morepedantic

IIRC, that's because Intel attempted it without EUV to save a handful of dollars.

Regulating with positive feedback is usually unstable and rife with unintended consequences.

Can we start by striking down regulations that make having children more expensive? Zoning laws, environmental laws, development approval processes, and even building codes have significantly increase the cost of housing. Regulations made daycare prohibitively expensive, while also subsidizing that model over traditional childcare models. High costs are first order effects of these regulations, but there are plenty of second and third order cost increases as well.

That may be, but this is the internet. Everyone is an American, didn't you know?

You are unusually self-aware. You do you, but it's unfortunate for everyone else that you don't want kids.

By law, Social Security invests surpluses in US Treasury securities. So the US government "lends" money to itself, where it is spent that year on government programs for the taxpayers in that year. The securities are backed by taxpayers in the future.

For example, in 2005 Social Security had a 172B surplus, but the US government had a deficit of 318B. Social Security's 172B surplus was spent by the US government in the same year for government services on the people of 2005. The money was spent on voters, taxpayers, and citizens in 2005, but the liability was recorded against people who hadn't been born yet.

You've referred to a fiction, but reality is as I've stated. The US government loves creating fictions, but that doesn't mean we visit the Vietnam Police Action Memorial.

That was my initial thought, but on further reflection it feels wrong. The electron is also a wave, and that wave can spread across the entire grid.

Another interesting aspect is that in an infinite grid, a spontaneous high voltage is going to exist somewhere at all times. It is probably very far away from you, but it's still weird.

Democracy is little more than simulated warfare. Rather than harsh campaigns and brutal battles over every issue, society has learned it's cheaper to predict the outcome and avoid the bother.

But if the majority voting bloc is geriatric, then that does rather change the fundamentals.

Sometimes there is an income problem. Sometimes there is a spending problem. And sometimes there is a cost problem. But cost is unlike the others, because income and spending are individual, but cost is universal.

Inflation from 2020-2024 was absurdly high. This was a universal hit to cost, and everyone felt it.

But outside of that recency bias, Americans have poor financial literacy. Americans have spending problems: credit card debt, car loans, and student loans come to mind. Each of these debt categories aren't inherently bad. Student loans are great if the degree has earning potential, but most Americans don't seek those degrees. Car loans aren't bad if it's a practical and affordable vehicles, but Americans like luxury SUVs. Credit cards aren't bad if you buy a washing machine to save on laundromat visits, but Americans like expensive vacations.

Americans also have problems with income, but that's even more complicated.

You mean those people with running water, indoor plumbing, central heating, electric lights, and a passenger vehicle capable of reaching speeds faster than the fastest land animal who entertain themselves with a magical rock that performs trillions of calculations a second to render 8-bit animals on an island to display on a sheet of quantum dots? Not to mention vaccines, antibiotics, cell phones, free education, supermarkets, and all the other modern wonders?

My point IS that you don't consider this to be a high level of consumption. To you it's normal. You've acclimated, and would again if the quality of life were 10x higher.

If people decide to build careers before having children, and DINKs acclimate to their income levels, then any child would feel like an unacceptable quality of life. You'll always feel like you're a rung below where you need to be, and this property would be independent of any particular scale.

Call it pedant's hypothesis. I've proposed it as an explanation. I can neither prove nor disprove it.

It's called hedonistic adaptation. Most people scale material consumption with income, and the new consumption level quickly feels normal. If this happens to you, then it's plausible that children will always look expensive, no matter your earned income.

The quality of life that modern, affluent people consider unacceptably low for a family would be considered decadent by most people who ever lived anywhere.

That may be true, and you may have banned the account, but I don't think you banned the person.

New account created immediately after, responding to the same thread with the same sentiment but less extreme specific statements.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=drentost

It's only accidentally illegal. Nobody made it illegal on purpose. It just so happened that car seat regulations and car seat testing regulations were highly prescriptive, but also written at a time where nobody had thought to build a full bench, multi-child car seat.

The full bench car seat is significantly safer than single seats. But it cannot be tested on the testing sleds in North America, and the wording of the regulations implicitly forbids multi-child seats anyway in many ways. Unfortunately, fixing the regulations is probably ~10 years and ~20 million dollars in lobbying.

>Historically

The car seat related drop predates high daycare costs. In some places, high daycare costs aren't the primary concern: it's infant daycare waiting lists longer than 9 months.

Grandparents used to look after young children. Maybe we should incentivize that structure again? I'm open to other ideas.

I'm not sure what the double whammy is here. I proposed a deduction for raising children, and he countered with a payment premium for adult children, but it sounded exclusive. Only one whammy applies.

Raising your child will run you ~300,000 USD, in addition to the massive opportunity cost from time investment. Given that social security is funded entirely through taxes in that tax year, it's a bit much to expect the children of 53% of the population to care for 100% of the elderly when the willfully childless 47% of the population did not put in more upfront in some other way. As birth rates drop, the ratio of workers to retirees will skew worse and worse, and the entire safety net will collapse progressively.

Alternatively, we can encourage and incentivize child rearing. Yes, that means that the willfully childfree will need to pony up resources for those who want children. What would you prefer: pay now for the continuity of the safety net, or the collapse of the safety net?

You're insulting people on the internet AND you're wrong, which puts you one Hitler comparison away from the trifecta.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of second and third order effects to consider.

The guy's name was kitler. Do you think that kitten hitler, or something else?

I don't think you understand how closely related Europeans and Indians are.

If the burden is too high, there's a risk that future generations will simply decline to care for the elderly who contributed to the problem (childlessness), but then expect the children to care for them in retirement.

Perhaps they simply have unrealistic material expectations not in line with individual productivity. In fact, if your expectations are a function of your childless consumption levels, then it will always exceed what you can achieve with the same income spread over more people.

First one, then the other.

I suppose the high child mortality rates of all the other economic systems tried thus far are preferable.

The proximate cause is social collapse, not economic. Maybe the ultimate collapse is economic, but it could again be social.

1. Those are often semi-permanent installs

2. Those must be professionally installed

3. Those are pricey

4. Those are, quite by accident, illegal in North America

It's still impossible for many vehicles. Plus, slim fit car seats are expensive. Here's the cheapest:

https://www.amazon.com/Graco-SlimFit3-Forward-Highback-Kunni...

>You can get car seats that do three across in a normal sedan though

Only in the last few years, and they require a full size sedan.

The car seat phenomenon is real, well studied, and interesting. The explanation is not only logical, but is exactly what you called a "serious" reason: cost. Parents must often buy a new car with the 3rd child, because they cannot fit 3 car seats in their current vehicle.

Historically, the jump from 2 kids to 3 kids requires purchasing a new car. The new car is more expensive to buy, operate, and maintain.

Today there are many narrow car seat options on the market, so 3 across seating is possible in full size sedans, but not compact cars. A European company makes a 3-across and 4-across car seat, but it's illegal in the US by accident.

Funny thing is, 100% of social security is paid for by US tax payers in that tax year.

Perhaps there should be a social security deduction for every dependent child you had that tax year? For example, each dependent child that year could be a refund of 3.1% of income up to the social security maximum, such that at 4 children all 12.4% is returned to you?

I've seen this exact problem in C code many times in my life, especially in kernel space where data structures and memory allocations are fun.

Ironically, this is much _faster_ for small sets. Sometimes the error is intentional, because the programmer believes that all inputs will be small. IME, those programmers were wrong, but that's the inverse of survival bias.