France sees collapse in births to lowest since World War Two
reuters.com
reuters.com
It occurs to me that this could be the fuel for a vicious cycle in countries where the government assumes high responsibility for social care: low birth rates create a population skewed older, which requires greater taxes on younger citizens, which places them under greater financial stress, which further suppresses the decision to have (or to have more) children.
These discussions about the tax burden of seniors are about two things in the end: health care and assisted living.
Assisted living means: workers to cook meals for seniors, to help them dress, to remind them to take their pills, etc. In our advanced industrialized societies, we offload that burden to young workers in their prime. In more traditional societies like Japan, senior communities don’t need young workers because they rely on one another. Let seniors cook for one another, help one another get dressed, etc. And let young workers go start businesses or work on cancer cures or build software and help society get richer as a whole.
https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/lifestyle/news-_-secre...
There’s still the health care aspect to deal with (seniors can’t do heart surgery on one another), but we could decrease the tax burden of over 65s by switching to a Japanese model.
I don't understand all the causes. Some is labour rights history (freeing children from the mills was a social victory), some is weird labour bargaining (a child doing a union job is a scab), and some is class anxiety from parents (only servants should wash a floor). Not to mention that given a choice, the young and old alike will chose free servants over doing their own chores.
For seniors, another cause is the novelty of mass retirement. North America was very young until recently, and we could afford to extend retirement benefits to people who'd never paid a dime in because there were so few of them.
My instincts are egalitarian, so I believe it doing for myself. Silver plate is for suckers, unless you like to cosplay as the help for an afternoon. But the world is full of people who just _must_ have servants.
https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-ca...
Basically - having supportive family take care of you is great, when you have supportive family. Not everyone does. Even in Japan, with a long Confucian culture, they had problems with elder care being too much for younger family members; with elderly being neglected and left to fend for themselves; and even with elder abuse and homicide. Now try applying that to America, where the social fabric is frayed, the norm since WW2 has been for children to move away from their parents in adulthood, and many people don't even have functioning intergenerational relationships at all.
It’s a bit of a chicken-egg problem in the US—we try to keep seniors out of assisted living because it’s incredibly expensive and has a reputation for poor quality; those things are the case because they require lots of paid labor, but also don’t pay great, resulting in high costs but also often-not-great quality; so seniors who have other options tend not to enter assisted living, so capable seniors aren’t around to do any of the work that might reduce reliance of the system on paid labor…
In an economically declining country that prioritizes social spending on pensions to the point of crowding out investment in the future, the young might just emigrate.
I think people feel the pinch because growth has been at best very low for a long time while inflation has accelerated in the past few years.
On the other hand, population has to stop growing at some point and, say, immigration has already been causing huge problems in France.
Income tax depends on number of children.
Nursery fees depend on income.
I believe cost of school meals depend on income.
Child benefits payments. I think this is now based on income but it used not to be.
Cash payment at beginning of school year to help pay for school stuff, etc. though I think this is also depending on income.
So sure lower earners benefit more but everyone gets something.
Many countries would think this is very good.
I am French and I moved to the UK a long time ago. My income tax actually went up. In the UK income tax depends on... income. Your children are irrelevant.
A lot of benefits do disappear when your QF is higher than 6 to be fair with you, but still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
It's not.
Society has changed, values have changed, and arguably it's good for the planet if there's less of us.
Only loser is the neverending idea of endless economic growth.
We need different economic models. If we'll be poorer, so be it.
I see so many people in Europe my age as I described blaming it on money yet spending like there's no tomorrow.
I could take a $4k trip to Japan every year for the next 20 years and not approach childcare costs before they were in school.
Extra monthly housing costs for a good school district versus a more-conveniently-located and similarly-safe but worse-schools area nearby would cover the payment on a pretty damn good car.
US perspective (if you couldn’t tell from the reference to high healthcare costs) but still. Kids are crazy-expensive.
https://www.ariababu.co.uk/p/beliefs-that-kill-birth-rates ("Beliefs that kill birth rates")
That's essentially a population replacement on the planet-scale, isn't it?
There's also a huge historic and geographic factor, specifically colonialism, that creates connections for immigration that would otherwise be unlikely. It's not like this is some clockwork system where every citizen migrates to the richest country that can reach at any given time. It's people, by the tens of millions, making the best decisions they can for themselves and their family based on the political and economic realities.
It's not nearly 1:1 with the current situations in the US and Europe, respectively.
I'm just saying that mass immigration has effects on the country, the people, the economy/housing, the way of life, etc.
People should fully understand this and then vote accordingly. It's something to openly discuss and digest, not something to be swept under the rug or "downvoted".
If you ever want to have a reasonable, productive conversation about immigration, don't use words like 'replacement' that almost everyone knows are racially charged.
And by the way I upvoted your original comment for visibility because I believe these issues should be discussed openly.
Replacement is defined as "a person or thing that takes the place of another"... when a town has 100 people who are German, and then in the future it is 50 Germans and 50 French -- the Germans have been half replaced by the French. It's a simple term, and I'm using it 100% as it is defined in our English language.
Given these facts as I've laid out, it is really quite inflammatory to call a proposition "BS" - especially without any contradictory evidence provided.
Free speech is vital to a functional democratic society.
i am lucky i cant be called a racist by them as i am myself an immigrant but as I prefer programming rather than woke politics I am quite factual and this is indeed a blatant fact than can be proven by any kind of statistics
It's very hard for people on both ends of the spectrum to take, analyze, and respond to a statement by itself and not to the person who is saying it.
That's completely irrelevant.
Even leaving aside the "conspiracy" aspect there is a valid point in using the term "replacement" to describe the trend when you combine the effect of immigration and relative birth rates.
Worth noting that a few down votes have no reflection on the truth or accuracy of a particular comment, they are merely an expression of opinion and/or ignorance - in much the same way my comments are simply an opinion and/or ignorance.
its pure evil and it happened in two way.
1. francois hollande and leftist ideals wanted more equity and decided it wasnt fair that “wealthy” people where getting government money when they had children (for them wealthy was anyone middle class or higher in france which whatever you think is way lower than usa in terms of income). they passed this law ten year ago and now only lower income families are incentivised to make children. pretty crazy and suicidal if you hear me. the wave of educated people saying not to make children for the environment due tompropaganda is alarming, at the end only people making children in france are immigrants so that they can get enough money from government to survive without a job (because the jobs dont exist we have 10% unemployment)
2. then macron presidencies just followed this wave. he got elected by boomers while the majority of the active working population voted for the oponent.the boomer generation will benefit from the retirement ponzi that is in place in france, getting back more than they paid to retirement funds during their carreers. the following generations are paying for this robbery. he then decided to reward them by raising pensions by 5% while advocating against raising salaries to tackle inflation.
the major idea behind this is that families vote right rather than left , they want to pay less taxes and are not easy to control. the solution: remove the middle class from the genetic pool, import mass immigration from less developed countries that will forever be lower class and forever vote left to get enough money to survive in a country without industry and with very few blue collar or unqualified jobs.
Are you sure the higher middle class is not having children because of the lack of state support ? Doesn't being higher middle class suggests that you own your house and have at least 3000 euros a month salary ? Isn't it enough for one child ?
Why do you think people not wanting children because they are worried about the state of the planet for their children is because "propaganda" ? Are you saying climate change is propaganda ? Isn't every expert on the subject saying that we are not doing enough and that things are going to be worst even in the best scenarii ?
2. you consider 3000 a month salary high middle class I consider it barely enough to survive with a family. 3000 salary is 2300 euros after tax with a 1300/months apartment in paris and an apartment buying price of 700-800k euros lol. with 3k€ a month you wont ever own a house… what is wrong with leftist to be deluded in a way that they dont understand that literaly everyone in france is far from wealthy due to cost of life. 3k is def not enough to raise a family knowing government wont support you financially because they thin you are rich.
3. to adress your last point. yes it is propaganda because only western people discuss this topic that way. if you really want to do something about it you should go to africa tell people not to make children rather than promoting your delusion in countries below renewal rates
It's not because people in third world countries don't think about it that it's propaganda.
It's not about doing something about it, it's about not putting out in the world a person who is going to have it worse.
Why do you care so much about renewal ? What is it you want to renew so much ? A gene pool ?
I am not deluded thank you. I don't have a family but I live with 1200 euros a month around Paris and although I am poor I am nowhere near miserable. Of course most people own houses thanks to parents participation and of course Paris is too expensive duh.
Now I am curious to know what's your standard of living.
This is a NOP news.
With 8 billion ape men on the planet, overrunning every natural support system, the human species needs a major reduction.
If it hadn't reched this over-burdended level, then the reduction also wouldn't be so painful.
But the real problem of "paying for it" must be held in the light of Bozo and Elon racing to see who can be the first trillionaire.
There's plenty of money, it's just spent on stupid shit like Mars vacation planning instead of taking care of the population that is largely responsible for creating that wealth...