ShowerThoughts

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Sometimes we have those little epiphanies in the shower.. sometimes they come from other places. This is a home for those epiphanies.

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The real reason no govt can resolve the fertility rate issue is because none of them are farsighted enough (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Everybody knows what needs to be done. Parenthood needs to be sustainable for the parents. There's just no political will to implement a policy that will only start paying off in 20+ years. Every politician kicks the can down the road, or implements half-hearted policies.

Edit: Just realised I posted this to the wrong instance comm 😅

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (22 children)

Everybody knows what needs to be done.

I'm not convinced it's as simple as you make it out to be, as places that experience more poverty and violence appear to have higher fertility rates (1).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (20 children)

In places with poverty and violence, kids are an asset. They work and contribute to the family in times of crisis.
General lack of education, awareness and access to birth control means there are no options for women.
Women have fewer or no rights, and little to no say in whether they have kids.

Unless we're planning on this route (which it seems the US is set on), the alternative is to make parenthood attractive (or at least not-unattractive) enough to negate the costs.

Additionally, fertility rates are dropping worldwide, even in low-income countries. They're further back on the curve, but they're definitely moving along it. Some institutes claim we've already dropped below the global replacement rate of ~2.3, though it'll take a few years to confirm the current statistics.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (16 children)

You forget that most of the assholes in charge right now don't give a flying fuck about fertility rates, having an educated workforce, or even anyone's rights and opportunities. All that matters to them is making more money and hanging onto power. The fuckers can practically read the future as long there is a dollar sign in front of it, and as far as they are concerned, the rest of us don't factor into that future.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

I believe some of the rich assholes really do see birth rates as a sort of global crisis. Mostly because it poses a threat to their bottom line. Less workers = less labor to exploit, less consumers to buy their shit, pay subscriptions or blast with ads. And a demographic shift where the size of the older generation is greater than the younger generation massively screws up social security systems that depend on taxes from the young to pay the benefits for the old. And, more nefariously - because parents necessarily consume more and become more reliable workers: when you're living paycheck to paycheck you can't afford to quit, take unpaid leave, turn up overtime or go on strike. But perhaps too, some may be experiencing the existential crisis that there is a real, natural limit to the growth of the human race, that we are not god-destined to just expand forever and ever, but rather finite in our place in the cosmos.

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