A community for discussing and documenting the second great housing bubble.
You don't have kids because it's too expensive.
I don't have kids because I'm immature, irresponsible, would screw it up like everything else in my life, can't even take care of myself let alone another human, these genes aren't worth passing on, climate change will almost certainly never be taken as seriously as it should be, and it's not like there's anyone that would want to have my kids anyway.
We are not the same.
And also it's too expensive.
I don't have kids because I find fulfillment in life without them. I get to travel, spend time on hobbies, and have a social life. I know you can technically do those things while having kids, but generally not to the same degree.
Also, I think letting our population decline a bit is probably better for our species and our planet.
I get to travel, spend time on hobbies, and have a social life.
I have kids, travel, hobby, and have a social life. Introducing kids to new places, ideas, and people has given me a new perspective on them and made these activities more fun.
Also, I think letting our population decline a bit is probably better for our species and our planet.
The biggest waste producers on our planet aren't the areas with the most people. They're the areas with the access to the most money and the least political consequence.
The OpenAI project is a great example of this. Phenomenal consumption of domestic resources - land, minerals, energy, water - at the hands of a few thousand people. If everyone in Brazil stopped existing tomorrow, Sam Altman would still be pumping out huge plumes of CO2 and sucking up hectares of water to cool his data centers.
Similarly, the assorted wars in Europe and the Middle East - Russia/Ukraine, Israel's genocide in Palestine, the US/Afghanistan and US/Iraq missions - have been resource hogs that vastly outstripped anything a comparable number of civilians would have consumed.
Idk what the "correct" number of humans is, but the notion that we can end the ecological degradation if the population gets cut in half really underweight the biggest drivers of the harm.
I grew up in a family with over a dozen siblings.
I didn't have space to myself nor a quiet Saturday morning until I was 21 years old, and I did a shit-ton of parenting without my consent.
Kids suck. Childrearing sucks. My dogs are nicer, cleaner, more loving, and cuter than human children. You couldn't pay men enough to give up my quiet, clean condo on a Saturday morning.
Also it's too expensive.
Who cares, let population decline for a generation or so. Maybe we will stop producing so much shit and scale back
let population decline for a generation or so
But that's bad for the Big GDP Number
Not necessarily - less people means lower unemployment resulting in higher wages to attract people to your organization (income is directly linked to GDP). Phillips curve relationship.
Its a bitch for inflation though.
that's not how capitalism works. if you're not selling enough shit you find a way to make the same people buy more or pay more. line must go up. no scaling back. line must go up.
But, now hear me out...what if it doesn't..
I don't understand... Are you saying, line go down? I've never heard of such a thing
You've never seen my bank account ....
hahaha... haha... ok now that we laughed at that ridiculously absurd idea, let's watch the line go up.
Make it so that families can afford to have one parent stay at home all day while the other parent does some basic shit off of a high school education for a job they just walked in off the street for.
Maybe you can solve the problem by letting immigrants in
Our leaders wouldn't mind that except that immigrants might come from countries where they grew up with access to banned books...
After a century of telling people work, career, consumption and wealth are the most important thing in their life, business leaders are now shocked people will prioritize work, career, consumption and wealth over having many children.
Furthermore, after cutting programs for making child care, health care and education affordable, politicians are wondering why people don't bring as much children into the world that need a lot of health care, child care and education.
Government in the 1940s: "Here, we're demolishing black and rural neighborhoods to give returning veterans a cheap suburban housing stock. Also, we're doing big industrial jobs programs and ramping up our domestic manufacturing base."
Baby Boom Happens
Government in 2020s: "Here, we're larding you up with debt all through your twenties and turning every facet of life into a micro payment we can ratchet upwards on a whim."
Baby Bust Happens
There was a time when a man with a highschool education could work a single full-time job to buy a house and support a stay at home partner and 2 children. Bring that back and you'll probably get more babies.
Now you know why the corporate backers of Republicans want to use their platform to outlaw abortion and birth control.
Reminds me of the CEO who took a giant paycut so everyone in his company can earn 70k/yr minimum. Guess what some of his employees started doing. They started to have kids.
People like him should be the norm, not an anomaly. In a system in full support of greed, only the greedy are meant to thrive unfortunately.
GOP: "that's okay, just trap them to have children and make abortion illegal."
Remember JD Vance said that childless individuals "should not have as much of a voice."
Where can I get some of that $1200 rent that isn’t in the middle of some hillbilly backwater?
Ignoring the elephant in the room called "Child Care." Often that's more expensive than housing.
jokes on billionaires, because of your shitty greed there wont be anyone left to buy your worthless junk
They will be long dead before any of this matters, so I doubt they will care.
When did we go from “baby boom” to “this is the correct population level we should sustain”. A boom eventually gets a correction
when it became clear that the people who "weren’t having enough kids" were white, it’s been white supremacy this whole time
Dang millennials! They must be the most powerful generation in... generations! Is there anything them avocado toasters can't ruin?
The baby boom generation is dying off and you're supposed to replace that?
Who writes these articles? Do they even think? Do they pause for one moment to think?
Republicans: the solution is fascism!
$1500? That's mad cheap. A small 2 bedroom in my city goes for $2500 or so
Life fucked me up. I'm not giving it fresh sacrifices.
Ohhh we're causing it. Ok cool.