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Fertility Rate in U.S. Hit a Record Low in 2018
The rate of births fell again last year, according to new government data, extending a lengthy decline as women wait until they are older to have children.
The number of births per 1,000 women in the United States has been declining even as the economy has recovered from the downturn of 2007-8.
The fertility rate in the United States fell in 2018 for the fourth straight year, extending a steep decline in births that began in 2008 with the Great Recession, the federal government said on Wednesday.
There were 59.1 births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age in the country last year, a record low, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate was down by 2 percent from the previous year, and has fallen by about 15 percent since 2007.
In all, there were 3,791,712 births in the country last year, the center said in its release of final birth data for 2018.
Fertility rates are essential measures of a society's demographic balance. If they are very high, resources like housing and education can be strained by a flood of children, as happened in the postwar Baby Boom years. If they are too low, a country may find itself with too few young people to replace its work force and support its elderly, as in Russia and Japan today.
In the United States, declines in fertility have not led to drops in population, in part because immigration has helped offset them.
The country has been living through one of the longest declines in fertility in decades. Demographers are trying to determine whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a new normal, driven by deeper social change.
Fertility rates tend to drop during difficult economic times, as people put off having babies, and then rise when the economy rebounds. That is what happened during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this time around, the birthrate has not recovered with the economy. A brief uptick in the rate in 2014 did not last.
"It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down," said Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.
Mr. Johnson estimated that if the rate had remained steady at its 2007 level, there would have been 5.7 million more births in the country since then.
The decline in 2018 was broad, sweeping through nearly all age groups, and reflected a long, gradual shift in American childbearing to later in the mother's life. The rate fell most steeply among women in their teens — down 7.4 percent from the year before. Births to teenagers have fallen by more than 70 percent since 1991.
Women in their 20s had fewer babies last year as well. Historically, women in their late twenties usually had the highest fertility rates of all, but they were overtaken in 2016 by women in their early 30s, reflecting a trend of later childbearing throughout American society.
The only age groups that recorded increases in fertility rates in 2018 were women in their late 30s and early 40s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:18PM (12 children)
and who cares? If people want to have kids, they can have kids. If they don't, they don't.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:33PM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:08PM (2 children)
Investing in children is the biggest ponzi scheme, adam and abraham are overflowing with cash rn, if only church fathers didn't invest so much clergy celibacy wouldn't be a thing, who knows maybe it would even solve the incel problem
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:23PM (1 child)
This just in: Donald Trump causes sterility!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 29 2019, @01:43AM
And Obama, in true "Change" style, kept everything going in exactly the same direction.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @06:39PM
Did someone mention suckers in the context of declining fertility rates?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0al93D5KpQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:11PM (6 children)
Think about every single child currently being born. They are largely all buy a ticket in the genetic lottery. Fertility rates determine the odds in that lottery which, in turn, determines what conditions these children will be born into and also plays a disproportionate roles in what their outcomes will be as adults. Fertility is, ultimately, the single largest factor in determining what the future of our species will be.
Across the world today, well actually mostly just in the western world, a number of factors correlate strongly against fertility - education, income, secularity, liberalism. And the opposite factors all correlate strongly with fertility. Pew carried out some religious projects here [pewforum.org]. There's all sorts of interesting data there. Keep in mind that these projections are not some distant future, but merely 30 years away. The world will go from 23.2% Muslim to 29.7% with ongoing growth. Unaffiliated, which includes agnostics and atheists, will go from 16.4% of the world today to 13.2% with a continuing decline.
The world is and will continue to grow less educated, poorer, more religious, and less liberal. And this isn't even touching on genetics since even if you want to pretend it doesn't exist, this is already a really awful scenario. Fertility will have a far larger impact on this planet than a few degrees of heating might. Yet you now have e.g. the royal family, who could provide phenomenal lives and upbringing for numerous children, instead virtue signaling that they'll only have 2 kids 'to save the planet'. Ok? And now those who couldn't care less about such things will make up an even bigger chunk of the population. And you live in a democracy where whoever pumps out the most kids, matters the most. Some great longterm planning there.
People always project in the future taking the present as, more or less, something that will always be. Most do not consider that "we", as defined by our current ideology and culture, may be something people look back to in a fashion similar to how we look back to the ancient Greeks. They had democracy, an advanced civilization, amazing arts and sciences, and were centuries ahead of the most of the rest of the planet. Yet for all of their learning - their civilization simply collapsed only to ultimately be replaced by regressive, superstitious, and incredibly resilient feudal orders.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:27PM
Muh collapse and apocalypse coming any day now! 2000 year old tradition with some who started it (jesus) being still the most worshipped overall after all these years. Eat bugs, stop sexing! Queue in carlin: earth doesn't give a fuck, stop saving the planet, worry about your species. Neither greta or jesus will save you, the most destructive in human history were ideological wars and with chinese and muslims having no fertility problems it is coming, repent!!!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @07:52PM
Congratulations, you just echoed the main point of the El Paso shooter
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 29 2019, @02:50AM (3 children)
That's assuming that middle class status won't happen to those Muslims along with more Liberalism. Considering that Christianity managed to go from nutcase crazy to liberal, there is hope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @04:37AM (1 child)
You mean it went from sane and sustainable to nutcase retarded?
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 29 2019, @05:35AM
Go back 500-1000 years, things were pretty crazy in Christian-ism and the religious wars didn't really end until about 300 years bak.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @08:02AM
I think this view is somewhat arrogant. The reason is that we assume we are right, and people will become like us once they "see the light". Trevor Phillips [wikipedia.org] is the former head of Britian's Equality and Human Rights Commission, is now chairman of the National Equality Standard, and so forth. He's also the person who effectively brought the term Islamophobia into normal usage and was extremely vigilant against such vigilant against such back in the late 90s. He's become rather controversial in recent times for making statements [theguardian.com] such as:
In response [zerohedge.com] to a survey indicating that Muslims in the UK are in no way whatsoever just assimilating he stated:
Of course now the genuine racists come out and simply label him an 'Uncle Tom' for having the 'wrong' view. Yet how is what he's saying in any way incorrect? People are different, groups are different. Islamic people are proud and vehement supporters of their culture; the liberal west are proud and ardent supporters of their own ideology. Do you expect to adopt an Islamic worldview should you move to the Mideast? Yet we expect people who feel just as strongly about their own worldviews to suddenly just adopt ours?
Traditional migrations involved peoples whose primary difference was language and invisible lines we call borders. Imagine you ignore economic and language issues. You could pretty much transplant all of Mexico into the US and society would be, more or less, the same. That's because the cultural differences there are pretty mild. Similarly if you migrated to Mexico, it wouldn't take much of any effort, beyond language, to seamlessly blend into society. But none of this is true once you start talking about cultures that are just radically different. In lieu of assimilation you end up creating countries within countries. And once these micronations reach a critical mass, problems start to emerge.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:40PM (6 children)
Seems like we're bummed out, lost the will to live as it were.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/health/life-expectancy-rate-usa.html [nytimes.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:52PM (5 children)
The effect there is going to be negligible. The article mentions the death change per 100k going from 328.5 to 348.2 and that's for everybody age 25-64, so a good chunk of those deaths are well beyond fertility dates. So maybe an increase of ~10 people per 100k or, in other words, [literally] 99.99% of the population not being affected. Those deaths are also extremely heavily weighted against men meaning the overall affect is further reduced. This [macrotrends.net] is a table of fertility in the US. It started plummeting, hard, in the 60s. Saw a brief uptick in the 80s and has been falling ever since. In my opinion the reason is two fold. The first isn't controversial - the internet and idiotic phones. Even teen pregnancy has been plummeting. You have a source of endless entertainment, endless porn, and endless socially acceptable addiction.
The second is perhaps a bit more controversial, but I don't really see why. We've adopted a large number of views that are going to be detrimental to overall fertility. Boys can be girls, being 'actively disinterested' in that notion (perhaps because you view a partner as not just somewhere to stick your dick, but someone to raise a family with) is considered bigoted, homosexual relation rates are greatly exaggerated in media and glamorized, expressing physical interest in a person - especially somebody you may regularly interact with is considered objectification if not outright misogyny, making the first move may be considered sexual assault if you misread a situation (he touched my thigh!), so forth and so on.
I'd say you could see this effect by comparing nations where this has not played as large a role in society, but you can even see it within societies. Turns out [thecut.com] in the 2012 election you could effectively predict how each state voted, by little more than their fertility rates. Same exact thing held true in 2016 as well. Just looked at the list [wikipedia.org] of states by fertility. It wasn't until you hit the 13th state, that you got an exception - and it was Hawaii which kind of plays by its own rules. Continental it was the 16th state, Minnesota - and that was a razor close one at 46.44% vs 44.92%. Hillary probably took it on spoiler votes. Evan McMullin, yeah I never heard of him either, picked up 1.8% of the vote with another 1.7% going to "other" candidates. It's really quite interesting! Screw polls, I'm just going to go see how fertility rates look for the next election!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:26PM
Oh, because it's so good to have kids with no supporting parents, right?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by PartTimeZombie on Friday November 29 2019, @12:40AM
I'd say you should get out more. Your second point is not controversial, it's word-salad nonsense.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 29 2019, @03:00AM (1 child)
Its pretty established that fertility levels, or rather birth rates drop when women are educated, have rights to equality, and have access to birth control. Something that really started in the '60's. Your list of States and how they voted reflects on how they treat women, including access to birth control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @04:40AM
Yes, it is pretty established that giving women any agency is unsustainable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday November 29 2019, @12:08PM
Please mod parent some combination "wrong" "overrated" and "rant". Birth rates plummeted in 1958 with the introduction of the birth control pill. It turns out that women getting a vote on whether or not to have a baby means that a bunch of them vote "no". Moving the system from a "one party veto" (condoms) to a "two party veto" hinders successful votes. It saw a brief uptick in the 1980s because of generational dynamics - Gen X on average, GenXers were 21 at the 1993 "recovery peak", not coincidentally, the most fertile childbearing age is 22.
The real story here is that the following generation - the millennial generation - is postponing marriage and childbirth HARD. https://www.bentley.edu/news/nowuknow-why-millennials-refuse-get-married [bentley.edu] . Median age at first marriage is up for women/men from 20/23 to 27/29. The move from female first marriage age from *20* (2 years prior to peak fertility) to *27* (5 years after peak fertility) has a pretty monstrous effect on overall fertility.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday November 28 2019, @02:50PM (37 children)
The people who are complaining about overpopulation and such should be overjoyed by this news. Especially since Americans on average use far more resources than people of other nations.
And it's also a strong sign that people aren't having kids they can't afford to have, and are taking advantage of birth control methods (including abstinence) to prevent that from happening.
From an economic standpoint, there's all this talk about how automation means fewer people needed to work. Well, among the most humane ways of having fewer people to work is to have fewer people born in the first place.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:05PM (5 children)
> people aren't having kids they can't afford to have
Additional possible reasons that they aren't having kids:
- They don't see any way that a kid born today could have it better than the parents (many aspects--money, class, etc).
- Possible infertility from recreational drug use
- The whole "incel" problem (my theory--starting with helicopter parents??)
- Too busy with their phones to notice the other sex (the phones are designed to be better than sex in terms of dopamine hits)
- More??
I live in a former Rust Belt area with stable or slightly declining population. While it's not that easy to find a job, if you have one this is a pretty pleasant place. Infrastructure isn't over-loaded, traffic jams are infrequent, housing isn't very expensive (compared to the coasts).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 28 2019, @09:49PM (3 children)
They don't want White babies because White people demand higher standards of living and want to do more with their lives than be consumerist debt slaves.
That's why they bring in the culturally inferior who are willing to live packed into housing like clown cars. Put it this way: a Jewish property owner rents a small single-family home. He can rent it to a quiet and respectful White family for (pulling the number out of my ass) $2000 a month. But when more Mexicans move in, the property owner along with the other greedy property owners know that they can raise rents to $3000 a month because Mexicans like to pack. So with a White family you have a husband, wife, maybe a kid or two. With a Mexican family, you have mom, dad, 6 kids (3 of whom are old enough to work part-time jobs or under the table to chip in), abuelita, maybe a couple tios or tias and 1 or 2 primos or primas. They don't mind living in situations where they're constantly stepping over each other inside the house, but when they need toom they hang out in the front yard drinking cerveza and listening to banda music.
And you know, besides the noise, when you see a single-family home with 5 cars (Chevy sedans and GMC SUVs) overflowing out of the driveway. Now imagine such a scenario involving multi-family housing and the problem grows exponentially.
There are occupancy laws limiting amount of people to given square footage, and other quality-of-life laws designed to tamp down on this, but those laws only apply to White people in rich neighborhoods.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by number11 on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:18PM (2 children)
I'd say "culturally inferior" refers to the government employees who tortured prisoners after 9/11, and those who defend that and the corruption in the head office.
But that aside, every wave of immigrants has been pretty much the same. That "Jewish property owner"'s ancestors were living in a cramped apartment over the candy store. Immigrants tend to not have much (that's why they came) and consequently live poorly compared to the established. The established have always disliked/feared the newcomers, whether that was the Irish, Germans, Norwegians, Italians, Russians, Chinese, Jews, Somalis, Mexicans. The newcomers have always been bad for property values. But, ya know, a couple of generations and their descendants are just like everybody else (and just as ready to dump on the newbies). And there are always politicians ready to stir fear by divide and conquer, all the while sucking up to their paymasters.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:37PM (1 child)
Disagreed. If that were true, then each generation of these families would have their own dwelling with only a couple and their 2-3 kids living in it by now, and they'd be a hell of a lot more quiet. They might also run an A/C unit rather than putting tinfoil or cardboard behind the windows.
Partially agreed, but only people like Trump tell it like it is even if he also profited from cheap labor. The rich profit not only from the cheap labor but the "divide and conquer" principle that keeps Whites mad at Mexicans rather than the rich Whites in government, who should be the real target of the disenfranchised Whites' anger. This is why Trump is so popular now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @10:13AM
No, he does not. He just plays to your fears and fake fantasies. Nothing to do with reality.
And here you are, with your fantasies again. The people that do this are not "them", it is *YOU*. The Trumpsters that do this because
1. are poor and can't afford AC
2. still haven't heard that there is no tinfoil
What number11 wrote was 100% correct. What you write is just your fantasies. Most immigrants will do better in their new countries than the non-immigrants. That's the statistics (but who needs reality when you can have fantasies?) And the only place I've ever seen aluminum foil on the windows is in the house of some non-immigrants. Actually, in a house of a gun-toting rednecks.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday November 29 2019, @04:47AM
More like because its finally socially acceptable to say you don't like children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:37PM (10 children)
I am pleasantly surprised, if this is true. 20 years ago, American families had as a matter of course put out three children, even as the writing was on the wall that good jobs would become scarce and advancement opportunities limited. Other developed countries have long before transitioned to about one child. Is religion finally losing its grasp on the average American?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:21PM (9 children)
I don't understand how people don't see the natural corollary of their own views. Can't you see what happens when one group stops procreating while another group continues pumping out the babies? And due to the nature of reproduction where 2.0 is the baseline, even relatively small differences have huge impacts. E.g. imagine two groups. One has a fertility rate average of 1.5, the other has an average of 2.5. Start with 1000 people in each group. After just 3 generations, the 1.5 group is down to 420 people. The 1000 group is up to 3375. So, in a democracy, the high fertility group, now has 89% of the vote. I mean this isn't like hundreds of years - that's ~70 years to go from 50:50 'yay look how cultured we are not having many babies', to 90:10 'oh god this world is so screwed what happened to the world i used to know.'
And while religion does correlate strongly with fertility, I think the correlation is confounded (except in the case of Mormons...). In particular I think the main issues driving low fertility in the west are cultural in nature - religion just tends to exclude people from these cultures. You can also go about it the other way. China has been disproportionately secular for many centuries. In modern times you can't even become a member of the Chinese Communist Party unless you are an atheist. Before the 1 child policy China, for all of its irreligion, had one of the highest birth rates in the world - the reason they now have 1.4 billion people and we have 330 million.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:45PM
Yep.
What I've seen in my own lifetime, as a result I believe of the change in laws primarily, though some of those laws technically changed well before I was born; but there was a very strong shift when I was young towards seeing having children as a duty, yes, but also something that was expected to make you better off as well in the long run - to being something that's really just absurdly expensive and dangerous and gains you nothing more than bragging rights in the best case.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing, overpopulation may or may not be a real worry, taking no sides on that at all - but of course this reduces fertility. Particularly when combined with sex education and ready availability of contraception.
"And while religion does correlate strongly with fertility, I think the correlation is confounded (except in the case of Mormons...). In particular I think the main issues driving low fertility in the west are cultural in nature - religion just tends to exclude people from these cultures. You can also go about it the other way. China has been disproportionately secular for many centuries. In modern times you can't even become a member of the Chinese Communist Party unless you are an atheist. Before the 1 child policy China, for all of its irreligion, had one of the highest birth rates in the world - the reason they now have 1.4 billion people and we have 330 million."
The CCP is effectively a megacult, as intolerant as any crusader kingdom or islamic caliphate.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @06:14PM (1 child)
I don't care. I will have lived my life out by then, unburdened by any thoughts on what I've brought kids into.
You also assume that low class people will continue to act constantly. But I see even them refraining from getting kids until they feel their finances are sufficiently stable, except for the few that were "young and dumb".
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @06:24PM
While I can't say I agree with you, I have immense respect for your honesty. I think if all people spoke similarly we'd be a million times better off as a nation because there would be no pretext.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @08:48PM
> Can't you see what happens when one group stops procreating while another group continues pumping out the babies?
What typically happens in USA (a nation of immigrants) is that after a few generations, these "groups" start to intermarry and have kids, and the hard group lines slowly dissolve. As we progress toward a nation of mutts (instead of purebreds) we become less high strung and generally better all around. This has been going on for longer than the USA has been independent, and I don't see any sign of it stopping.
From time to time parts of the USA population is scared silly by leaders who play the "bad group" card (race, color, etc), but this too passes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday November 28 2019, @09:43PM (3 children)
1. Who decided to divide humanity up into groups, rather than starting from the idea that humans are a single species?
2. Who's deciding what these groups are?
3. Who's deciding who is in what group, factoring in that most divisions between humans are spectrums with lots of mixing rather than sharp lines?
4. Why do these groups that you've picked out even matter?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @02:16AM (1 child)
1. God.
2. The highest-ranking group, i.e. white males
3. Clearly not the pink-hair SJW posing the questions!
4. Correct, most of the groups do not matter except when you need cheap labor.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday November 29 2019, @05:41AM
This "had the most kids" crude view of success is actually "sowing the seeds of your own destruction". Even more so if the kids are all nearly alike, all chips off the old block. Because then, they must therefore compete with one another and their own parents more than anyone else, for the scarce resources and opportunities that they have the knowledge and ability to exploit.
If on the other hand, some of them differentiate significantly, then one way in which they will almost certainly differ is in the quantity of offspring they feel able to nurture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @04:42PM
You have a kid. A deeply religious, deeply insular, family in rural Alabama have a kid. Do you think these kids, as adults, will just hold some random set of values? Or will those values be heavily influenced by their parents and the cultures in which they grew up? You can even indulge the neo-liberal fantasy of genetics being all fake and still see the issue.
The natural retort is that cultures can and do change. Absolutely true. But there's no 'arrow of time' for cultures requiring they "improve", let alone "improve" meaning do what we think they should do. The western world has become more secular, scientific and tolerant. So we naturally envision everybody will do the same. But it's so peculiar because at the exact same thing this was happening the Islamic world was going through a rather different path. Many Islamic nations used to be the center of learning and education. Even things we take for granted today like Algebra derives from Ilm al-jabr wa'l-muḳābala by al-Khwarizmi around 800AD. But then something fun happened. Around 1080AD along came this fellow by the name of Al-Ghazali [wikipedia.org]. Al-Ghazali was an Islamic scholar and philosopher. But one day he apparently tired of religious debates and introspection. And so he came up with a new philosophy.
Why does a leaf burn when exposed to fire? Is it because as it reaches a certain temperature? No! Al-Ghazali, in his noted work 'The Incoherence of the Philosophers' answered not only this question, but all questions with a single fell swoop. It sets alight because God willed it so, and only because God willed it so. He completely denied all natural and logical laws. No, things happen only, and exclusively only, because God wills each and every thing to happen exactly when it happens. To consider otherwise is to question God himself.
This idea was rapidly and widely accepted. The Islamic Golden Age would churn on for a bit longer on inertia, but this event is undoubtedly what set into motion its end. But I think it's disconcertingly easy to see why this happened. His ideological view dramatically simplified the world and gave people a simple and concise answer to everything without having to deal with difficult and uncomfortable questions. It feels, in many ways, quite similar to certain social ideologies of the West today. But as the answers it gave were fake, Islamic society began to decline precipitously. And that trend continues to this day. The denial of nature is much more emotionally pleasant than the acceptance of it. Ideological fantasies provide no truth or progress, but they do provide immense comfort.
----
The example there inadvertently hits on multiple very closely related topics, but the primary point is that there is no reason to just have blind faith that culture will go in any particular way. The way cultures will go will be decided today by those who create the children who will create the cultures of tomorrow. Imagine there are two groups, about the same size. One has a fertility rate of 1.5, the other has a fertility rate of 2.5. Doesn't seem like that huge a difference, an average of one more child per couple per generation. Start with 1000 of each group. What are their populations after 3 generations - about 50 years, give or take, if we assume the first generation is already of age? It's stupefying how rapidly things change. You go from 1000:1000 to 422:1954! Now introduce democracy. In a single human lifetime you go from 50%:50% in elections to 18%:82%!
I don't think people appreciate how remarkable this is. Again, that is ~50 years to go from a completely even ideological split, to a 4:1 landslide, based nothing more than a "slight" difference in fertility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @04:54AM
I for one won't live to see the glorious day when this country is decisively Amish, but it will be a great day indeed.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:28PM (19 children)
Automation is proportional to a population.
All automation will do is increasing the effective productivity rate. So perhaps today it takes 1 person working to generate the basic goods and services to provide for 3 other people, meaning you need at least 25% labor participation just to keep society churning. Automation will simply change that to e.g. it taking 1 person to generate the basic goods and services for 30 people, so you need a 3% labor participation rate just to keep society churning. But the point being that it doesn't really matter if you have a population of 3,000 or 3 billion - you get the exact same problem.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday November 28 2019, @06:02PM (18 children)
The historical consequence of such productivity increases has been to create more basic goods and services - such as the vast array of electrical devices in use in homes today.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimtee on Thursday November 28 2019, @08:23PM (15 children)
Historically, yes. But there is a saturation point. You can only eat so much food, drive so many cars, and watch so many screens before you say "I don't want any more".
Currently we average what, 30 or 40 years of work per person? Hell, add unemployment and extra schooling, unemployables, etc. and call it 20 or 10 years. It doesn't matter. At some point automation will provide a lifetimes worth of food, goods, and services for an input of less than that 10 person-years of work. At that point you have to have either make-work or unemployment. What about when it gets down to 1 year's worth of work? 90% unemployment?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:16PM (2 children)
You'd think. But somehow we've figured out more to want.
What makes you think we're not already there? A few items are driving most of the costs. Drop those and we're pretty close.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @03:20AM (1 child)
It might be higher than the civilised world, but there is a limit to how much even Americans can eat.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday November 29 2019, @03:59AM
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:28PM (5 children)
Funny how we haven't found it yet.
The question is will that be what people want by that time? Indications are that they'll want more than that.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday November 29 2019, @03:16AM (4 children)
Given the number of "Simplify" and "De-clutter" movements going on we are getting close.
50 years ago most people didn't throw out things just because they had too much stuff.
150 years ago most people would have thought you were insane for throwing out just about anything.
You only hit a saturation point once. That's why it's called a point.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 29 2019, @04:04AM (3 children)
Those movements are reactionary. That means that there's some more materialistic aggregate they're reacting against.
Or like in logistic curves, you never hit the saturation point at all.
My view is that we're way off from any sort of saturation point. How long do those "Simplify" and "De-clutter" people live again?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday November 30 2019, @01:29AM (2 children)
Yeah, they are reacting against their dwellings being too full of stuff they don't use.
We are talking macro-economics and you invoke Zeno's paradox. Really?
The ones I know are normal people who have simply decided they don't want a house full of junk. I assume they live pretty much as long as everyone else.
Just thought of it ; the tiny house phenomenon is another indicator that some people are starting to say "I've got enough".
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 30 2019, @03:16AM
No, it's a property of the logistics curve. You never hit the saturation point.
So in other words, they don't live very long. Longevity is one of those avenues of growth you're ignoring when you claim that we're at saturation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 30 2019, @02:45PM
Longevity is one of the biggest of those wants, but far from the only one. There's travel, the obtaining of knowledge, bringing the entirety of humanity out of poverty, setting up new businesses, etc. Doesn't make sense to speak of saturation when we're not even close.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 29 2019, @03:13AM (5 children)
War seems to be the usual solution. Break a bunch of stuff that needs rebuilding, employ people to kill or build killing machines etc.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 30 2019, @02:46PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 30 2019, @04:45PM (3 children)
Yes, you're right. America spends fuck all on their military and hasn't had a war since 1945.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 30 2019, @04:56PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 30 2019, @10:18PM (1 child)
Quite a few developed countries sell arms, others do resource extraction to sell to the ones creating arms.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 01 2019, @05:31AM
And what does "others do resource extraction to sell to the ones creating arms." mean? Is Norway spending a huge fraction of its oil/hydroelectric revenue on foreign military gear?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.
If the market can't expand, those goods/services can no longer sustain a price that's profitable. For an example, the textile industry in Britain when Gandhi's message took hold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 29 2019, @02:18AM
OTOH, you're not going to get a better indication of future performance.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:18PM (14 children)
The meth heads, crackheads, and trailer trash country bumpkins keep popping them out. They're the ones that need to turn the cable back on and sit down somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:25PM (1 child)
As it turned out, even dummies can figure out sex is dope.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @06:25PM
Also it turns out 'rich folk' can be bigoted assholes too!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:39PM
Oh, looks like you've already worked that bit out.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:05PM (10 children)
Evidence?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:33PM (9 children)
US Birth rate vs Income [statista.com] Those earning $10k per year pump out 50% more babies than those earning $200k per year. The really disconcerting thing is that the relationship in the incomes in between is damn near perfectly linear.
We've created quite a dysfunctional society. Now the next generations of Americans are going to be increasingly coming from parents who think having kids when they can't even afford to feed themselves is an acceptable thing to do. But don't worry, I'm sure they'll actually be great and completely responsible parents. Or, alternatively, they won't and their kids will be pumping out even more kids by the time they hit their mid teens and we are well on our way to idiocracy.
Aren't welfare and human rights (to prevent any crazy notion like welfare precondition = cord snip) just such enlightened policies.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:47PM (1 child)
The state has gone to great lengths, legal and extralegal, for a long time to condition them to do so.
Hate the game not the player.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @06:19PM
Absolutely agreed. And no I hold nothing whatsoever against the people taking advantage of the system.
I think any system that is to truly stand the test of time should take, as an assumption, the worst of humanity. That's not because I think we are inherently evil, which I do not believe at all, but because such a system is going to be closer to 'game theory optimal' in that in the worst case scenario (of everybody simply being a greedy self centered asshole) we do okay. And if people are actually kind of okay? Then we do phenomenal. By contrast systems that only function properly when people are good and socially responsible tend to explode into fiery balls of failure each time they're trialed.
But right now I think we are living through a time when objective analysis can indicate we have a number of rather severe problems, but it's often the case that the might of a great country is exceeded only by its inertia. Well that and, lacking a more poetic way of phrasing it, normalized cognitive dissonance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 28 2019, @07:23PM (6 children)
And your alternative is class-stratified genocide?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:45PM
Why would you massacre your indentured servants when you can squeeze some more of them a while longer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @12:44AM (4 children)
We could take action on the high-class part of society. We could make them have kids. With exponential population growth, they would soon outnumber the crummy people.
The low-intensity solution involves simple changes in tax law. We provide high-class fathers with a universal income, to be funded by heavy taxes on high-class people who are not fathers. Each additional child is worth more universal income. Single males and working women suffer punitive taxes.
We can go beyond that of course. We could imprison high-class women who do not stay pregnant. While in prison they would be allowed opportunities to remedy the problem.
We could even just directly impregnate them. We could create a new uniformed service (like the coast guard, NOAA, etc.) that supplies the nation with babies. Officers would be male, and the enlisted would be female. We could draft women if we don't get enough volunteers. The enlisted would serve from age 15 to 45, with early departure for those with at least 12 babies.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 29 2019, @03:14AM (3 children)
Ooooh I know this movie! This is the one that ended with that guy riding a bomb down to earth hollering and whooping and waving his hat, right?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Saturday November 30 2019, @01:18AM (2 children)
You know how it is - life imitates art.
As for the idea of getting the "upper class" to out-breed the rest, what a joke. Most of the upper class are morons who enjoy their position through inherited wealth. Same as Trump with his father continually giving him more money every time he fucked up. Not because Fred cared whether Donald succeeded or not, but because Donald was an embarrassment.
As per a recent article I submitted that made the front page, all human societies either find ways to reduce inequality voluntarily or the rich have it taken from them. So long-term, the upper class has to yield to the masses one way or another.
What's the big deal anyway with opposing wealth redistribution - your customers need money to buy your products. No customers, your stocks end up being worthless when the company goes bankrupt. And you can't take it with you. And you've got so much if you're one of the 1% that you can't even spend it all if you wanted to.
Economists agree that money squirrelled away in tax havens harms the economy because it's idle.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @08:37AM (1 child)
I'm not sure where the assertion that most wealthy are inherited comes from. It's trivial to prove false in a large number of ways.
Let's start with low tiers of "rich" where the notion of inheritance is basically irrelevant. Today in America there are about 5.66 million households [statista.com] with assets worth at least a million dollars. In 2009 that number was 2.54 million. New millionaires are emerging at a rate dramatically faster than old millionaires are reproducing. Inherited wealth is playing effectively 0 role at this level of wealth.
Let's now consider billionaires. At a such a level of wealth you'd expect inherited wealth to play a significant role. With anything vaguely resembling fiscal responsibility, wealth should increase between generations. Yet interestingly enough even these people, billionaires, are no longer primarily born into wealth. Forbes studied the billionare question here [forbes.com]
The measured the role of inheritance on a scale. On one end is the people who just inherited their wealth and have achieved little to nothing with it, such as the Waltons. The other extreme are those born into poverty alongside extreme duress and built their wealthy entirely from nothing. The latter group now outnumber the former group, which a transition that happened sometime around 2014. And suffice to say as you start to include individuals other than those born to "extreme duress" the numbers become even more lopsided.
As for why wealth redistribution is bad, see above - contrast against the numerous nations that have tried and failed to create social economic systems. No Europe is not an example. The United States already [oecd.org] spends vastly more than the OECD average on social programs per capita ($9,875 vs $7,701 average). We have a people problem more than a money problem. Some people you just can't help. You could give them a million bucks today and they'd be broke and asking for handouts in a decade. It dramatically reduces the perceived returns of social spending.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 02 2019, @03:09AM
Trump makes a piker out of them. His father gave him 10s of millions, he repeatedly needed more 10s of millions.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:20PM (2 children)
Can't imagine why people would even want to have kids, when 30 years from now the only job position their kids will have available to them is as the main ingredient of soylent green.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:55PM
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIlUvEOhFos
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday November 30 2019, @01:23AM
Climate change anxiety is now a real thing that mental health workers are confronting every day. Why do anything if we're all going to die anyway?
Fact is we passed the tipping point a couple of decades ago. Just the baked-in effects will put us well over 1.5 degrees if we stopped all emissions today. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to mitigate the effects, but we're not doing anyone except big oil and bought-off politicians a favour by denying it.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:59PM
Too many women on company boards [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:11PM (7 children)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/china-watch/society/china-birth-rate-fall/ [telegraph.co.uk]
https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/russian-population-decline-spotlight-again [russiamatters.org]
Most of the OECD has similar figures.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:48PM (6 children)
Media is so useless. Here [oecd.org] are the actual data. The numbers below are fertility rates from 2000 to 2017 (latest year data provided for)
China: 1.500 1.510 1.520 1.540 1.550 1.570 1.570 1.580 1.580 1.590 1.590 1.590 1.600 1.600 1.610 1.620 1.620 1.630
Russia: 1.200 1.220 1.290 1.320 1.330 1.290 1.310 1.420 1.500 1.540 1.570 1.580 1.690 1.710 1.750 1.780 1.760 1.620
USA: 2.060 2.030 2.010 2.040 2.050 2.060 2.110 2.120 2.070 2.000 1.930 1.890 1.880 1.860 1.860 1.840 1.820 1.770
Only reason the US birthrate is as "high" as it is is because of this. [statista.com] That's fertility vs family income in the US. Familes earning less than $10k per year are having 50% more children than those earning more than $200k per year, with a disconcertingly smooth trend in between. And needless to say there are way more of the former group than the later. No worry, I'm sure they'll be great responsible parents.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 28 2019, @07:22PM (3 children)
Why don't you just say "niggers?" We all know that's what you mean, and yes, you do mean that specific word.
What is it with you assholes and being too chickenshit to put out there in plain language what you're actually saying? It's not like you fool anyone. Besides which, you're wrong anyway: these are correlations with poverty, not race. Newsflash: when there's no hope, no education, and no contraception, people are gonna do the beast with two backs unprotected more and pop out more kids.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 28 2019, @09:53PM
This is by design. Anybody who tells you that this is the "new normal" are fatcats pissing on your heads and telling you it's raining. I would be a lot more likely to believe their narrative if income inequality wasn't so goddamn obscene.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @02:25AM (1 child)
That's a new low even for you, zuma-zuki.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 29 2019, @02:58AM
Do you have some trouble with reading compreh--of course you do who the fuck am I kidding :/ Crawl back under your bridge until you achieve fourth-grade literacy.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 29 2019, @03:29AM (1 child)
Looking at that chart, pretty well all countries have declining birth rates excepting Israel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @09:26PM
The Jews-only immigration law renders family friendly laws, policies and taxes due to qualified workers scarcity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @02:51AM (22 children)
... those who reproduce.
It was always thus, from the first single-celled lifeform billions of years ago to us today and eventually to whatever replaces us.
That is the driving law of biology.
Liberals are going extinct because liberalism is a dead end.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 29 2019, @02:59AM (21 children)
This is a surprisingly r-type perspective from the kind of person who i'm sure would refer to himself (yes, I am assuming your gender...) as a K-type strategist. Odd.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @03:25AM (4 children)
A lot of noise in your non-response to my post.
We're not even debating the merits of 10 child families versus 3 child families.
Liberals are not *reproducing* at a lower rate than others, they are *failing to reproduce* their numbers at all.
They will go the way of the Shakers for the same reason.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @08:01AM (3 children)
Shallow end of the gene pool, I take it? Listen, you moron of a RWNJ, Liberals are not made by fucking, they are made by education. We take those unfortunate spawn of Fundies and Mormons and Trump voters, and turn them into liberals by giving them a solid "Liberal Arts" education. You know, the Liberal arts, the arts of a free citizen?
There's an old saying, "You can hatch 'em, but you cain't cratch 'em."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @04:03PM
Liberals have overreached. Obvious suicidal propaganda is obvious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @06:07PM
I think this view can be disproven pretty easily.
Why did California turn blue? Clinton won 67% [cnn.com] of the postgraduate vote and 63% of the college graduate vote. By contrast she won 71% of the latino vote, 88% of the black vote, 70% of the asian vote, and 50% of the white vote. Her victory was significantly more driven by race than by education. In fact among non-whites, college grads were even more likely to vote for Trump than among those who did not have a college education.
This is a big part of the reason the democratic party has turned so hardcore in favor of open borders. They see it as a means of trying to gain political power, but one that I expect will backfire. Hispanics will integrate into society and it's going to result in a much greater diversification of long-term ideological values than other democratic race driven experiments. The hispanic vote is already becoming more diversified, and I expect that will only continue to grow.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday November 30 2019, @01:05AM
Actually, there is a component of genetics to the whole liberal-vs-conservative debate. Check out how differences in neuroplasticity influence the ability to absorb new ideas, as well as the tendency for men to be come more conservative as they age, and women to become more liberal.
Just look at how the republican men on the supreme court become more "swing voter" as they age. And the women start liberal and stay liberal.
Dementia also tends to make people less tolerant, which is why we've had our first lawsuit awarding a health care worker of colour an award against a retiree in a rest home because the retiree kept verbally abusing them for being black. Loss of self-censorship, I guess.
Trump is an example of the latter.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @05:17AM (15 children)
That AC, and the peer comment here (same person? sorry...), are both correct.
In the USA the left does about 1.5 kids per woman, and the right does about 3 kids per woman. This is expected due to different attitudes toward marriage, abortion, working women, excessive education, and generally the value of family. The population of the left is smaller with each generation. It has a half-life, just like a radioactive substance, eventually making the left small enough to be harmless. The right has a doubling time, just like bacteria in a fresh petri dish. Exponential growth means the right will come to dominate. The left won't recover without help from the right, which will come in the form of banning the things that keep leftists from reproducing.
I have gone beyond acceptance of this reality. I'm proudly r-type now. Remember that guy with 11 kids? Last summer I had another. I have a dozen kids. Some will be old enough to vote for Trump, just as all my siblings do.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 30 2019, @03:45AM (14 children)
You miss the point. Yes, the world belongs to those who reproduce. But what kind of world will you "proud r-type[s]" produce? Who would want to live in that?
Make no mistake, you will inherit the world. And you will envy those who have departed it in short order. Your strategy is that of the virus, the cancer cell, the lowly prey animal, the "ve haff rezervez" school of military "thought." By all means, continue your frenzied overpopulation...watch your precious (?) offspring die of disease, starvation, and all the other things dame Nature reserves for idiot r-types with no self-control.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 30 2019, @02:49PM (13 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 30 2019, @03:49PM (12 children)
Pretty sure our verminous friend here intends to keep on multiplying and dividing down the ages. Well, have fun with that says I; when y'all get to Hell it won't be too much of a shock after what you'll do to this world...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 30 2019, @03:52PM (11 children)
I'm sure a lot of liberals' ancestors had similar plans. These all tend to go way off the rails when you're dead and no longer have any power to influence other peoples' behavior.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 30 2019, @04:02PM (10 children)
What's your point? Yes, the world belongs to those who reproduce most...until they hit the limits of the world's resources and carrying capacity. Then the world belongs to the roaches, and what have our prodigiously-fecund friends to show for it? Nothing. Generations of suffering, savagery, disease, starvation, and poverty.
You don't seem to understand something: I do not care about "inheriting the earth." With any luck this is the last time I need to reincarnate here, or anywhere. You fucking lunatics can HAVE the Earth, and choke on your own wastes into extinction.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 01 2019, @05:49AM (9 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 01 2019, @02:56PM (8 children)
You don't read, do you?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 01 2019, @03:52PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 01 2019, @04:20PM (6 children)
Okay, should I mod you off-topic then?
Fucking pay attention: inheriting the Earth means shit if you turn it into a living Hell. These "proud r-types" are going to do exactly that, and then Mother Nature will deal with them as she always deals with idiotic fucking machines who lack all self-control and intelligence: plagues, famine, suffering, and mass death.
LET them have the Earth. I have no ties to this whirling terraqueous madhouse and am very much anticipating leaving the body behind when the time comes.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 02 2019, @02:16AM (5 children)
And bragging about the number of your progeny doesn't matter, if they turn their collective backs on making more progeny.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 02 2019, @07:02AM (4 children)
Where are you going with this, aside from even further up your own ass?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 02 2019, @04:23PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 02 2019, @11:39PM (2 children)
Now how do we get that through his head? The kind of person who seriously thinks "fuck moar" is a winning strategy long-term is not likely to have the cognitive capability to understand why it isn't...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:58AM (1 child)
I suggest, given your debate approach, a triumphant declaration that his spawn or perhaps his spawn's spawn will be your ideological descendants not his. After all, how many of his relatives are already "liberal"?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 03 2019, @11:39PM
We have no way of knowing whether that will be the case, though. I'd prefer not to count my chickens before they hatch. Indeed, in at least the short and medium term, his ideology has decisively won out; it remains to be seen whether there will be a civilization left over for the pendulum to swing in the other direction over once that ideology inevitably self-destructs. We're capable of some very, very large explosions...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...