensive," you know that isn't necessarily true, you can have an amazing travel experience on a dime if you want to.
Parenting is a lot like that. What kids care about is having parents that love them and care about them. If you can do that part, they won't care too much about the rest.
Yet, I agree, nothing beats walking them to day care and then to work and having a dog to play with in a park a few blocks away. Having access to some of the best food in the world and lots of evening family friendly events is quite a perk and a dream.
Another thing though that I hear a lot, people who choose to live in the subburbs here also find the "unique" culture of SF a bit much for a kid to get exposed to so early. A bit too gritty and real lol, but I applaud you for being so open.
I think it related to the general availability of contraception and that the work involved in caring for children has increased, while the number of carers has decreased.
The trend toward migration means grandparents are often not nearby to help care for kids. This coupled with the fact that in most cases both parents need to work increases the difficulty in raising kids dramatically.
I’ve also noticed that, while grandparents are not around to help, fathers often still don’t involve themselves in childcare.
All this coupled with how expensive kids are means that if you can satisfy yourself with one child, people often do. Enough that it depresses the birth rate significantly in any case.
Are people really living in marriages where the husband does nothing? This is a genuine question. My family is Indian, and I grew up in America, but from what I remember, my mom and dad spent most of their time taking care of my brother and I, whether that be by cooking, paying bills, cleaning the house, taking care of the car, driving us around, etc. Our grandparents lived in India, and only immigrated permanently in our teenage years, and both my parents worked (my mother even went to college). Indian culture is not known for an equal sharing of responsibilities, but that was my experience in my family. What are these husbands doing, if not taking care of their families? Watching TV? What? How is doing nothing productive for your family considered societally acceptable for men? As a man, I've always felt it was a societal imperative that everything I do directly benefit my wife and children.
In my own family the actual way it worked out was that both of them indulged their fixations and muddled through the rest without much discipline or mutual encouragement. This was imperfect but mostly worked for me up until my teen years, at that point I was neither something to indulge in or make plans with, unless one of them had concocted a story involving me - and then I was obliged to go along with it. That was not great for my psyche.
And I presume in more dysfunctional families they end up getting into an argument about everything, or one is an abuser and gets away with doing less.
In our case, I worked a full-time tech job while my ex either wasn't working at all, or for a while was in a technical school (which wasn't taking all that much of her time), plus for a while we had several rental houses that we had to do repairs and upgrades on. So I did auto repair, tile installation, plumbing repair, etc., while she did most of the cooking and cleaning, and some things we shared like painting.
The tasks you mention are amazingly important. However, many people today feel "male-coded" tasks encompass the following alone: take out trash, mow lawn, take car for oil change or car wash, set up TV. That set of tasks is not complex.
Frankly, I don't know why his wife puts up with him.
I just feel like I’m normalizing their actions by acting like it’s no big deal. I think one of the reasons that this kind of attitude amongst fathers continues, is because it’s seen as somewhat normal and socially acceptable.
If the kids small, and they can’t work, then it’s possible to get trapped in a marriage for financial reasons...
Meanwhile, at least in early years, mother spends 16 hours a day looking after kids. Essentially the father gets some downtime, but mother has to look after kids constantly (maybe gets a little help but that’s it). And if you /never/ get any downtime it tends to drive you into depression... causes other issues.
Now that you mention it, I've seen this in some friends and colleagues, working in the tech sector. I always chocked it up to tech workers often being socially atypcial. Didn't realize it was considered normal. Just doesn't match my experience with my parents, or the adults I grew up with (who granted, were mostly vietnamese and phillipino due to where we lived), and I don't see it in my wife's family (irish). My dad always earned more than my mom, but when he came home, he would always be the one to do things with my brother and I and leave my mom to rest. Moreover, my mom was always so thankful that she no longer had to work.
And yet population has grown by 120 million [1]. There are a lot of problems in the world, but I don't think low fertility rates is one of them.
Even if the children-per-woman rate has decreased sharply, the population can still be increasing for decades afterwards, because there are still a sharply higher absolute number of women in the relatively-lower-rate birthing generation, thanks to the rate having been higher in the past when they were born.
Not caring about lower fertility rates because you don't realize that there's a temporary lag keeping the population increase high seems very careless.
Come to the height of their careers in the 70's through the 90's. The decades of self. With Michael Douglas's character's "Greed is good!" as a centerpoint.
They're where the wealth has gone. Leaving following generations without the security to settle down and raise families.
Everyone wanted something for nothing. Well, you turned something into nothing. Sold your own kids and grandkids out.
Speaking generally.
And it's not the aides providing 24/7 coverage, who are getting rich. (Having been dealing increasingly with this, recently with some friends. Most of the aides are immigrants who are making relatively low hourly wages. The bills, however, can (well) exceed the full household expenses for a staunchly middle-class family of four. And many eventual estates have to pay those until they're more or less broke, when the government picks up.)
I need to reduce my commenting. This here is anecdote. And I'm pretty steamed about what I've been watching happen in the U.S., for the past 3+ decades.
In Europe with the free healthcare, the elderly can be kept on care for a very long time, all covered by the taxes of the younger workers. This is gonna become a huge hole in the budget.
China, that's where.
China will become the new world superpower, filling the vacuum left by the US in its decline. That's the legacy that the Boomers have left behind.
We also waited until the kid could be something other than American though, so we're outliers.
Back in the day (and in poor countries with no pension funds) people knew that they had to have children because otherwise nobody would support them when they were old and they'd die. Right now people are confident that they will get a pension when they are old, so there is no reason for them to have kids.
They consider children as an inconvenience, miss out on the marvel of parenthood, and basically make the nation die off gradually.
Plus of course - lowering wages and women having to work, thus making having a child a huge problem.
The average or median worker in the United States cannot depend on a pension, it is impractical for the vast majority of Americans to consider what we commonly think of as retirement and stopping work. http://time.com/money/4258451/retirement-savings-survey/
How many people here would say that they have actively decided not to have children? I am just curious.
At the end of the day, the kids go home with their own parents.
Plenty of people do. For many different reasons.
Some people do not like kids, some people like their life as it is, some people are in a relationship that they are happy in but that they are sure of that it won't survive having children, some people carry genes that they do not wish to pass on and so on. The list is endless, probably at least as long as the list of reasons why people do want children, possibly even longer.
1) I'm a woman married to another woman. Yes, one of us could get a donor, but it's one more hurdle, and it means we won't ever have one accidentally.
2) Debt. We've got some debt that needs to be paid off, and babies are expensive.
3) We'd need a bigger home. Right now the house we're in is paid off in full, and we'd have to go through the whole home-selling/buying process if we wanted enough space for kids.
4) Health concerns. I'm depressed, diabetic, and have fibromyalgia. My doctor says I also likely have PCOS and due to that I might not even be fertile. So I'm not a good candidate to try to get pregnant. My wife has her own health concerns, which are genetic, and she doesn't want to pass them down to a kid. I don't want to pass on the fibro or diabetes either. They both suck.
5) We're happy as is. We've got cats instead of kids (insert lesbians-with-cats joke here?). A lot of our friends have kids, so we're both pretty content to just be "aunties" to all our friends' kids.
http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fert...
Maybe you address in your post, but as stated this doesn't make a lot of sense. Fertility is falling across all demographics and in all developed countries and has been for decades – are you saying everybody everywhere has experienced a personality shift over that time?
And while fertility probably does have some genetic component, I think that's a small piece of it compared to prevailing economic conditions (having kids is friggin expensive and this generation is deeply in debt) and social mores (whether there's powerful religions pressure to have kids). Genetics neither explains this nor provides a way out of it.
And there are lots of other factors involved as well. I think the differences in fertility between Germany and France are particularly illustrative.
Sounds like a tautology to me.
If this were true wouldn't that mean that the genes for the heritable part of the "want to have kids" personality type would be overrepresented in the population, because they came from parents who had kids?
I think that most of them (low purchasing power, high cost of living, high house prices) seem to stem from the effects of our collective activity and lack of large-scale and long-term organization and planning; it doesn't help that we've been lately -- as a society -- focused on optimizing for GDP, which is as an indicator of how well a country's economy is faring.
I'd like to say my opinion, and would welcome any educated response, but I fear a backlash or repercussion. This is something I've been thinking about in terms of game theory, and though they may seem a bit crazy, I would invite everyone to consider them before disregarding them as conspiracy theories.
I believe there is an interest in keeping the majority of people uneducated, busy and plentiful: in essence almost everyone is easily replaceable, and the majority of the population have to settle for meager wages.
However, in a scenario where people were to be educated and scarce, I posit that inequality would tend to disappear as people would have a higher bargaining power, a likelier scenario to organize or respond, and a higher quality of life.
So, even if this hurts housing, healthcare and industries indirectly (less infrastructure to be built, babies to be delivered and products to be sold), I'm glad that fertility rates are below replacement level because this indicates -- in my opinion -- that average quality of life will increase.
I'll bet the opposite. The long run is really long and if your population is in decline then you either up the numbers or sooner or later it will be game over for your branch of the tree.
>you use it or you lose it
Please explain in direct language the point your deployment of this aphorism was intended to convey as I find it wholly inapplicable.
Exactly for that reason. Note how the Japanese have had their various wars of conquest in the past. At that time they had no problem with their 'stance on immigration'.
Just look at modern-day China: the Han Chinese ethnic group dominates, and oppresses all the minority groups. China is not a country with a lot of immigration either (nor do they have a shortage of people). So far, it seems to be working out for them, though admittedly it sucks for the minorities.
Japan may decide that being self sufficient and self reliant offers them the best return on their lifestyle.
I believe Japan is experiencing this right now at a large scale.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feat...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-soc...
A generation full of sociopaths will be getting their just desserts when they're wasting away in poorly-run nursing homes with no one visiting them.
It will cause the US to continue to be a nation of immigrants and the resentment that may cause.
Politically, it probably means increased racial tensions as the majority white population finds itself on a more and more equal footing with other ethnic groups.
Of course, you're not likely to get an Einstein if a bunch of uneducated idiots breed either, but most really remarkable people like that come from pretty "normal" parents, though admittedly usually from family backgrounds that are at least middle-class, and not impoverished, and where they had good opportunities and education.
If you want to increase your chances of making more Einsteins, there's two things you have to do as a society: 1) minimize poverty, illiteracy, poor education, etc., and 2) increase the birthrate (while making sure as many of those kids as possible grow up in economically and emotionally stable homes). You're not going to get Einsteins from a bunch of dirt-poor subsistence farmers, nor from a tiny cabal of wealthy people.
Particularly given the parallels, I'm surprised there's so little talk of the political climate in connection with these episodes.
I expected this to happen.
Asians with the highest income level have lowest birth rate.
Given that it is mostly whites who have been leading in STEM there is a high chance that US will lose its competitive advantage in these fields.
You're technically correct, but minorities are only slightly higher (birth rate wise) than whites.
"It’s official: Minority babies are the majority among the nation’s infants, but only just"
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/23/its-official...
I would argue, based on historical data, that if wealth inequality was reduced in conjunction with higher education levels of minority women, their birth rates would dip again (higher income levels and higher education obtained by women are prime drivers of lower birth rates). This discounts cultural drivers, but my hunch is those decline with each passing generation (ie catholicism and its disdain for contraception/family planning).
I'd bet the ones that have closer incomes to the black/hispanic population have closer birthrates
Programs that apparently target wealth inequality such as subsidising fathering bastard children have actually hurt minority women as they tend to have more and more fatherless children who eventually end up in the world of abuse, drugs and crime.
That's really the crux of the problem. Then add to that the fact that people who do have children young are put in a comparative disadvantage to their peers.
I desperately want to have kids and my girlfriend is on board, but she makes next to nothing and I make quite a lot of money. I tried an online calculator and if things go awry between us, I'll be paying her roughly a quarter of my post-tax income for the next two decades here in California.
That's just too big a gamble for me. So even though I desperately want children and I can afford them and everything would probably work out fine -- here I am, aging and childless while my girlfriend nears infertility because I can't justify the math to myself.
Also, you'd be insane not to get married before having kids. It's a legal contract between you and your partner that kinda comes in handy if you get disabled, die, etc...
I've been together with my wife for almost 20 years now and I still make decisions where I consider "what would happen if my partner would die/leave me/etc". And one good thing of being in a long relationship with someone is that these things can be discussed transparently among ourselves, otherwise you wouldn't be able to discuss simple issues like life insurance.
And yes, getting married gives implicit legal protections and a lot of those legal protections are all about "what would happen if" scenarios...
Yes, not having kids means missing out on certain (important) human life experiences. But so is if you DO have kids, it automatically means you will miss out on things that can't be done now because you don't have the money/time/etc that goes into having those kids. And in terms of "when you're gone away" I'm not seeing how having kids changes that, you still die and stop existing afterward, it's your kids that keep on living. You may feel good/proud about having them live after you die, just as an artist may feel good about their work living for many years in the minds of people. Personally I've decided to focus on one thing "make sure I don't regret too many things when I'm n my death bed". That means planning and doing things that I think I would regret not having done otherwise but of course, there will always be some regrets, simply because we always tend to regret/miss the things we haven't done if by no other reason.
We may prefer having kids over other things or vice versa but I disagree with a general state of the form "not having kids is a clear loss", there are pros and cons.
Apart from the examples in the article, I am also judging from my own experience and I personally reached the point where the money simply does not matter compared to the possibility of being a parent.
0 - https://www.self.com/story/the-cost-of-infertility
Edit: Also agree with others about potential relationship problems you guys may be experiencing
Since you say you can afford it anyway, as you make "quite a lot of money", and millions of people with much less raise children, it seems as trough you don't want desperately want to have kids, but perhaps you like the idea but don't want to spend money on other people in your family.
I have no intention of getting married, so: No I won't.
No offense, but that is a silly attitude. Marriage isn't about love, it's a legal contract two parties agree to. It entitles you to rights like power of attorney, ability to make health decisions for each-other, inheritance, etc. In addition, it also has non-trivial tax benefits, especially if one of you isn't working.
Honestly, having kids without getting married is pretty irresponsible in my opinion, simply because of the very important legal benefits that come from marriage.
But whatever, this isn't /r/relationships....
And you're right: This isn't the place for relationship advice, nor was I asking for any.
Once you have them and have fallen in love with them, you'll find that their happiness is worth working things out with their mother, rather than breaking up. If you can't man up enough to put up with her shit (assuming there is any) and you do break up, the money will be going to your kids, who you'll love, and giving that money won't be as objectionable as you imagine.
For me, I used to break up with women over silly arguments that embarrass me now to think about. Now, when such emotions surface, it always leads to me thinking about my kids and what a break-up would do to them. When you have kids, you're in a relationship with their mother and with them also. When you're mad at her, you're still having fun with them, and that lets you work through your issues with her, as their happiness includes her presence. The same applies to her, if you're being an asshole for awhile. So breaking up after kids is not as likely as you fear.
No, that money certainly won't be going to my kids. It's utterly ridiculous to pay that amount of money for child support for one child.
This is essentially incentivizing my partner to break up with me: "Hey <GF>, if you dump him, you get a $60k check for the rest of your life for sitting on your ass." Incidentally, this is far more than she has ever made.
There has been a meme for a couple decades now, that kids are so expensive and will cost millions of dollars to raise, etc. This meme is doubtless responsible for much of the reduced birthrate.
You can spend as much or as little as you desire on kids. I grew up shopping at Goodwill, but now I buy $40 shoes that my kids will wear for 6 months before outgrowing. That's my choice, as there are cheaper new shoes and much cheaper used shoes. Somebody else might buy their kids $120 shoes and complain to their friends how expensive their kids are. It's a shame that people like to promote this myth of the expense of kids.
If you can get over your trust issue with your GF, her not needing to give up a high paying job and being able to be home with the kids is a win. She won't feel like she's missing out on something and your kids get a much better childhood.
It seemed necessary for me to qualify my encouragement for you to not abandon the idea of kids, on the condition that you could make yourself feel safe in the relationship, since it seemed like you did not.
It just makes me sad to see successful people deciding not to have kids, given the subject of this thread and given the very few number of my friends, my wife's friends, my family, and my wife's family that had kids.
If this is the attitude you have toward your partner then I stand by my other comment. You've got bigger problems with your relationship than just having kids.
> Incidentally, this is far more than she has ever made.
What the fuck does it matter what your partner makes? Your money is her money and her money is yours. You share everything--good and bad. That is what good partnerships are about. You are a team...
But again, I digress. This isn't /r/relationships, but yes, you've got a bad attitude w.r.t. relationships. Best of luck in all your future endeavors...
How would the color of someone's skin affect their skills in these fields?
Many middle class white and asian families are putting off children because of the cost of living. Just to make a decent 2-earner income, you need both to have at least a college degree. After graduating college and landing a job you're still making historically low wages relative to the cost of living.
Take those historically low wages and try and buy a house. Home ownership (a staple milestone for young families) is still wildly unaffordable in most healthy economic zones. When home ownership is pushed later, and later in life, couples don't feel "settled" and ready to build a family.