Are Men to Blame for the Birth-Rate Collapse?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I'm not sure what the point of this article is.
The birth rate dropped off quickly after the pill was approved by the FDA in 1960.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
With more workers, wages get suppressed. With more single person households, housing prices go up as supply is strained. Dual income households becoming the norm means increased childcare costs.
It all seems connected, but it seems few want to talk about it... so we end up with articles like this about people desperately trying to blame it on men not doing dishes.
There was a small minority who insisted that overpopulation was a myth, and that we shouldn't be worried about it. And it seemed that without any fuss, most thinkpieces have come around to this view that now the TFR rates are dropping irreversibly and precipitously, and also that these drops are pretty bad news for the economy in particular.
It's like all the global heating denialists and the global cooling true believers got together and accepted global warming as truth, all of a sudden.
Trying to turn the blame on "men" is just icing on the cake, chef kiss, well done Atlantic!
A declining birthrate is actually a good thing, not a bad thing.
if there is 100 million less people there is 100 million less people to sell an iPhone too
You are contradicting yourself, what you call "consumption" isn't - it's profits going to a single entity. "Consumption" is number of iPhones per person, 100 million less people means less materials extracted, less pollution, less landfill garbage, more robots, less work hours, less demand, cheaper phones and more phones per person than 200 million would have.
What's bad is the demographic shift and the bomb that goes off when there aren't enough young people working and producing to support the old people who need care and pensions.
Shrinking families mean that there aren't enough children of elders to care for them directly, so those elders are leaning on welfare states, and mercenary caregivers, instead. It isn't working out.
HN is full of promises of AI bonanza to come about any minute now. That's the reason we have to endure inflation, unemployment, wars of domination and what not. Musk claims we won't have to work at all, AI would do everything, stuff is going to be free, etc. In other words, everybody would be unemployed or nearly so.
That's the talk when it comes to promoting sacrifice to those who have little to sacrifice. However, when other issues are considered, that wonderful AI future magically disappears and we are back to profit-motivated arguments from the economics of the 19th century.
What would be the reason for these abrupt transformations?