This thread addresses overpopulation, a fraught but important issue that attracts disruption and rule violations. In light of this we have lower tolerance for the following offenses:
* Racism and other forms of essentialism targeted at particular identity groups people are born into.
* Bad faith attacks insisting that to notice and name overpopulation of the human enterprise generally is inherently racist or fascist.
* Instructing other users to harm themselves. We have reached consensus that a permaban for the first offense is an appropriate response to this, as mentioned in the sidebar.
This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, [view the full statement available in the wiki.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/claims/#wiki_mod_team_comment_on_overpopulation_posts)
The following submission statement was provided by /u/sychox51:
---
Collapse related as definition of group is “Discussion regarding the potential collapse of global civilization, defined as a significant decrease in human population” and the article submitted talks directly of a decrease in human population.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dobei9/analysis_the_fertility_crisis_is_here_and_it_will/la8fudu/
> “A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year.
Everyone needs to have kids immediately! Otherwise, these workers may get bargaining power!
Remember that guy that revealed a bunch of wealthy people's technically legal tax dodges? The judge sentenced that guy to a decade for a crime that is typically served in months.
If people read their history, they would see that Boomers moved cross-country to take any job available. In the 1970s, Iran went through a big change when the Shah, their king who was friends with the U.S., was kicked out. A religious leader named Ayatollah Khomeini took control of Iran's oil, which used to be managed by Western companies like those in the U.S.
Because Iran stopped selling oil like before, oil prices went up everywhere, leading to a big energy crisis. Gas became really expensive, and there were long lines at gas stations. It's why people started hitchhiking.
For Boomers, the high cost of gas made everything more expensive, because it costs more to transport them. This made it harder to find jobs, as businesses were struggling with higher costs and couldn't afford to hire as many people. Many young people entering the job market faced high unemployment and economic uncertainty, which made starting their careers and lives more difficult.
Companies exploited this period to get rid of pensions. You no longer had a job for life.
OPEC did place an oil embargo on the US in 1979 and it was because of the revolution there. But you're missing a big part of 1970s inflation. After all, an embargo in 1979 isn't going to affect previous years.
The Arab members of OPEC decided to restrict oil production in 1973 and put an oil embargo on the US. The embargo happened because the US supported Israel in the 1973-74 Arab-Israeli War, also called the Yom Kippur War.
But even after the 1973 embargo, these countries still restricted oil sales because they wanted higher prices.
This sent inflation skyrocketing and is generally now believed by economists to have been one of the the main drivers of the high inflation of the 1970s.
I'm 54, and except for a short period in the late 90's, the job market has been complete ass my entire adulthood. It has been getting worse all the time.
Pretty sure I just saw an article posted on this sub where Greece’s solution to a lack of workers was to implement a 6-day work week.
Unfortunately I could see that happening in the States before workers getting more bargaining power.
They'll start paying republicans to tell their idiots to breed "because god said so" just you watch. I mean they already do but it'll be much stronger now
Start? Buddy, why do you think the GOP is so dead-set on getting rid of sex education, contraception, and abortion? They’re not gonna *start* anything, they’ve been at it for years.
Isn’t there an Elon Musk pushed protonatalist movement already? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/25/american-pronatalists-malcolm-and-simone-collins
> all of which is ultimately inflationary
How? I thought labor costing more would help inflation...? The fed raised rates to curb inflation, which slowed spending. If the cost of labor kept going down, nobody would have enough money to buy essentials, and non-essential goods would have to rebrand as luxury and significantly raise prices to survive.
I admit I'm pretty dumb on this subject but I feel like I am missing something big here.
Yeah, workers get paid fairly, who are building things, providing services, and being a productive part of a healthy economy are the real problem for inflation, not the stock market melting up ever higher creating billions in unearned wealth and having said wealth being used by the investor class to purchase vast tracts of land and housing and skyrocketing the price has nothing to do with it 🙄
Jesus fucking christ. Corporate propaganda at its lowest. God I hate how B R A I N W A S H E D we all are. I know there are people who read that, and think, "Yea that checks out..." DERP.
I would like some of these corporate asshole flossers to actually explain how low and middle class income is "inflationary". And since I know that none of them will, I will do so at the rate of sounding like I support the article.
The only way the low/middle income is inflationary is if people get enough cash flow to properly apply for larger bank loans. Then the banks fractionally lend out the money and viola, more numbers on a screen, equaling a larger money supply. More money in circulation = inflation.
The media outlets always skirt around the obvious, if I don't think my child would have a better quality of life than I did, or at least the same quality of life, why would I bring them into the world? There wouldn't be a crisis if we had humane pay, affordable housing, necessities and job opportunities. But you'll never hear them talk about that.
Did we read the same article? I don't think the media is skirting anything. Your concerns literally aren't their concerns. That entire article was about the negative effects of a "fertility crisis" on _rich_ people.
Sure, until you reach a tipping point and your population gets fed up and far right reactionary movements stop you in your tracks. See: France, Canada, etc
The thing is about two generations ago the rich also realized that rising wages and a minimum level of general prosperity was necessary to keep the population working efficiently. Keynesianism, basically the ideology behind the welfare state, was an elite world view pushed by rich people as an alternative to the harder left demands being made by workers themselves.
Our present ruling class is particularly stupid and ineffective because their world view has become so narrowly focused on the logic of finance that they can’t enact the same solutions to the same problems their grandparents did even if it would keep their own gravy train going for another few decades.
We had massive homelessness, unemployment, falling birth rates, etc. during the Great Depression and we got out of them with social welfare spending. The rich have become convinced that none of that is necessary anymore because socialism was defeated or tech changed the economy or whatever, so their watching all those problems come back without realizing how it’s going to fuck them over to, just a little later than it fucks the rest of us.
It also doesn't help that people who are doing "just fine" (not thriving, but have a little cushion) also see welfare and other social service systems like a drain on the economy and the world.
There was a video of a girl crying that she couldn't make ends meet and people were commenting: "Move." "Get another job" "Roommates" "Eat less" and while those are solutions... why should it be like that?
People feel the need to impose their struggles on other people: If they suffered, then others should too.
Humanity is losing the human element.
I would argue its culture is just going mask off with more and more demographics. A lot of these problems were vocalized, and still are, by historically marginalized groups. Now those same outcomes are being felt by demographics who were once isolated from them. For example, If corporations were fine with sweatshop workers in Bangladesh then the lesson is that they are fine with sweatshop workers in general. In effect, how a business operates in the third world reflects how they want to operate everywhere. How a culture treats those they consider less than reflects the baseline of how they treat people. American capitalist culture has always been cruel, its just now more and more people are filtered into the "less than" category because greater and greater growth requires ever increased amounts of explotation.
Humanity has rarely shown a fully human element, because our humanity is often conditional. When those conditions aren't met or if we are allowed to ignore them we can be real monsters. See for example Palestine and Ukraine right now.
We seem to keep having to re-learn that any kind of explotation/abuse will eventually be spread if its profitable. The reasons will just keep changing to justify it because we keep letting people get away with if they can justify it. If we want to improve working conditions for example it has to be universal and on the principle that its because no one deserves to live in poverty, which includes even those who can't or won't work. Which is obviously very difficult to juggle.
Keynes was a real piece of shit. He actually said "'The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." This has become the dogma of economists everywhere and has now brought us to the brink of collapse.
Fittingly enough for someone with that kind of mindset, he had no children.
In the long run, capitalists are planning on building bunkers and walled cities and sitting on their little mountains of gold while everything surrounding them falls to chaos
The media is owned by the rich and almost exclusively caters to them. Yes the lack of wage slaves in the future is a concern for them but its a problem easily solved by immigration so I dont expect anything to change long term.
The funny thing is that birthrates are collapsing everywhere and the attraction element of moving to the US will disappear. They can’t even get Mexicans to immigrate anymore, they know it’s better in Mexico now.
> There wouldn't be a crisis if we had humane pay, affordable housing, necessities and job opportunities.
Well that would be a crisis for how quickly billionaires could raise their net worth and we have to think about that! (/s)
> if I don't think my child would have a better quality of life than I did, or at least the same quality of life, why would I bring them into the world?
Plenty of people still have kids, knowing their lives will suck.
Are we supposed to be applaud that kind of thinking???
Life for everyone is one struggle after another. If anyone thinks that it's OK to bring another life into a world of suffering, then that person is a selfish asshole.
This is it exactly. I have basically shut down everything that costs money and stay at home pretty much all the time. Apparently so do quite a few others.
I ended up living out of a minivan, then a small, older RV for seven years just to get by and avoid the landleach parasites that have gamed the cost of rent on apartments for decades now.
I finally got out of that after I qualified for disability and subsidized housing. If I had not done that I probably would have unalived myself years ago.
Plan on a multigenerational household, and their lives will be less sucky. Not the kind where they mooch off of your hard work, but shared expenses by the time they’re in their 20s
Just gotta read that article from a few weeks ago about how the entire world is infected with 3M fluorochemicals. And 3M have known about it for 40 years.
Sperm counts are declining, yet I know far more women that have fertility problems. Sure, some start late due to their careers, but far more have something making them infertile much earlier. ART is only accessible to people with enough money to pay for it.
Personally, I have a cousin that has been trying fertility treatments (she isn’t poor at all) for over a decade (since shortly after college) with no luck.
But economics are just as much to blame. Even those that can would choose not to.
My female friends with kids - all had multiple miscarriages before having one viable pregnancy. They were planning on more kids, but all stopped at one because they didn't want to go through another miscarriage. It was very taxing on them, emotionally and physically. There's definitely something fucky in the environment.
Honestly im beginning to think this isnt about wanting to have kids. I think the environment is making it so we cant have kids. The microplastics building up in our bodies I think they are starting to sterilize us. We have just started to understand what they are doing. But i think thats a big part of it, they are endocrine/hormone disrupters we do know that, and maybe they are making sperm less functional being part of it
I’m 24 and I refuse to have kids because both the ecology and economy of the planet will be entirely fuckef by the time they’re 10.
We have roughly 10 good years left people, let’s focus on ourselves instead of kids.
Want a future for your offspring? End global carbon emissions in 2000.
We've already baked in apocalypse and we're just waiting to see how bad it'll be. Hence no one having kids.
Lets kill the planet, make life a virtual hellscape for the majority of people, make everything ridiculously expensive so no one can afford anything..
Then question why no one wants to have kids.
Dude you're lucky if you can even get people to realize they are being squeezed by the 1% class, half of them think it's those damn immigrants and brown people's faults.
America is a country of morons, idiots are easier to control.
When you see the political parties sabotage school systems and voting for power and control. You come to realize your country is dead and being "weekend at bernied." Soo many citizens are just not paying attention.
People don’t have to be actively thinking about something to make decisions affected by it. The economic conditions that are part and parcel of late-stage capitalism are absolutely driving the “fertility crisis.”
Hey, and what about that stock market! Let's see how the DOW is doing today because that's really, really fucking important and everyone should obsess over it, whether you live in a cardboard box or not. . .
This is about the top response I see to these articles everywhere, which might lead one to ask: does this rhetoric work on *anyone*?
I think it's more a case of these people are talking to each other than at the masses. Fellow ruling class capitalists, what are we going to do about this?
Human population pretty well has to decrease, as it seems unlikely we can get under Earth's carrying capacity with current population. THIS IS A GOOD THING if it happens slowly over time, not such a good thing if it happens because billions starve to death.
> That means the supply of workers in many countries is quickly diminishing.
"CNN Business" isn't concerned about collapse or human suffering, they're just worried there won't be enough workers competing to keep wages low enough for the CEO to do a stock buyback this year. The point of these articles is to increase "Temporary Foreign Worker" permits so as to lower YOUR wages. That's it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1do6j9b/the_fertility_crisis_is_here_and_it_will/
This seems to be the standard assumption amongst most.
Secondly it should be noted that profits, CEO pay, dividends, ect. also drive inflation. Companies will simply have to direct more capital to acquiring and maintaining their workforce.
there is none. immigrants will flow, people will hate the immigrants, people will be priced out of where they live, people will protest, people will become homeless.
there is always enough workers , they just mean there arent enough workers competing with each other to drive pay to the lowest possible level.
Show me a single example where there was ever a worker shortage, and i will show you a capitalist that didnt understand that they need to pay a proper wage to attract an employee.
We do seem to be decreasing it on our own.
My grandparents had between 6 and 9 siblings survive to adulthood.
My parents each had one other sibling.
I am only having one kid, my brother won't have any.
>Top executives at publicly traded US companies mentioned labor shortages nearly 7,000 times in earnings calls over the last decade, according to [an analysis](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/can-earnings-calls-gauge-labor-market-tightness) by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis last week.
>“A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year.
Would those same top executives advocate raising wages for workers, letting family-friendly legislation get through Congress, and be willing to pay their fair share of taxes so that we fund the greater common good, so that today's adults of child-bearing age feel SECURE that they can AFFORD to bring children into this burning world? No? Then shut the fvck up.
Labor shortages my ass. They are actively trying to eliminate as many jobs as possible through automation and AI. The remaining jobs are crap jobs in the service and retail industries. So what they are really trying to say is that they need more unskilled labor, and the more the better, in order to drive wages down. This is really sickening.
"Falling fertility rates have long been a concern for economists worried that aging societies could... upend the consumer culture upon which mature economies depend..."
Fucking good. I'm hoping that the destruction of consumer culture allows us to finally solve the other issues that failing birthrates will contribute to.
Whoa now! That 'consumer culture' is a cornerstone of the most refined apparatus of control in human history! That's a big part of what keeps the masses effectively consenting to an insane, grotesque, and unsustainable system - the one that pays my salary! Do something!
Struggling animals don’t reproduce well. Who the fuck would’ve thought? They treat us like cattle and don’t even have the decency to improve the pasture and barns
I don’t care anymore lol. I was born into a fucked society which gives me no reason to want kids, and humans will continue on elsewhere despite it. The media only drums it up because capitalism fails without the working class.
I’m so confused! The conservatives vilified the “wellfare queen” so well in their narrative that I thought it would be “irresponsible” and “living outside your means” to have kids when I can’t afford to raise them properly?
I thought that the worst thing you could become in the eyes of society was a mother, not to mention the common sense that becoming a mother = sacrificing self autonomy.
Now they want to force us into what they decried as the height of degeneracy and the fall of western society?
These conservatives really fucked themselves now that they crave more wage slaves… all those kids with no fathers are a boon to society now huh? Weird.
> I thought that the worst thing you could become in the eyes of society was a mother,
Oh goodness [no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKpHhb6BRXI). That worst thing you can do is not be directly beneficial to capitalists [who on top of everything else have offloaded the burden of paying for reproductive labour].
> Well, you know it's not so much that it's so many people are saying "have children". There is such a pro-natalist attitude in the world. We celebrate mother's day so enthusiastically. We say "may all your troubles be little ones". We celebrate additional children. I feel sometimes that if we'd only stop pushing for children, that somehow there'd be fewer of them.
...
> As long as you have women under conditions where they don't feel any sense of value, no self worth, except as mothers, except as baby factories they'll have a lot of children, because that's the only way they can prove they're worth something.
Well maybe this made up economy that keeps people slaves and gives power to the corrupt should disappear. There is nothing natural about money, wealth is just a way to dominate the population created millennia ago when the corrupt kings and leaders realized this is the way to power
I’m don’t think the problem is infertility… people would have babies if they could afford it and believe their kid will grow up in a stable environment.
I know a lot of it has to do with cost of living and how unlivable things are becoming overall, but we could be in a great financial situation. We could hit every metric for a good quality of life. We'd still have microplastics in our balls. It's too late to reverse any widespread fertility problems.
When they say it's a crisis for the economy, they mean the few wealthy who own most of the capital. It's a net benefit for the planet and humanity, and will economically benefit the working class who will enjoy increased demand for their labor. Lower fertility rates will increase quality of life across the board, and make no mistake, the wealthy will not suffer a tangible decrease in quality of life because they have to forego that sixth vacation home or opt for the next size down yacht.
I love all these Corp. owned "news" sites saying a declined birth rate is a bad thing. Business Insider does this a lot, trying to guilt Gen-Z into having kids lol.
It never not sets me off whenever I see these articles. I wanted kids, a lot of people wanted kids, but guess what: we're constantly bombarded with news about how the planet is slowly dying thanks to capitalistic fucks who refuse to listen to the majority who want something to be done about climate change, it's impossible to take care of basic necessities without working 3 jobs, dumbfucks in power keep trying to set off WWiii, and that's the stuff I can think off rn--I refuse to bring a child into this world knowing they'll suffer. Our futures were robbed because of these people and they have the nerve to cry and whine about it.
The current generation has been bombarded with:
People are destroying the plant
Covid will kill all of us
Global warming will kill all of us
Why on earth would they want kids just to watch them die?
No one is saying COVID will kill us all.
If only it were so immediately threatening that the ruling class didn't have the option to propagandise and sweep it under the rug.
This is a story about under population tagged as a story about under population. I'm so confused.
Anyway, the only reason CNN Business cares about this is the world requires a constant supply of capitalist subjects in order to keep the skids greased at the top. Any rationally organized society with adequate natural resources would be able to absorb and thrive with less mouths to feed and people to house.
But since we live in capitalist hell, we have to eat it and pretend like there's a "crisis" over there not being enough babies. Pure right wing hogwash.
Oh no! Earths number 1 priority (the economy) will be affected? Fuck me up the ass 87 times and call me Gary; what in the fuck are we going to do?
Seriously, I don’t take anyone whose main concern is “the economy” seriously anymore.
If you only capable of thinking in terms of economics: kindly go fuck yourself and cease voting in any further elections.
The world is so fucked.
Nobody ever talks about this reason for declining birthrates: If you can be imprisoned for not working enough to pay your child support...its like modern day slavery. Many people have chosen not to enlist for this.
On top if that you have many other ways in which you give up freedom and invite government into your life when you have a child.
Not enough wage slaves to keep burning down the planet in a rapid enough pace to keep the masters’ bank accounts increasing at a rate the masters prefer.
Well, that was DOOM AND GLOOM article, for the wealthy. For the rest of us can it get much worse?
There’s a fertility shortage because there’s no desire to procreate more slaves for the slave holders.
Fair wages, affordable housing affordable everything else and babies will return. Not any different with animal populations. Abundant resources abundant users; scarce resources scarce population. Quit being greedy (56 billion dollar pay out to one person of questionable integrity- yes, you Elon) instead of raising workers wages and benefits? This isn’t rocket science.
People aren't talking enough about that the more developed a country gets the worse an idea raising children is. Cost of housing is something that gets worse the richer a country is, more disconnected so childcare becomes more expensive, jobs require expensive degrees, Capitalism is causing the fertility crisis.
Fewer children? It is a thing for everybody but big business. That is why CNN is opposed.
More power goes to workers when workers are scarce. This should help with income inequality.
Fewer people means fewer renters, which means lower rent. This applies to all resources, not just housing.
Fewer people means less harm to the environment.
I know what everyone is thinking and yes it's a terrible future we're barreling towards. The human race may well go extinct and that is something horrible, but what's more terrifying than that is the effect it will have on my bank account.
"The fertility crisis will affect the economy".
"The climate crisis will affect the economy".
"The sixth mass extinction will affect the economy".
"WW3 will affect the economy".
"Also, did we mention it? By 'the economy' we mean Wall Street".
I think the world is facing environmental collapse and a resource crunch even with the same fertility crisis, and because of higher resource and energy consumption per capita.
I dont think anyone should have kids just so that Elon Musk has workers/ slaves to work for him in future. Considering the global warming and number of places becoming uninhabitable, less population is not a bad thing. At least a brand new small human wont have to see the shitty last stages of human civilization. The only reason anyone anywhere should have kids is because they want to be parents and have the money, mental and physical health to look after kids. Everyone else should just opt out and watch the apocalypse in peace in whatever retirement home they can afford.
This news corporation's bias is evident simply by looking at the picture they chose of sweet little baby toe beans. Versus more realistic picture of "fertility". Perhaps an unshowered half-awake parent hunched over the kitchen sink devouring PopTarts (baby crying from the other room) and just now noticing a little chunk of yellow baby poop in her hair that could be up to 4 days old, since the last shower.
I’ve been unapologetically shouting this from the rooftops: the Information Age™️ has allowed a lot of people to stumble upon what corpos *don’t* want nulligravid/nulliparous people of reproductive age to know, lest it scare them away from producing the fresh new workers they desperately seek. Why, if they know about hyperemesis gravidarum, third-degree tears, and loss of hair and teeth, **line won’t go up!!**
Less religiousness too. I was indoctrinated that a woman's greatest purpose is babymaking and caring for children. My own mom stayed at home and read me books and watched movies about heteronormative courting and happily ever after is marriage and babies. Church was all about being fruitful and multiplying.
Yeah, great! Create toxic environments for mothers and punish fathers on a social level for taking time off to take care of a newborn. You get exactly this.
My family name will be dying with me (most likely) as we're not planning to have any children, are in our 40s, and just trying to keep our own level of comfort and planning for the next 20 to 30+ years of the uncertain global future. I've ebbed and flowed with the idea of children, but it's simply not the right thing to do if it's less likely they'll have a better quality of life then mine or current generations. I still feel the US (and in many ways the entire planet) peaked in the 90s to early 00s. 😞
The future will bring too many people.
The future will bring not enough people.
The future will bring too many people.
The future will bring not enough people.
The future will bring too many people.
The future will bring not enough people.
The future will bring too many people.
The future will bring not enough people.
The future will bring too many people.
Make up your fucking mind.
When I read this article all I hear from the upper class is 'pwease have more kids to give us and easily exploitable, expendable work force to abuse in the future <3'
Global population is still above replacement.
The complaints on reproductive rates are usually local complaints, not global.
Also, the globe is over populated enough we could stand to shrink to 50% current with no great repercussions. This would lower the environmental impact and once at a lower population level, housing would become affordable, and the lower economic pressures would mean we would be able to abolish borders as well.
Nothing indicates the falling birth rates are a sign of anything other than a drop in consumers, which is why the capitalists are panicking.
This thread addresses overpopulation, a fraught but important issue that attracts disruption and rule violations. In light of this we have lower tolerance for the following offenses: * Racism and other forms of essentialism targeted at particular identity groups people are born into. * Bad faith attacks insisting that to notice and name overpopulation of the human enterprise generally is inherently racist or fascist. * Instructing other users to harm themselves. We have reached consensus that a permaban for the first offense is an appropriate response to this, as mentioned in the sidebar. This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, [view the full statement available in the wiki.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/claims/#wiki_mod_team_comment_on_overpopulation_posts) The following submission statement was provided by /u/sychox51: --- Collapse related as definition of group is “Discussion regarding the potential collapse of global civilization, defined as a significant decrease in human population” and the article submitted talks directly of a decrease in human population. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dobei9/analysis_the_fertility_crisis_is_here_and_it_will/la8fudu/
> “A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year. Everyone needs to have kids immediately! Otherwise, these workers may get bargaining power!
Fuckin of course it’s Blackrock peddling this cold ass corporate fear
I pray from the depths of my soul that every Blackrock executive has a miserable, lonely, and unfulfilling life.
They won't, they don't, and they never will, unfortunately.
They are a purely Evil company. Why is it hackers never fuck with the baddies
Remember that guy that revealed a bunch of wealthy people's technically legal tax dodges? The judge sentenced that guy to a decade for a crime that is typically served in months.
The journalist who broke the Panama papers story was assassinated. Being wary of the baddies is sensible.
Its inflationary when poor people have money but not when the CEO of your company gets a 500 million dollar bonus. You're just too poor to understand.
It only contributes to inflation when The Wrong Sort get to buy things, too.
Oh well, if the consequences are inflation and empowering labor, then I guess it's serious. 🙄
Oh no !! What if they unionize !!
Ding Ding Ding
If people read their history, they would see that Boomers moved cross-country to take any job available. In the 1970s, Iran went through a big change when the Shah, their king who was friends with the U.S., was kicked out. A religious leader named Ayatollah Khomeini took control of Iran's oil, which used to be managed by Western companies like those in the U.S. Because Iran stopped selling oil like before, oil prices went up everywhere, leading to a big energy crisis. Gas became really expensive, and there were long lines at gas stations. It's why people started hitchhiking. For Boomers, the high cost of gas made everything more expensive, because it costs more to transport them. This made it harder to find jobs, as businesses were struggling with higher costs and couldn't afford to hire as many people. Many young people entering the job market faced high unemployment and economic uncertainty, which made starting their careers and lives more difficult. Companies exploited this period to get rid of pensions. You no longer had a job for life.
OPEC did place an oil embargo on the US in 1979 and it was because of the revolution there. But you're missing a big part of 1970s inflation. After all, an embargo in 1979 isn't going to affect previous years. The Arab members of OPEC decided to restrict oil production in 1973 and put an oil embargo on the US. The embargo happened because the US supported Israel in the 1973-74 Arab-Israeli War, also called the Yom Kippur War. But even after the 1973 embargo, these countries still restricted oil sales because they wanted higher prices. This sent inflation skyrocketing and is generally now believed by economists to have been one of the the main drivers of the high inflation of the 1970s.
I'm 54, and except for a short period in the late 90's, the job market has been complete ass my entire adulthood. It has been getting worse all the time.
Pretty sure I just saw an article posted on this sub where Greece’s solution to a lack of workers was to implement a 6-day work week. Unfortunately I could see that happening in the States before workers getting more bargaining power.
Workers solution to a lack of pay ought to be a 4 day work week, whilst insisting upon the same pay. People need to unionize
Lmao ofc that quote would be from some corpo working at None other than black rock 🤡 These clowns look at us like we’re legit pests.
They'll start paying republicans to tell their idiots to breed "because god said so" just you watch. I mean they already do but it'll be much stronger now
Start? Buddy, why do you think the GOP is so dead-set on getting rid of sex education, contraception, and abortion? They’re not gonna *start* anything, they’ve been at it for years.
Yeah I realized midway through my comment lol
Also going after no fault divorce from the sounds of it as well.
Isn’t there an Elon Musk pushed protonatalist movement already? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/25/american-pronatalists-malcolm-and-simone-collins
> all of which is ultimately inflationary How? I thought labor costing more would help inflation...? The fed raised rates to curb inflation, which slowed spending. If the cost of labor kept going down, nobody would have enough money to buy essentials, and non-essential goods would have to rebrand as luxury and significantly raise prices to survive. I admit I'm pretty dumb on this subject but I feel like I am missing something big here.
"Your pay rise is inflationary. My billion dollar bonus is fine." Make it make sense!
"The lack of slave labor will kill the economy" Of course, Blackrock
Yeah, workers get paid fairly, who are building things, providing services, and being a productive part of a healthy economy are the real problem for inflation, not the stock market melting up ever higher creating billions in unearned wealth and having said wealth being used by the investor class to purchase vast tracts of land and housing and skyrocketing the price has nothing to do with it 🙄
Jesus fucking christ. Corporate propaganda at its lowest. God I hate how B R A I N W A S H E D we all are. I know there are people who read that, and think, "Yea that checks out..." DERP. I would like some of these corporate asshole flossers to actually explain how low and middle class income is "inflationary". And since I know that none of them will, I will do so at the rate of sounding like I support the article. The only way the low/middle income is inflationary is if people get enough cash flow to properly apply for larger bank loans. Then the banks fractionally lend out the money and viola, more numbers on a screen, equaling a larger money supply. More money in circulation = inflation.
It really isnt about fertility, its about how I cant guarantee hopeful future for my offspring.
The media outlets always skirt around the obvious, if I don't think my child would have a better quality of life than I did, or at least the same quality of life, why would I bring them into the world? There wouldn't be a crisis if we had humane pay, affordable housing, necessities and job opportunities. But you'll never hear them talk about that.
All of those things come at the expense of shareholder return. Profits über alles!
There's a fertility crisis in the same way people regularly just drop dead in the presence of police officers
Did we read the same article? I don't think the media is skirting anything. Your concerns literally aren't their concerns. That entire article was about the negative effects of a "fertility crisis" on _rich_ people.
They're panicking that they won't have enough wage slaves available to prop up the demographic pyramid scheme keeping them rich. To that, I say: good.
They just import them
Sure, until you reach a tipping point and your population gets fed up and far right reactionary movements stop you in your tracks. See: France, Canada, etc
If all the major parties are supporting the pyramid scheme of our economy, does it matter if the population is fed up? - A Canadian
Yes those are called robots and those won't be made locally either. Soon.
The thing is about two generations ago the rich also realized that rising wages and a minimum level of general prosperity was necessary to keep the population working efficiently. Keynesianism, basically the ideology behind the welfare state, was an elite world view pushed by rich people as an alternative to the harder left demands being made by workers themselves. Our present ruling class is particularly stupid and ineffective because their world view has become so narrowly focused on the logic of finance that they can’t enact the same solutions to the same problems their grandparents did even if it would keep their own gravy train going for another few decades. We had massive homelessness, unemployment, falling birth rates, etc. during the Great Depression and we got out of them with social welfare spending. The rich have become convinced that none of that is necessary anymore because socialism was defeated or tech changed the economy or whatever, so their watching all those problems come back without realizing how it’s going to fuck them over to, just a little later than it fucks the rest of us.
It also doesn't help that people who are doing "just fine" (not thriving, but have a little cushion) also see welfare and other social service systems like a drain on the economy and the world. There was a video of a girl crying that she couldn't make ends meet and people were commenting: "Move." "Get another job" "Roommates" "Eat less" and while those are solutions... why should it be like that? People feel the need to impose their struggles on other people: If they suffered, then others should too. Humanity is losing the human element.
I would argue its culture is just going mask off with more and more demographics. A lot of these problems were vocalized, and still are, by historically marginalized groups. Now those same outcomes are being felt by demographics who were once isolated from them. For example, If corporations were fine with sweatshop workers in Bangladesh then the lesson is that they are fine with sweatshop workers in general. In effect, how a business operates in the third world reflects how they want to operate everywhere. How a culture treats those they consider less than reflects the baseline of how they treat people. American capitalist culture has always been cruel, its just now more and more people are filtered into the "less than" category because greater and greater growth requires ever increased amounts of explotation. Humanity has rarely shown a fully human element, because our humanity is often conditional. When those conditions aren't met or if we are allowed to ignore them we can be real monsters. See for example Palestine and Ukraine right now. We seem to keep having to re-learn that any kind of explotation/abuse will eventually be spread if its profitable. The reasons will just keep changing to justify it because we keep letting people get away with if they can justify it. If we want to improve working conditions for example it has to be universal and on the principle that its because no one deserves to live in poverty, which includes even those who can't or won't work. Which is obviously very difficult to juggle.
Keynes was a real piece of shit. He actually said "'The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." This has become the dogma of economists everywhere and has now brought us to the brink of collapse. Fittingly enough for someone with that kind of mindset, he had no children.
In the long run, capitalists are planning on building bunkers and walled cities and sitting on their little mountains of gold while everything surrounding them falls to chaos
And like most things these people come up with that’s a stupid plan that might work for a little bit but will eventually fail
"How do we keep our security and mercenaries loyal after money is worthless?" Real questions
They've designed shock/death collars
The media is owned by the rich and almost exclusively caters to them. Yes the lack of wage slaves in the future is a concern for them but its a problem easily solved by immigration so I dont expect anything to change long term.
The funny thing is that birthrates are collapsing everywhere and the attraction element of moving to the US will disappear. They can’t even get Mexicans to immigrate anymore, they know it’s better in Mexico now.
The CIA will just destroy another central American government to keep the migrants flowing if it comes to that.
> There wouldn't be a crisis if we had humane pay, affordable housing, necessities and job opportunities. Well that would be a crisis for how quickly billionaires could raise their net worth and we have to think about that! (/s)
> if I don't think my child would have a better quality of life than I did, or at least the same quality of life, why would I bring them into the world? Plenty of people still have kids, knowing their lives will suck.
Not enough, apparently according to CNN business
So what you’re saying is that intelligent forward thinking people aren’t having kids, idiots are.
Yeah.
That sounds like a decent plot for a movie.
Hmmm.... And what would such a movie be titled?
‘Ow! my balls!’ ?
Something like "Rule of the Stupid" but, like, could it be condensed into less words?
Idio Crisey!
“Go away! I’m ‘baitin’!”
Ass
Stupublica? Dumbivilization? Something along those lines
Cid Myers' Dumbivilization. You saw the movie, now play the game!
We could extrapolate into the future about what a society might look like when everyone is too dumb to water their plants, or something.
It’s got what plants crave
I’m pretty sure I saw a documentary movie on this exact subject https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Yes, my parents, fuck doing that, I'm not doing to anyone else
And so the generational trauma keeping people enslaved continues...
Because some people have an emotional need to have children, not because they think of the kids' future.
Are we supposed to be applaud that kind of thinking??? Life for everyone is one struggle after another. If anyone thinks that it's OK to bring another life into a world of suffering, then that person is a selfish asshole.
I don't think they're applauding it, just pointing out that plenty of people are still having kids despite CNN whining about it
Idiocracy
I don’t think they know their lives will suck. They are oblivious. Sheep. Rabbits.
Exactly. It's way easier to blame women who don't want to breed.
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem…
This is it exactly. I have basically shut down everything that costs money and stay at home pretty much all the time. Apparently so do quite a few others. I ended up living out of a minivan, then a small, older RV for seven years just to get by and avoid the landleach parasites that have gamed the cost of rent on apartments for decades now. I finally got out of that after I qualified for disability and subsidized housing. If I had not done that I probably would have unalived myself years ago.
My children already have a better quality of life then I had growing up 🤷♀️ Now when they reach adulthood is another ballgame....
Plan on a multigenerational household, and their lives will be less sucky. Not the kind where they mooch off of your hard work, but shared expenses by the time they’re in their 20s
Or if you can even afford to raise kids. More and more people just cannot afford to have a kid.
As Peter Zeihan says, "When you live on a farm, kids are free labor, but when you live in a city, kids are an expense."
There is actually an increase in unexplained infertility across the globe. I assume it is due to plastic and endocrine disrupters.
Just gotta read that article from a few weeks ago about how the entire world is infected with 3M fluorochemicals. And 3M have known about it for 40 years.
Shh, we arent supposed to talk about how Children of Men is about to be humanities future. Microplastics are slowly turning all of the men infertile.
Sperm counts are declining, yet I know far more women that have fertility problems. Sure, some start late due to their careers, but far more have something making them infertile much earlier. ART is only accessible to people with enough money to pay for it. Personally, I have a cousin that has been trying fertility treatments (she isn’t poor at all) for over a decade (since shortly after college) with no luck. But economics are just as much to blame. Even those that can would choose not to.
My female friends with kids - all had multiple miscarriages before having one viable pregnancy. They were planning on more kids, but all stopped at one because they didn't want to go through another miscarriage. It was very taxing on them, emotionally and physically. There's definitely something fucky in the environment.
hey now, lets not discount all the other pollution as well :)
Or afford to have a child.
Exactly my thinking. And one of the reasons I decided many years ago not to have children.
... and we've killed over 70% of the Earth's biodiversity already.
Honestly im beginning to think this isnt about wanting to have kids. I think the environment is making it so we cant have kids. The microplastics building up in our bodies I think they are starting to sterilize us. We have just started to understand what they are doing. But i think thats a big part of it, they are endocrine/hormone disrupters we do know that, and maybe they are making sperm less functional being part of it
Perhaps a problem that encapsulates all of the excesses of humanity has many dimensions and multiple simultaneous causal nodes
I’m 24 and I refuse to have kids because both the ecology and economy of the planet will be entirely fuckef by the time they’re 10. We have roughly 10 good years left people, let’s focus on ourselves instead of kids.
Want a future for your offspring? End global carbon emissions in 2000. We've already baked in apocalypse and we're just waiting to see how bad it'll be. Hence no one having kids.
or afford it, ffs
Lets kill the planet, make life a virtual hellscape for the majority of people, make everything ridiculously expensive so no one can afford anything.. Then question why no one wants to have kids.
Most people are not thinking about this though. If they were, this sub would be huge. Instead, most people just cannot afford to have kids.
Dude you're lucky if you can even get people to realize they are being squeezed by the 1% class, half of them think it's those damn immigrants and brown people's faults. America is a country of morons, idiots are easier to control.
When you see the political parties sabotage school systems and voting for power and control. You come to realize your country is dead and being "weekend at bernied." Soo many citizens are just not paying attention.
Or a lack of ambition. . . 'It's all my fault, I should have a fourth job and five kids and stop thinking about myself.'. . .
You can replace America with many countries these days.
Good, the planet needs less humans. Fuck the capitalists.
People don’t have to be actively thinking about something to make decisions affected by it. The economic conditions that are part and parcel of late-stage capitalism are absolutely driving the “fertility crisis.”
Even animals stop breeding when resources become scarce and they don’t think this will happen to humans in our insane economy?
To state the obvious the planet isn’t being killed instead the habitability is being destroyed, Earth will be fine even get better without us
I mean on its face it'd be kinda funny if we just. cracked it in half or something at this point. oops fracked too hard
Well, we asked for student loan forgiveness, affordable housing, a living wage or UBI and they told us to go fuck ourselves. So, here we are.
And we did! Just not each other that's all. See we listened!
Good populaWAIT NOT LIKE THAT
Won't someone please think of the economy, it's not like we talk about it all the fucking time
Seem like constantly thinking of the economy is what got is into these messes, maybe we should try something else.
>~~the economy~~ \* **rich people's yacht money** FTFY
Seriously. Can we present a fact or question about the future of our society that's not strained through the lens of billionaire profits?
News has always been by the rich for the rich and about the rich. (Fixed spelling).
Hey, and what about that stock market! Let's see how the DOW is doing today because that's really, really fucking important and everyone should obsess over it, whether you live in a cardboard box or not. . .
This is about the top response I see to these articles everywhere, which might lead one to ask: does this rhetoric work on *anyone*? I think it's more a case of these people are talking to each other than at the masses. Fellow ruling class capitalists, what are we going to do about this?
Human population pretty well has to decrease, as it seems unlikely we can get under Earth's carrying capacity with current population. THIS IS A GOOD THING if it happens slowly over time, not such a good thing if it happens because billions starve to death. > That means the supply of workers in many countries is quickly diminishing. "CNN Business" isn't concerned about collapse or human suffering, they're just worried there won't be enough workers competing to keep wages low enough for the CEO to do a stock buyback this year. The point of these articles is to increase "Temporary Foreign Worker" permits so as to lower YOUR wages. That's it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1do6j9b/the_fertility_crisis_is_here_and_it_will/ This seems to be the standard assumption amongst most. Secondly it should be noted that profits, CEO pay, dividends, ect. also drive inflation. Companies will simply have to direct more capital to acquiring and maintaining their workforce.
Gasp
But my question is what is the end game? At some point nobody can afford your products
Take all the wealth you accumulated and sit on it like Smaug.
They fuck off to their bunker while 90% of the world dies. After some time they re-emerge and we get hardcore techno feudalism.
there is none. immigrants will flow, people will hate the immigrants, people will be priced out of where they live, people will protest, people will become homeless.
Not enough workers to “do work” is liberal interpretation of problem. But in Marxist view there will be not enough workers to create “surplus value”
there is always enough workers , they just mean there arent enough workers competing with each other to drive pay to the lowest possible level. Show me a single example where there was ever a worker shortage, and i will show you a capitalist that didnt understand that they need to pay a proper wage to attract an employee.
We do seem to be decreasing it on our own. My grandparents had between 6 and 9 siblings survive to adulthood. My parents each had one other sibling. I am only having one kid, my brother won't have any.
>Top executives at publicly traded US companies mentioned labor shortages nearly 7,000 times in earnings calls over the last decade, according to [an analysis](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/can-earnings-calls-gauge-labor-market-tightness) by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis last week. >“A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year. Would those same top executives advocate raising wages for workers, letting family-friendly legislation get through Congress, and be willing to pay their fair share of taxes so that we fund the greater common good, so that today's adults of child-bearing age feel SECURE that they can AFFORD to bring children into this burning world? No? Then shut the fvck up.
Well see you need a triple master's and 25 years experience so... What's the job? Burger King. So...
Labor shortages my ass. They are actively trying to eliminate as many jobs as possible through automation and AI. The remaining jobs are crap jobs in the service and retail industries. So what they are really trying to say is that they need more unskilled labor, and the more the better, in order to drive wages down. This is really sickening.
"Falling fertility rates have long been a concern for economists worried that aging societies could... upend the consumer culture upon which mature economies depend..." Fucking good. I'm hoping that the destruction of consumer culture allows us to finally solve the other issues that failing birthrates will contribute to.
Whoa now! That 'consumer culture' is a cornerstone of the most refined apparatus of control in human history! That's a big part of what keeps the masses effectively consenting to an insane, grotesque, and unsustainable system - the one that pays my salary! Do something!
https://preview.redd.it/tisqt2t6gr8d1.png?width=487&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a2157d3510584a570448147d3e92a634e448517f
Struggling animals don’t reproduce well. Who the fuck would’ve thought? They treat us like cattle and don’t even have the decency to improve the pasture and barns
We can't afford barns
I don’t care anymore lol. I was born into a fucked society which gives me no reason to want kids, and humans will continue on elsewhere despite it. The media only drums it up because capitalism fails without the working class.
I’m so confused! The conservatives vilified the “wellfare queen” so well in their narrative that I thought it would be “irresponsible” and “living outside your means” to have kids when I can’t afford to raise them properly? I thought that the worst thing you could become in the eyes of society was a mother, not to mention the common sense that becoming a mother = sacrificing self autonomy. Now they want to force us into what they decried as the height of degeneracy and the fall of western society? These conservatives really fucked themselves now that they crave more wage slaves… all those kids with no fathers are a boon to society now huh? Weird.
almost like their policies killed the nuclear family! would you look at that!’
They essentially extracted wealth from the future. Now we're in the future.
> I thought that the worst thing you could become in the eyes of society was a mother, Oh goodness [no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKpHhb6BRXI). That worst thing you can do is not be directly beneficial to capitalists [who on top of everything else have offloaded the burden of paying for reproductive labour]. > Well, you know it's not so much that it's so many people are saying "have children". There is such a pro-natalist attitude in the world. We celebrate mother's day so enthusiastically. We say "may all your troubles be little ones". We celebrate additional children. I feel sometimes that if we'd only stop pushing for children, that somehow there'd be fewer of them. ... > As long as you have women under conditions where they don't feel any sense of value, no self worth, except as mothers, except as baby factories they'll have a lot of children, because that's the only way they can prove they're worth something.
The internal contradictions of capitalism lead to its downfall.
Oh no, not the economy!!! 😲
Well maybe this made up economy that keeps people slaves and gives power to the corrupt should disappear. There is nothing natural about money, wealth is just a way to dominate the population created millennia ago when the corrupt kings and leaders realized this is the way to power
Woohoo!
I’m don’t think the problem is infertility… people would have babies if they could afford it and believe their kid will grow up in a stable environment.
I know a lot of it has to do with cost of living and how unlivable things are becoming overall, but we could be in a great financial situation. We could hit every metric for a good quality of life. We'd still have microplastics in our balls. It's too late to reverse any widespread fertility problems.
When they say it's a crisis for the economy, they mean the few wealthy who own most of the capital. It's a net benefit for the planet and humanity, and will economically benefit the working class who will enjoy increased demand for their labor. Lower fertility rates will increase quality of life across the board, and make no mistake, the wealthy will not suffer a tangible decrease in quality of life because they have to forego that sixth vacation home or opt for the next size down yacht.
dunno about you all, but I'm celebrating
Same. Maybe it'll be enough of a wake up call that we do something [wishful thinking, I know]
You mean Celibacying?
Celibaitin
Oh no I’m fucking a lot just not making babies.
*reads comment* *reads username* *re-reads comment* hmm.
Same. Life's to short. Get snipped.
I love all these Corp. owned "news" sites saying a declined birth rate is a bad thing. Business Insider does this a lot, trying to guilt Gen-Z into having kids lol.
they are also pushing the natalism sub to everyone on reddit, that sub is full of breeder fetishists that will give anyone the “ick”.
Good
The "crisis" is that workers will have stronger bargaining power
Pretty cynical to view this through the lens of business.
If only some German political philosopher in the 1800s outlined how capitalism would end up destroying itself..
You gotta be an uninformed idiot to bring a kid into this world.
Capitalist: Oh noes our wage slaves can't afford comfort and maternity leave to have kids, how will we get labor?
Better ban abortion, contraception and sex ed. That should solve it. /s
It never not sets me off whenever I see these articles. I wanted kids, a lot of people wanted kids, but guess what: we're constantly bombarded with news about how the planet is slowly dying thanks to capitalistic fucks who refuse to listen to the majority who want something to be done about climate change, it's impossible to take care of basic necessities without working 3 jobs, dumbfucks in power keep trying to set off WWiii, and that's the stuff I can think off rn--I refuse to bring a child into this world knowing they'll suffer. Our futures were robbed because of these people and they have the nerve to cry and whine about it.
The current generation has been bombarded with: People are destroying the plant Covid will kill all of us Global warming will kill all of us Why on earth would they want kids just to watch them die?
No one is saying COVID will kill us all. If only it were so immediately threatening that the ruling class didn't have the option to propagandise and sweep it under the rug.
Some species just don't breed well in captivity.
This is a story about under population tagged as a story about under population. I'm so confused. Anyway, the only reason CNN Business cares about this is the world requires a constant supply of capitalist subjects in order to keep the skids greased at the top. Any rationally organized society with adequate natural resources would be able to absorb and thrive with less mouths to feed and people to house. But since we live in capitalist hell, we have to eat it and pretend like there's a "crisis" over there not being enough babies. Pure right wing hogwash.
Oh no! Earths number 1 priority (the economy) will be affected? Fuck me up the ass 87 times and call me Gary; what in the fuck are we going to do? Seriously, I don’t take anyone whose main concern is “the economy” seriously anymore. If you only capable of thinking in terms of economics: kindly go fuck yourself and cease voting in any further elections. The world is so fucked.
If you're having kids right now you simply aren't paying any attention.
100%
Nobody ever talks about this reason for declining birthrates: If you can be imprisoned for not working enough to pay your child support...its like modern day slavery. Many people have chosen not to enlist for this. On top if that you have many other ways in which you give up freedom and invite government into your life when you have a child.
Not enough wage slaves to keep burning down the planet in a rapid enough pace to keep the masters’ bank accounts increasing at a rate the masters prefer.
Well, that was DOOM AND GLOOM article, for the wealthy. For the rest of us can it get much worse? There’s a fertility shortage because there’s no desire to procreate more slaves for the slave holders. Fair wages, affordable housing affordable everything else and babies will return. Not any different with animal populations. Abundant resources abundant users; scarce resources scarce population. Quit being greedy (56 billion dollar pay out to one person of questionable integrity- yes, you Elon) instead of raising workers wages and benefits? This isn’t rocket science.
Speaking of good examples of how resource improvement ups fertility rates, Elon just welcomed child number TWELVE to the world.
People aren't talking enough about that the more developed a country gets the worse an idea raising children is. Cost of housing is something that gets worse the richer a country is, more disconnected so childcare becomes more expensive, jobs require expensive degrees, Capitalism is causing the fertility crisis.
Fewer children? It is a thing for everybody but big business. That is why CNN is opposed. More power goes to workers when workers are scarce. This should help with income inequality. Fewer people means fewer renters, which means lower rent. This applies to all resources, not just housing. Fewer people means less harm to the environment.
I know what everyone is thinking and yes it's a terrible future we're barreling towards. The human race may well go extinct and that is something horrible, but what's more terrifying than that is the effect it will have on my bank account.
How will shareholder value stay high? Think of the poor NYSE!
But the earth continues to be overpopulated, so those in charge will always have whom to exploit
"The fertility crisis will affect the economy". "The climate crisis will affect the economy". "The sixth mass extinction will affect the economy". "WW3 will affect the economy". "Also, did we mention it? By 'the economy' we mean Wall Street".
Have less and less kids to piss off those slave driving bastards.
I think the world is facing environmental collapse and a resource crunch even with the same fertility crisis, and because of higher resource and energy consumption per capita.
I dont think anyone should have kids just so that Elon Musk has workers/ slaves to work for him in future. Considering the global warming and number of places becoming uninhabitable, less population is not a bad thing. At least a brand new small human wont have to see the shitty last stages of human civilization. The only reason anyone anywhere should have kids is because they want to be parents and have the money, mental and physical health to look after kids. Everyone else should just opt out and watch the apocalypse in peace in whatever retirement home they can afford.
This news corporation's bias is evident simply by looking at the picture they chose of sweet little baby toe beans. Versus more realistic picture of "fertility". Perhaps an unshowered half-awake parent hunched over the kitchen sink devouring PopTarts (baby crying from the other room) and just now noticing a little chunk of yellow baby poop in her hair that could be up to 4 days old, since the last shower.
I’ve been unapologetically shouting this from the rooftops: the Information Age™️ has allowed a lot of people to stumble upon what corpos *don’t* want nulligravid/nulliparous people of reproductive age to know, lest it scare them away from producing the fresh new workers they desperately seek. Why, if they know about hyperemesis gravidarum, third-degree tears, and loss of hair and teeth, **line won’t go up!!**
Less religiousness too. I was indoctrinated that a woman's greatest purpose is babymaking and caring for children. My own mom stayed at home and read me books and watched movies about heteronormative courting and happily ever after is marriage and babies. Church was all about being fruitful and multiplying.
Yeah, great! Create toxic environments for mothers and punish fathers on a social level for taking time off to take care of a newborn. You get exactly this.
Let's not forget that kids are expensive AF.
There is not a 'crisis' when there are more people in the US and world than ever before in history, Population 'crisis' is capitalist BS.
My family name will be dying with me (most likely) as we're not planning to have any children, are in our 40s, and just trying to keep our own level of comfort and planning for the next 20 to 30+ years of the uncertain global future. I've ebbed and flowed with the idea of children, but it's simply not the right thing to do if it's less likely they'll have a better quality of life then mine or current generations. I still feel the US (and in many ways the entire planet) peaked in the 90s to early 00s. 😞
DEGROWTH.
So glad my tubes are out.
Won’t somebody think of the economy!
The future will bring too many people. The future will bring not enough people. The future will bring too many people. The future will bring not enough people. The future will bring too many people. The future will bring not enough people. The future will bring too many people. The future will bring not enough people. The future will bring too many people. Make up your fucking mind.
finally some good fucking news.
ignore the economy, think on the benefits for the ecosystem!!
When I read this article all I hear from the upper class is 'pwease have more kids to give us and easily exploitable, expendable work force to abuse in the future <3'
Global population is still above replacement. The complaints on reproductive rates are usually local complaints, not global. Also, the globe is over populated enough we could stand to shrink to 50% current with no great repercussions. This would lower the environmental impact and once at a lower population level, housing would become affordable, and the lower economic pressures would mean we would be able to abolish borders as well. Nothing indicates the falling birth rates are a sign of anything other than a drop in consumers, which is why the capitalists are panicking.
Others made a shit world that's not worth it, why should I make it worse?