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| Title: Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world | |
| TAEmove > General > General Discussion | Go to subcategory： |
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alaskaone
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Date Posted：10/31/2018 5:44 PMCopy HTML In every westernized nation, without exception, birthrates have plummeted to below replacement levels. Why? My uncle, a former college professor in Portland, Oregon, doesn't believe this to be true yet refuses to condescend to look up the numbers, would no doubt assert that there are too many people on earth anyway even if it is true. My uncle is an idiot. There are a variety of factors at play in our decline but the point of this thread is to gather ideas about solving the problem... and, yes, it is a problem. I'm an economics guy so that's natural that I would initially approach it something like this; while you're raising kids, you're relieved of all tax burdens. Parents would be relieved of all federal, state and local taxation while they are raising children, up to emancipation or age 18, which ever comes first. My thinking is along these lines; we want to encourage people to have children, not punish them. Children grow up to be tax payers so think of it as an, 'investment', in our future. Secondly, I'm going to suggest that the third and fourth wave feminist idea that 'children are bad and careers are good' needs to be actively thrown out in the trash. It's a garbage idea coming from garbage human beings. As always, I actively want critique, hole poking, different approaches, whatever. |
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Nickel
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#1
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：10/31/2018 8:01 PMCopy HTML You’re wrong about women wanting a career more than children. Women want it all. Companies that recognize the value of a woman provide daycare and lounges where they can breast feed or pump. Nothing beats a stay at home mom, but given choices, women will make the best decision for their family. Choices are not available everywhere, so women do the best they can, from where they are, with what they have.
Mormons are expected to have five children. Once that magical number is reached, the pressure stops. Raising happy children in that community is as easy as it gets. However, girls who just want to have fun are faced with a full court press to the altar by guys who just want to marry. The cashier who shared that with me was planning to move out of the state.
Not sure why total strangers share stuff like that with me but it has been my experience since I was too young to hear such things at markets and department stores fro NewJersey to California. Strangers can be incredibly informative....lol.
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govols
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#2
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：10/31/2018 8:10 PMCopy HTML Dude, it's a steaming pool of shit you're putting together with this one. If this place where more active, man, you'd already have fifty comments of outrage going on. That said, allow me to wade in. Disclosure: I have no kids. I loathe the idea of tax policy as social policy. Still… Given some of the “success indicators” I’ve seen, it might be good to scale the tax breaks. If we assume EITC would effectively raise a child rearing household with at least one working parent to poverty level, tax credits might be graduated and granted based on things like: Single biological parent, never married: $1k/child Single biological parent, dead spouse, couple’s non-biological child: 2k/child Married couple, adopted child: 2k/child Single parent, divorced sometime after child is born……. ………. Married biological parents: 5k/child It would have to be hashed out, but I could see something like above being used not just to promote increasing birth rates among a nation’s “legacy population,” but also traditional families lead by two adult biological parents who are married when the children are born. Another thing is to quit talking about what a burden it is to raise children. Yes, talk about the stupid cost of daycare and college and medical checkups and insurance, but not in context of children and burdens. It’s off-putting to a young person or couple already kind of struggling along. You’re also going to have to push back against what it means to be a man, or a woman, and talk about how meaningful it is to be a GOOD father or mother. You’re going to have to figure out how to rebuild the idea that children are a blessing, and it’s grandparents who spoil them and parents who teach them discipline. |
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Nickel
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#3
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：10/31/2018 8:19 PMCopy HTML We already give a tax exemption for every child to encourage families.
Welfare was increasing the population with the wrong kind of dependency.
You have to be very careful messing with population...look what China did to itself by limiting the number of children to one: a generation of self absorbed individuals of no use to anyone. LOL
Immigration allows other countries to take over communities, states, sections of the country......NOT the best way to increase population. Trickles into the dominant culture, assimilation with respect for the best of the old country works so long as the next generation is American and not still Europeans, Asians, Africans, etc. Multicultural studies somehow set us at odds with each other the way countries are at odds on all the other continents.
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govols
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#4
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：10/31/2018 8:24 PMCopy HTML I don't like the idea of the thread very much exactly because it's about trying to use government to tinker with society, adjust it, mold it... It's eat up with potential for more of the unintended consequenses that got us where we are from the last hundred years of same. But, we're an obscure corner of the web, and nobody is likely to notice this conversation. |
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alaskaone
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#5
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：11/01/2018 12:54 PMCopy HTML You’re wrong about women wanting a career more than children. Women want it all. ~ Nickel Some do. Some few can even manage it. Most, however, cannot 'have it all' any more than men can. What ends up happening is that upon reaching their late 30's, a whole lot of women look up from their 'careers' and realize it's just a shit job and now it's way past time to find a good partner and have a family. |
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alaskaone
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#6
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：11/01/2018 1:04 PMCopy HTML Dude, it's a steaming pool of shit you're putting together with this one. If this place where more active, man, you'd already have fifty comments of outrage going on. That said, allow me to wade in. Disclosure: I have no kids. I loathe the idea of tax policy as social policy. Still… Given some of the “success indicators” I’ve seen, it might be good to scale the tax breaks. If we assume EITC would effectively raise a child rearing household with at least one working parent to poverty level, tax credits might be graduated and granted based on things like: Single biological parent, never married: $1k/child Single biological parent, dead spouse, couple’s non-biological child: 2k/child Married couple, adopted child: 2k/child Single parent, divorced sometime after child is born……. ………. Married biological parents: 5k/child It would have to be hashed out, but I could see something like above being used not just to promote increasing birth rates among a nation’s “legacy population,” but also traditional families lead by two adult biological parents who are married when the children are born. Another thing is to quit talking about what a burden it is to raise children. Yes, talk about the stupid cost of daycare and college and medical checkups and insurance, but not in context of children and burdens. It’s off-putting to a young person or couple already kind of struggling along. You’re also going to have to push back against what it means to be a man, or a woman, and talk about how meaningful it is to be a GOOD father or mother. You’re going to have to figure out how to rebuild the idea that children are a blessing, and it’s grandparents who spoil them and parents who teach them discipline. The devil is in the details, as they say. What they don't say is the details rapidly become so complex that the whole enterprise goes down the crapper into yet another feeding frenzy for tax accountants and lawyers. I understand your loathing for using tax policy to shape society. I loathe it myself yet that is exactly what taxes have been used for since fdr shoved 'old age insurance' down the nations throat back in the 1930's. In my defence, however, I'm not shoving anything down anyone's throat here. Quite the opposite, in fact... it would remove the tax burdon (which is crushing, if you take into account all the stealth taxes in addition to the visable ones) from folk who are trying to raise kids. If we were to get into, as you say, 'scaling the breaks', well then we would really start really trying to manipulate society. I don't think it's a good idea to go there. It gives the moralizers and SJW's cracks in which to insert their fingers. 100% tax holiday for the duration of child rearing. Simple, effective and no room for manipulation by scoundrels. |
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WRS10
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#7
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：11/01/2018 2:02 PMCopy HTML I have no idea as to how to raise birth rates back to replacement levels - but some places are close to doing so; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate 2015 List by the World Bank total fertility rate
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10493239 ...........Mr Boddington said it was tempting in countries like New Zealand, France
and Australia which had introduced "pro-natal policies" - such as
expanding paid parental leave in New Zealand - to think these accounted
for increasing birth rates. |
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Nickel
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#8
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Re：Reverse the decline; fertility in the western world Date Posted：11/01/2018 9:51 PMCopy HTML A generation or women were told they should wait until their thirties to have children, get a career first. I checked out a stacks of books from the local library when I first became pregnant. Among them was one that claimed the easiest and most problem free years to have children were between the ages of 20 and 30. Since I married at 19, all four of mine were born during those years, thanks to birth control pills, IUDs. Abstinence is not realistic and my husband was the oldest of seven with his parents using the rhythm method....lol.
In Vitro fertilization, difficult pregnancies, a host of issues seem to plague women who waited. Also, the children are intolerable brats. Parenting is so much harder than I remember.
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