I can easily understand that if everyone went my route (i.e. no kids) that society would collapse by definition, and my later years would be inherently miserable. I'm depending on others that do have kids (and sacrificed a lot in their 20s, 30s and 40s, a sacrifice I was not willing to make) so I can pay for medical and aged care when I'm old. So paying a slight amount more for this support seems highly reasonable to me.
IMO a big factor for the whole sub-replacement fertility in developed nations (and resulting demographic problems) is that the state has invalidated/replaced all the economical gain that families got from children (cheap "workers" and elder care), but the chld-related costs to families have only increased.
Society gains massively from future workers/tax payers, but economical incentives are not aligned at all; children cost their parents a lot, society reaps all the benefits, but does not compensate parents enough economically.
How is it in Germany? I would guess better
As you point out, Finland famously has incredible family support, and also a birth rate under 1.3.
1. Lump sum, pretty big (like year worth of salary or close) payment on birth
2. Works for first child only.
That's it. So, it kinda works, but very limited. Increasing sum did not increase birthrates, if I remember correctly.
A child might cost its parents somewhere beyond $200k, the parents only get a tiny fraction of this from the state.
And the public paying for education is not a subsidy for parents in my view, but an investment into the children, i.e. future taxpayers (=> the parents don't really gain from that).
With both of those combined they are currently just redistributing wealth to the elderly that have created this mess.
It is very difficult to diminish pension benefits that were promised 30 years ago (when the worker/retiree ration was 4:1 instead of like 2:1) and almost half your voters would be affected (>40% of voters are over 60).
Any "solution" is going to hurt and feel unfair to a bunch of people and it is very difficult to make "young-people-politics" when most of your voters are old (problems probably need to escalate more to achieve approval for anything that financially hurts retirees).
People sometimes like to point at wealth disparity as a real root cause for the floundering pension/elder care system, but even completely disowning the richest 10% of Germans would fund the pension system for less than a decade, so no easy solution from that direction, either.
It seems to me that, all other things equal, future workers/tax payers will lead to economic increases proportional to their costs.
A reasonable forward looking plan / budget scales with the population size. Therefore there would be no need for these special one off exceptions and nudges.
All these little bandaids add up to complexity that necessitates more bandaids.
Prospective adoptive parents need to assume a difficult years-long process with no guarantee of placement, mid to high five-figures expenses or more (prohibitive for the average non-FAANG Americans), assume major undisclosed and significantly heritable mental health disorders, assume undisclosed in-utero substance exposure requiring challenging and costly care, and be aware of revocation periods up to one year in length.
I've seen people exhaust themselves financially after many years of trying only to be told by agencies they were now above the age limit. I've seen people learn later of a family history of not just Cluster C or even B disorders, but A. I've seen revocation on the last day of eligibility at the one year mark.
International agencies are notorious for not disclosing previously diagnosed FAS, drug exposure, autism, and other major medical issues to the receiving stateside agency a consistent problem adopting out of Eastern Europe, especially.
Too many good homes who would love to adopt are being put off of the process. We need major adoption reform so eligible parents have a relatively smooth process they can trust.
For all my horror stories I've also seen it work out wonderfully for people, and wish you the best. In my book it's one of the noblest things anyone can do.
I don't have children and this doesn't seem inherently unfair to me. It's an acknowledgement of the care labor these households are doing.
That said, I'd prefer to see it be progressive by income as well. A couple without children in the bottom income decile shouldn't be paying more than a couple with children in the top income decile.
Do they understand the problem in the first place? Many people can't afford to have kids.
Most people I know with kids can’t afford them and still have them. And most people I know with money don’t have them. In a way it seems wealth is inversely correlated to having kids. It’s not about money, it’s about having interesting stuff to do with your life, and having the education to know what a terrible economic decision it is to have kids.
This is the conclusion I came to as well. I do have kids.
So I wholly agree with the sibling comment "compromise on lifestyle"
I know that the economics don't actually work like this, but this is the social contract.
Wrong. Poor people have 0 problems having kids.
People can afford kids, they don't want to compromise on lifestyle.
People could feed kids, but they can't afford to give their child a lifestyle similar to their own childhood.
A simply WILD statement given the rates of children raised in poverty with all the trauma and issues that gives, who then oftentimes grow up to be their parents doing the exact same thing.
> People can afford kids, they don't want to compromise on lifestyle.
Previous generations didn't have to, ours does. So if people don't want to make that compromise, they won't.
Maybe if we made it systemically a bit less awful to be parents more people would do it.
"This perception, however, is false. In most human societies, poverty does not predict higher fertility, and well-to-do families often have the highest fertility. When families in America have more money, they tend to have more children. The stereotype of fertility being skewed towards low-income women is a product of basically two data analysis errors: 1) failure to control for important underlying cultural stratification, and 2) failure to adequately deal with the relationship between age, income, and fertility."
https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-babies-whats-the-...
Well yeah, if they are falling across all income levels then not being able to afford children can’t be the reason.
They have no vision for the future and no idea how to bring Germany forward other that taxing the poor.
The actual monetary cost of a child is high, for sure. But many people put that number higher due to lifestyle choices, not need. Social media certainly doesn't help.
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/07/29/fewer-adults-ha...
But aimed at childless women? To balance things out a bit?
And yes, kids cost that much.
I'm a senior level software engineer in the bay area. I don't have kids. I don't think I can afford them. I'm tired of people telling me I can afford them. The world works differently today. In the 1980's, if you had a stable job that let you leave at 5pm, you could more or less handle kids.
Today, leaving at 5pm means risking PIP and not having an income; your company may lay off people randomly without notice; your rents could go up 10-20% unexpectedly; groceries could double in price over a couple years; you basically need to be working round the clock to not get PIPed and even sustain an income. And if you work around the clock you also need cash to hire nannies because you don't have the time to raise them yourself. As such I wouldn't even think about kids in this world without having saved up the full sum of my expenses AND their expenses for their ENTIRE life until 21 years old in CASH before even having the kid. We just don't have the job security today.
Where does the money come from?
It's not my problem, really. I'm very happy childless. Unless that money materializes, I can't afford kids.
you’re probably making like 500k TC
if you’re 30 and worked in tech you should have around 1m nw
if your partner makes 200-400k you can afford to have children
i see arab/muslims and mexicans here with like 3-4 kids. i live in sf, so somehow they’re able to do it without a high paying tech job.
That isn’t to say you should have kids. That’s a really personal choice. And it can come with huge amounts of extra anxiety around job security, for sure. But there are tons of options for arranging life and work to make it happen if one really wants to.
Except, of course, reduce income inequality, address housing shortages, that sort of thing.
It explains how we got there, the problems we are facing, the problems inherent to the proposed/possible solutions, etc.
(*) as in, they really try hard to stay neutral on the topic until the end, in the clearly marked conclusions and opinion section.
My own country the Netherlands got rid of the private/public distinction. Everybody is insured via a private insurer. They can't reject patients and patients are allowed to switch insurer up to once a year. Insurers also work with health care providers to make sure money is spent more efficiently. Meaning hospitals can't just offload their inefficiencies onto insurers. And insurers can't just offload that onto patients. Because the patients switch to the insurers with the best relation ships with healthcare providers and the best deal. They all have to provide the same base coverage but you can insure for stuff on top of that.
The Dutch system also has its flaws and deficiencies. But my parents together pay much less than me by myself in Germany. And as far as I can see from their recent experiences, they are well looked after. It seems the Dutch system has a lot less bureaucratic nonsense, better information sharing, more modern hospitals, etc. It also has underpaid nurses, issues with some types of medication not getting covered, and a few other issues. But compared to the expensive German mess; much better.
Germany is mainly legislating to kick the can down the road instead of addressing any of it's structural economic issues: a government bureaucracy that stifles innovation rather than promoting it, a pension system that is essentially a underfunded slow moving train wreck at this point, broken physical and energy infrastructure that will take decades to fix, and a hopelessly inefficient health care system.
mc32•51m ago
hobofan•45m ago
mc32•43m ago
jonhohle•42m ago
The plane was overweight so they were choosing reservations to involuntary bump to the next day and of course we were selected. No amount of reason mattered; if they bumped us based on an “average weight”, they’d be no better off than when they started.
jxhcbu•38m ago
wadim•36m ago
We should really gamify the system as much as possible to make it fun for everyone involved.
mc32•32m ago
wadim•21m ago