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> A multi generational household occurs naturally when grandma and grandpa had a stable two parent households and now mom and dad do too.

More importantly, young people need a reason not to move hundreds or thousands of miles away from their stable household. Investing in community resources, local economies, and infrastructure that promotes health and opportunity are all necessary.

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WFH solves this too. RTO policies are anti-family. Hell, unchecked corporate work culture is part of why Japan and Korea's birth rates are so low. Can't be out having babies if you're at the office at all hours.

Fully agreed! But it's not enough.

I think WFH-RTO dimension is orthogonal to unchecked corporate culture. You can have a great work-life balance with RTO (I saw it at Google first-hand in 2010's) and you can have a shitty dawn-to-dusk grinder with WFH (saw it many times since Covid.

Tech companies wouldn't be offering their employees who are too busy to start families the perk of egg freezing if they offered "great work-life balance." They would be offering more flexible part-time work, so that employees could both have children and continue working, instead of putting off having children.

Companies with great work-life balance still offer egg freezing. It is simply an option to the female employees who want to work a lot and postpone childbearing. Having that option doesn't mean other employees don't have a great WLB if they want to go for that.

Case in point - Google (first hand experience).

But you can more easily live next to your parents with WFH then RTO; you don't have to move to where the jobs are, moving everytime you change jobs.

Even here in the US is tough. I have a "good" job as a developer. My wife still has to work to support a middle class lifestyle and make a median household income. She has to work my off-hours. Doesn't feel like that much of a family when we don't do family activities or have family meals. No wonder others don't want this sort of "good" life. The single guys I know are doing so much better financially and overall. Risk of financial ruin in divorcebor child support is a major factor in the US as well. Why take on that risk? If the environment is hostile, it's no wonder marriage declines, birth rate declines, etc.

I've thought about this a lot. My personal theory is that when young leave their home communities to seek opportunity elsewhere, that experience changes them. Afterward, to the extent they return, they rejuvenate their community. To the extent they don't, the community stagnates. The reality in the US is mostly the latter. This also created a self-perpetuating cycle, since who wants to go back to their stagnant little corner of the world after getting a taste of cosmopolitan life?

So all that said, I imagine a hugely beneficial policy would be one where young people who leave for college would get assistance paying off student debt if and to the extent they return to their community afterward.

every student should spend a year in a foreign country. i spend a year in a US highschool and later volunteered for a student organization that helps students get internships in a foreign country. it's also possible to spend a term or a year to study abroad.

it would be good to make at least one of these opportunities available to more students.

Japan has a 'hometown' tax. Forget exactly how this works but you're tied to the town / area you grew up in for life.

Discussed yesterday: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37555004>

I honestly blame exurbia. I “left home” to just be able to walk to buy groceries. I doubt I would have left if my lifestyle choices were available at home.

Monoculture is efficient only for the group building the infrastructure.

Yeah - in the US, the majority of places where people grow up aren't very suitable for a healthy life; they're designed for car-dependent consumerism.

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