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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

> But who raises the next generation under that scenario? Immigrants, of course, but what does that say about what American society has become?

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/24/will-birt... (Will births in the US rebound? Probably not.)

People respond to incentives. Living and having children in the US is expensive, so the results are what you’d expect.

Maybe we don’t need replacement rate, except for the part of an economic system that requires unending growth. I’d like to submit a bug report.

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except for the part of an economic system that requires unending growth

This is such a tired phrase. Like if we had socialism or communism or some other -ism it wouldn't matter.

But that's just not true. The issue is math and the fact that prime age working people (25-55ish) are the ones that, for the most part, make stuff. If you have a shrinking population then the % of the population that makes stuff gets a lot smaller so everyone has to be poorer. No "economic system" can change that.

but hasn't the productivity per worker been steadily climbing for decades, you would think there would be a stable point where that balances out

There's always the post-scarcity system where robots make all the stuff and we can all stay home and play video games.

You would still need a fair system that distributes a base amount of resources fairly. If we had that system the current form of capitalism could last much longer (another 80 years).

I don't think we even need to settle for reduction. The US economy as measured by GDP and other metrics has surpassed countries with higher pop growth rates, especially since Covid. It does not matter if the % who makes stuff shrinks if productivity goes up.

What about the scifi trope of robots making things? After all the productivity of a single human has been skyrocketing for more than a century now. I do not which -ism that is. Somewhere between socialism and startrekism I guess.

Fun fact, it hasn’t, outside of a handful of sectors: https://aneconomicsense.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/real-val...

Wait. I’m not sure I understand what that chart is supposed to show. Are you suggesting because the GDP is only linearly growing productivity is not increasing?

No, look at the “services and construction” line. That measures output per worker in that sector (2/3 of the economy) since 1947. That’s a measure of productivity per worker. It’s grown at only 0.9% over that time. A big chunk of even that tepid growth is in a handful of areas like finance. In vast swaths of the economy, workers aren’t any more productive today than in 1947. Everything from building houses to caring for kids and old people to serving diners at restaurants, etc. We can make iPhones with fewer workers than ever but the post-scarcity economy is very far away.

I don’t have much of an opinion on the scarcity economy but I think you could read that chart differently. The industries that have listed the longest, agriculture, manufacturing etc have seen explosive productivity growth. So you might predict services are next.

Actually it's estimated gradually redistributing wealth from billionaires and Silicon Valley companies via taxes and stimulus checks to the American people could afford us up to 4 to 5 years of prosperity. So clearly you're wrong, we can change living conditions of mostly everyone through a better economic system.

  If you have a shrinking population then the % of the population that makes stuff gets a lot smaller so everyone has to be poorer. No "economic system" can change that.

sure, but if people are too exhausted to make the time to have a family (a.k.a nookie) then its maybe worth examining [0] if "constant growth" is societally sustainable

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/japan-m...

Actually making children is by far the least exhausting part of the process.

Something like 0.000000001% of the process.

I don't see what people being exhausted has to do with population growth.

Only if productivity is flat. If productivity grows faster than the population shrinks you can still have a growing economy with fewer people.

Productivity grown in the service sector (2/3 of the economy) has been just 0.9% annually since 1947: https://aneconomicsense.org/tag/productivity/. It’s pretty much stopped growing over the last couple of decades.

Historically, only a % of the population ever reproduced. About the same as do today.

The difference is that the couples that do have children, have much fewer children. 2, instead of 4.

We need to look at the costs faced by couples with a lot of children. For example, you can accommodate 2 children in a standard 3 bedroom house, but 4 or 5 children are going to need a much larger and more expensive dwelling. Same thing with cars.

The USA seems to be doing alright with this, where housing is relatively affordable, and child tax credits and the ability to combine you income with your spouse. (The situation is much more dire in Central/Eastern Europe)

One way to improve this is to increase land value taxes, but offer a credit for each child of the owners under 18 living there. This would give families a formal tax advantage against baby boomers and investors.

> We need to look at the costs faced by couples with a lot of children. For example, you can accommodate 2 children in a standard 3 bedroom house, but 4 or 5 children are going to need a much larger and more expensive dwelling. Same thing with cars.

Per modern standards. A whole bedroom per child is still today only an amenity that relatively richer people have, especially in desirable areas.

I also wonder how many women chose to have 4 kids. It might have just been an unfortunate byproduct of sex, but now it’s completely controllable. And after seeing what my wife went through in 2 completely normal pregnancies with no complications, you would have to offer me some serious cash if I was a woman to go through that.

> I also wonder how many women chose to have 4 kids.

I guess it depends how far back you go. Prior to child labor laws, having more children resulted in more family income. They could work on the farm or in factories, etc. In those times, childhood mortality was also high. So you may have had 8 kids but not that many would make it to adulthood.

Those women had significantly less ability to not have one more kid. First , there was no child control, only way to not have sex at all. Second, husband was head of familly with huge power and there was no way to escale if he decided the celibacy is not a way to go.

"Historically, only a % of the population ever reproduced. About the same as do today"

What is "historically"? Is that in a society of cavemen where most men died before reaching maturity? Is that a polygamous tribal society? Is it ancient Rome where peasants had families and had loads of kids to help with farm work? Are we talking post-renaissance, where vast majority of people had families and contraception was non existent, so basically everyone had kids?

What is a%, 100%? 90%?

> Historically, only a % of the population ever reproduced. About the same as do today.

This is half-right, as both 10% and 90% are technically both percentages. The rest is very much [Citation Needed].

When we lived in the US, we only had a single child and said No More. That single child nearly bankrupted us in medical bills. You’d have to be irrational to have a child in the US, be very rich, very poor, or have great health insurance.

Since moving to the EU, when we explain to people how much our child costs, their jaw drops. If the US wants more children, they really need to solve the medical costs problem.

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