Americans shrug over falling birthrate

We don’t need more slaves to capitalism.

A man working an average job used to earn enough to buy an average house and comfortably support his wife and kids.

Now you need two people in full-time work just to pay rent to the landlord.

The problem is inequality of wealth and the solution is make work pay.

I keep hearing stories about falling birth rates, USA, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and on and on.
The articles often pose many questions about why younger generations dont seem to care about having kids, but very few articles actually say the real reasons:

• Being able to afford a house or stable long term rent without either option competing for money to buy food or other essentials
• Further to this the cost of a child once you can get by with enough money for the above
• Climate change & future conditions for their children anxiety

Lol. How much does it cost to have a child in the hospital in the USA again? Oh, $18,865 you say? Huh. What if they need an ambulance to get there? Oh, $500 to $3000 depending on distance you say? And you say also that US Bureau of Labor and Statistics is letting us know that in four short years our grocery prices have risen 22.04% and are expected to rise another 5.11% per year indefinitely? Meanwhile corporate profits increase every single year and minimum wage has been stagnant for decades? Someone should get them quick!!! I think I figured out why no one wants to have babies anymore! I would like to also comment on how obscenely expensive daycare is and how fucked up it is we have to put children in school 40 hours a week just so we can keep working more than half our lives away but I feel like anyone reading this gets the idea. They will be begging your ass to have babies in the next 100 to 200 years if we make it that long and I'll bet you all those obscene expenses will be an even greater cost to income ratio then, too. I mean if birthrates are a problem you have to ask yourself are they just fucking stupid or just fucking greedy?

Hey GOP assholes, taking away bodily autonomy doesn't get you more babies.

you want more kids make houses affordable and give people time off from work.

If you want to further subjugate women so rich people can get away with more creepy sex crimes then you do what the GOP is currently doing.

The capitalist class only cares about birthrate for productivity. Don't blame us for not caring about reduced productivity when most of us get a tiny fraction of the benefits of productivity. Also, what happened to all the shrieking about overpopulation? It's all just fearmongering to drive people to act in ways to benefit the capitalist class. I'm tired, leave me alone.

I'd love to have kids. I think it would be wonderful to be able to be a foster parent as another option.

I can't afford it. Its impossible. We can barely afford living as it is. How the fuck am I supposed to raise a kid?

I'm shrugging at falling birth rates not out of indifference, but out of a lack of ability to do anything about it.

I can't understand why anyone would expect most people to want to have kids. I can hardly afford to take care of myself, things look like they're only likely to get worse, and all indicators are that if I did have kids, they would be facing an even worse future when they hit adulthood. Why would I do that to them?

Wealthy employers shrug over falling standard of living and lack of affordable housing and food

If young Americans had financial stability, better mental health, hope for the future, etc. I'm sure that birth rate would go back up.

It's not like people don't enjoy fucking anymore. It's just that they're more careful than ever not to reproduce, because they can't afford parenthood.

My kids don't want kids. I'm cool with that. It's not my decision and I'm definitely not interested in playing grandma daycare.

If politicians want people to have more children, maybe they could do something to make having kids less ruinously-expensive.

Even if I could afford to have kids (which I can't) or believed in forcing anyone to have to be alive without consent (which is impossible), there's no way I could ethically justify making somebody have to live in what is probably The last century ever of human civilization.

I'm very happy that I don't have kids. I still have no idea what compels people to have kids these days. They must not know the things I know.

Fewer people means increased wages. Fuck em.

The only reason economists say immigration can offset falling birthrate. Is because the system is designed for low wages to keep the system running

As a species we have the tools, technology, education, knowledge, cognition, and intelligence to override an animal instinct to reproduce willy nilly. We're more than that now. People should know what it means to choose to have children and weigh the benefits vs the costs to their lives.

Have children when you want to and when it makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, then don't do it. Humanity will survive thinning down to many billions fewer humans sitting around consuming resources. A person who never existed in the first place because healthy adults decided to put their time and resources into something else shouldn't be lamented, but a choice respected.

My family has a long history of not having many children. Our family tree is one of marrying in people and then just not growing larger generation to generation. We have plenty of childless couples in the tree and they make the coolest aunts and uncles a kid can have.

Uh yeah, that'll happen when we are financially ruined for life and facing an ever worsening climate disaster because of greedy pieces of shit. If we can't reliably support ourselves, how can we support children?

Just what the fuck are we supposed to do with that???

Don't play the game if it's rigged

Theme to lean into: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement

Get all your right wing nutcase friends to have more babies “for the cause”, then get all your left wing nutcase friends to have more babies because “oh noes, Project 2025”. Pretty soon your social security will be funded and you can retire in peace, far from either

That's fewer kids on my damn lawn! (shakes fist)

There's over 300 million people in the US, I'm not at all concerned about falling birth rates.

¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Definately not me. Im cheering it.

Wonder how nice it would be not to put 0‐20% of your income into a 401k. Or the money I need to put into a HSA in case I get destroyed in medical bills. Or crippling student debt. Maybe that money could go into housing or children.

🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️

Shrug©®™

Yours for only fordy-naaan low low payments of nanteen nandy-naaaan

Who knows we might end up like Japan and South Korea, the proble with capitalism is you run out of other people's labour.

We have an endless supply of illegal emigrants we don’t need to have kids.