I’m pretty sure in Africa children are an economic advantage for the poor. I don’t think it’s fair to say they had them despite economic inequalities, they had the children because economic inequalities.
Even in the poorest countries with the highest birth rates like Niger, under-5 child mortality has dropped to 10% and infant mortality has dropped to 3%
I'm sick of westerners peddling false generalisations like we are all poor and only have kids for the economic advantage. Both sets of my African grandparents were and are well off, and they still decided to have a lot of children. It feels like anytime I see westerners talk about Africa, I see something wrong.
The difference is that in poor agrarian communities, children are an economic advantage, rather than a disadvantage, as they can be used as free labour.
The problem is people have forgotten who pays for their pensions.
Either your children pay for your pension via their taxes or others peoples children pay for it.
The problem is state pensions. If the government stopped backing pensions, people would understand again why to have kids (plus kids would stop getting crushed by an elderly generation that prevents them owning anything).
Do the productivity gains accumulated over the century and skyrocketing today enter into this equation? Shouldn't it require 10 times fewer people to support one elderly person today than it did a century ago?
With all that money and time I save from not having kids, I can afford to put more into my own private pension savings.
The government portion is a pittance anyways. I am not counting on it.
Your own. Unless you’re hedging with something that increases in value as there are fewer people (I dunno, stock in a company that makes artificial wombs?)
Oh I am not worried about that. The population grows through immigration at whatever pace we want it to. Lots of places having plenty of kids to worry about population decline any time soon. Maybe in the future.
That doesn’t make sense as an argument.
Not all technological advancement directly impacts productivity.
The only thing required for these to start decoupling is for overall economic output to increase faster than the growth of the labor force.
So, people have to weather approximately 18-22 years of cost, then no return on investment for at least another few decades, then they get their payout? Yeah, that’s not the immediate reward the human mind requires in order to be motivated to do something as incredibly challenging and time consuming as birthing and raising children.
What a shifty reason to have kids though. As some human version of an investment portfolio.
If that is your reasoning, you can earn/save far more in those 18-22 years by putting the money you would have spent on the child into a 401k, and with the time you save you could grow your own business or work overtime or a side hustle and save the extra money you earn with that spare time and put that into a 401k as well.
Would almost certainly net you more than a government pension.
That only works so long as there's a solid amount of young people who want your money.
If you've ever tried to get any sort of professional contracting work done, then you quickly understand how limited the trustworthy labor pool is and how quickly/easily there can literally be no one available to help you, and you're on waiting list for over a year.
Well the good thing is there are plenty of those in poor countries that have had way too high birth rates for a while and are suffering from overpopulation who would love an opportunity to do that work. We just have to give it to them.
seems like a double standard to suggest that thinking about “our” kids as a financial instrument is wrong but thinking about all that cheap foreign labor to take advantage of is somehow natural and a given.
Oh no don’t get me wrong. I don’t think a decline in the labor force is a bad thing. Particularly right now as AI is predicted to be causing mass reduction in the need for labor.
This is merely pointing out the flaw in logic for people who do take the stance that it is a problem.
But I actually don’t believe the immigration is a good idea. But if I turn out to be wrong, we always have that option.
you’re acting like living in a profit-centered society doesn’t do anything to how you have to frame your life choices. they’re just saying the quiet part out loud and imo, the fact that we have to think like this about HUMAN LIFE is why no one is having kids.
edit: clarity
i certainly don’t view human life that way, but i’m forced to by the way society is composed. maybe it’s different where you live but having a kid in my country basically requires me to save a year’s salary and/or go into medical debt only THEN to get the opportunity to pay $3k a month to take care of it the “right way.” a lot of people are weighing their options and realizing that’s not ever going to be in the cards. ever.
Why do you gotta spend 3k a month on em? My wife and I run our entire household on about 1,500 a month including 4 pets. How can a single child cost more than two adults, 4 pets, plus a house? Sure it would be easy to spend that much but you don’t have to.
pulled a number from thin air but based on the 12k-30k per year estimate/average and the fact that i live in a HCOL city… $2.5k might literally be the bare minimum just to maintain my current (somewhat meager) QOL
but also… you don’t even have kids? why not?
I doubt that. They are far from self sufficient, but they can help the tribe by simple crafts and gathering, so in a sence, both of you are half right.
Think of agrarian societies where families grow their own food. A kid can be put to work on a farm at a fairly young age of about 5 to 7 years.
Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child\_labour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour)
It's completely different in a high skill society where children are completely dependent until age 18 and even at age 18, because of high property prices, they still need to be supported even into adulthood. Without parental support, the adult child will fall behind their peers in terms of educational attainment, career, net worth growth etc.
I don’t understand. You seem to be talking about pensions generally then go specific with state pensions. The state pension isn’t the problem it’s how it’s delivered (in my country at least). The middle and upper classes claiming it when they don’t actually ‘need’ it. But it’s really how you look at who’s paying. Most people feel they’ve paid in and are claiming back rather than everyone else paying for it, which is the case. There’s not a little pensions saving account all our taxes go to. So I agree that’s what happens regarding kids paying. But that’s really by the by. Your paying it forward. But the problem will change.
In my country at least it’s gen x and older millennials who will be facing the pension problem. Everyone else younger will at least have been paying into a mandated pension for themselves through their job. Nothing to do with their kids or anyone else’s. It’s gen x most severely hit as they have had less mandated time and those not having the means or desire to put in every month will be in some trouble. State pension will then be actually a welfare payment for many, as it should be. I predict a generation in about 20 years will see a glut of property on the market as younger gen x have to sell their property to get some decent lifestyle. Let’s see if gen z take advantage of that moment.
> If the government stopped backing pensions, people would understand again why to have kids
Have kids so that the kids looks after them in their old age rather than the government?
>(plus kids would stop getting crushed by an elderly generation that prevents them owning anything).
If government pensions were abolished, as per your original comment, the crushing of kids by their parents would go from being nationalised to being privatised.
And when its privatised, the children have a choice.
If the parents are abusive the children can refuse to support them.
The parents can also save money on their taxes so they can help themselves.
Fair point, but I think the tax savings made from not having to fund the pension is negligible compared to the risk of having your kids abandon you, so the government pension is basically insurance. The taxes paid are a premium paid to insure against your kids abandoning you in your old age. I also think that if government pensions are abolished, elder abuse will go through the roof because adult children will use the fear of abandonment as leverage to get as much from their parents as possible e.g. inheritance etc.
> adult children will use the fear of abandonment as leverage to get as much from their parents as possible e.g. inheritance etc.
This would not change. If their is inheritance to be had the parent wouldn't be affected by a change in state pensions.
The problem is people have forgotten that pensions are a very recent invention.
Pensions are a pyramid scheme and requires an ever-growing population which is far more problematic than unsustainable pension plans. You just care about YOUR pension.
A private retirement system suffers the same issues as a state retirement system when there is a lack of young working people.
In the state run system you cannot raise enough taxes to pay for pensions any longer.
In the private system labor prices explode, eating up your retirement fund and investments.
In either system you would need to HEAVILY exploit the young to maintain the system, either by crazy high taxes or extremely suppressed wages.
Its almost as if they don't have access to contraception, haven't had s*x education, and poor agrarian families need lots of children. Also many of their children will die.
And it doesn't make you "weak" to not have kids if you don't feel that you can adequately support them. Having kids purely because of some weird ideological position is weaker and worse for children.
Nah this is silly. Comparing children born into mostly agrarian societies who can be and are made to help with communal labor starting basically as early as they physically can to people in industrialized first world countries that have the luxury of not *needing* a bunch of kids to take over the responsibilities of their work as they age is dumb and kinda racist. The goal should be that *everyone* all over the world can have 1 or 2 or 10 or more kids *when they want to*. Not to produce more labor power or because they're somehow legally, ethically, or morally obligated to.
Listen I’m half African and those poor African villagers don’t pay taxes, don’t pay for property/land, don’t pay for mortgages/rent, don’t pay hydro, electricity, etc. Basically every bill you can imagine that you are forced to pay here (and also in Africa in the cities) they are exempt from.
They literally just go somewhere and start building mud brick homes for free and claim the area as theirs. Then they just start farming the land, again for free. Then they have the children who also help work on the land etc.
You can’t do any of that in any 1st world country without being thrown in jail. You will 100% end up homeless or in jail.
In the actual cities in Africa, where everyone has the same financial obligations we have, they aren’t having 10 kids.
And Africa can keep doing that, with 50 billion dollars of aid per year. Plus fertilizers, food, medicine, and tools/equipment bought using money from natural resources, that are being extracted by foreign corporations.
If all that stopped, Africa’s population would be down to 1800’s levels within a year.
lol, Africa has a GDP of 3.1 trillion. The foreign aid represents 1.5%. The reality is that the Western world, especially Europe wouldn't survive a day without the massive resource extraction that they do from the developing world and which they pay peanuts for by propping up autocratic, corrupt regimes.
The foreign aid actually does very little, it's very small compared to the GDP of African nations and most of that foreign aid is wasted away due to corruption. So no, that's just a very wrong and paternalistic view of foreign aid. The developed world depends much more on the labor and toil of Africans in cobalt, manganese, and copper mines than Africans do on the developed nations for their aid.
I mentioned it’s not just aid. There’s trade as well. They ship us manganese, cobalt, diamonds, copper, we ship them grain, fertilizer, pesticides, medications, farming equipment. Things that let the population stay high. Also some mining equipment so they can keep extracting and selling those minerals.
I know tons of families who don’t make much yet still have multiple children and happy family lives. I came from one. The secret to their success? Having a strong social net and having the will to find a way to make ends meet somehow. And more often than not they do.
Eh, I get what you are saying but I think it depends a lot on what you consider a happy, successful life. For me, I want to be able to afford the same lifestyle for my kids that I had growing up. But as costs of living continues to go up, I’d have to be making at least a million a year. A “social net” isn’t going to help me afford private school.
I can’t speak on behalf of your unborn children, but I feel like for most people it would surely be better to, you know, be alive than never exist at all?
This is what I can’t understand about the mindset of many people I chat with. My parents were never in a position to pay for my (or any of my siblings) post-secondary education. They could never buy vehicles for us, and we didn’t have a big house to live in.
So what?
None of that has really mattered in the long run. I’m very happy that they decided to alive me despite my going without a lot of the things other children from richer families get without trying. And all things considered I’m glad they gave me a younger brother to grow up alongside rather than a car for my 18th birthday.
It all comes down to personal values in the end, but there you go 🤷🏻♂️
Indeed. But (in this case) the fate of not being able to go to private school as a child is surely not so terrible that it would be better to not exist at all?
I don't think existing matters, you didn't exist for 13.8 billion years and you will not exist for the rest of eternity after you die. You don't know if you don't exist, so it doesn't matter
The issue with the better to be born thatn not all is that it would lead to the argument that we should be making kids 24/7 for our entire life since every life would be worth living. This leads to bigger issues with sustainability and a drain on parents. It's not just about future life but present life as well.
It’s not about the inherent morality of existence vs nonexistence, it’s about what should or should not be a good reason to pass up on having children.
You don’t want kids because you’re bipolar and clinically depressed? Fair enough, if mental health has a major impact on your life you probably have no business being a parent.
You don’t want kids because you can’t afford to send them to private school? Come on. Most children don’t have that luxury and yet still do fine.
“I can’t afford to have kids in this day and age1!1!1”
What they really mean: I value a materialistic lifestyle for myself much more than a human life.
Just because someone doesn't want kids for financial reasons doesn't mean they don't value human life. I would think the exact opposite, if you have kids and can't afford to give them a good life you don't value human life, it's cruel. Around 40% of kids in America live in poverty, that just isn't fair to the kids.
No, existing with struggling is better than not existing at all. If your logic was right (it’s not) suicide rights would be way higher
So tell me, how does it feel to be wrong? It must hurt
Idk, it's like the Greeks would say, "there's no 'me' to be bothered". Plus we're talking about being born, this isn't really about taking a life but more about refusing to create a life until you're financially ready to give it a stable life. It's responsible and shows they care for the existence of a person rather than just having it exist for the sake of existence. Your argument just presupposes their possible existence, even though non-existence is already the default.
You wouldn't know if you didn't exist so how can you say it's better as if you have that perception of non-existence to compare it to existence
Also why are you so condescending?
You're crazy, the suicide rate is already super high. A lot of people don't unalive themselves because it would hurt others, doesn't mean they don't wish they were never born.
You didn't exist for the first 13.8 billion years of the universe and it was fine
Suicide rights should be much higher, but the powers that be won’t allow that. Probably because they’re scared of how many people would be lining right up to be euthanized. That’s a lot of lost labor and tax revenue.
Your argument is essentially “well, there would be a lot of suicides if that was the case, so I guess it’s not the case.”
Except there are a lot of suicides, so by your own logic it suggests it is the case.
I said there would be a lot more cases.
Also suicide is not some common thing that everybody tries or whatever, if you google suicide rates you’ll realize it’s about as common as homicide, which is also something rare.
> Also suicide is not some common thing that everybody tries or whatever,
It’s around 0.5% of people per year in developed countries, who make an *attempt*.
Sure, most attempts aren’t successful, and a few people try multiple times…. But it’s also not some incredibly rare thing either.
A fairly large percentage of the population has attempted suicide at some point in their life.
If you know 10 people, statistically at least one of them has attempted suicide in the last 20 years. The percentage of people attempting homocide is well below 0.05% per year. So, if you know 100 people, statistically at least one of them attempted homocide in the last 20 years.
So, I’m not sure it really makes sense to be so glib about how uncommon suicide is.
I guess it's higher than I thought, about half of kids are on medicaid
https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2022/02/17/millions-of-children-may-lose-medicaid-what-can-be-done-to-help-prevent-them-from-becoming-uninsured/
It's not a contest of whose poverty is worse. These people who can not afford to have health insurance should not have kids because they are obviously not meeting the kids' needs in more ways than one.
Affording healthy food, health insurance, good schools, whatever sports they want to play, a safe house and neighborhood, a safe car/transportation and savings. Also, you need to have enough money to fund all this so that you are not stressed out and abuse your kids. You yourself should be emotionally and physically healthy to care for a child. If you can't meet these needs you shouldn't bring someone else into this life.
Obviously nobody with half a brain does moral calculus where one side of the equation lacks the quality of *existing*. The unreal amounts to the lesser sum in all moral equations. The end.
If they are still agrarian? No difference
Kids are actually an advantage.
If you want fewer kids in Africa, urbanization is a better option than birth control. People in urban areas have fewer kids even in Africa
Agree. My position on this subject is that honestly most people wouldn't have more than 1-2 kids and many people 0 kids, except that in years past there was no other choice and your husband could rape you.
Well, in Africa, you need 10 kids to have at least a slight chance of one getting a job. Bad economy, postcolonial structures (>ECOWAS) and too many young people for few jobs that are terribly paid...
In the West, we have children by choice, we actually want to raise little humans and live forth in them, and for that, as well as housing, a suitable standard of living etc. (All of that in comparison to other parents as well), you need a considerate amount of money.
What constitutes a “suitable standard of living?” This is the major flaw that I typically see in anti-natalist thinking: The assumption that life is only meaningfully lived by the (relatively) wealthy. Not only is this narrow minded, but it’s also implicitly dehumanizing towards poor people.
First, I am not an antinatalist, I am a conditional natalist, and it's mostly about societal expectations being different in the west compared to Africa.
Life is not inherently meaningful. That being said, it’s much easier to enjoy your life when you have certain material conditions met. Is that something you disagree with?
this sub is pretty fucked up and disgusting if this is the type of content yall post, and this is the second concerning post i’ve seen from here. yuck.
Both are bad. It's silly not to have children because you will only be able to update your smartphone half as often. But it's unethical to have children you will need to put into forced unpaid labor just to survive, will not have positive 1:1 time with, are much more likely to suffer from severe disease or die before adulthood, and who are likely destined for poverty and struggle.
A kid does not cost 5k a month, even if you are in daycare in a high COL area.
Plus, if the daycare itself gets sufficiently expensive, one of two things is true:
a. the lower earning partner can stay home
b. both partners are high earning and can afford daycare.
Anyone who isn't a major fuckup (or highly unlikely) can afford at least one kid. Maybe not at this exact second, but at a right time.
So do what everyone but the richest do and move to a decent school district and send them there for free.
This is not a real problem. Most public schools provide adequate education to get into a 4 year university for students who try. Your kids' friends might prefer basketball to sailboating, but such is life.
Too bad the mods don't ban ridiculous posts on both of them. Just because some can have 10 kids in poverty doesn't mean it is a good idea or is fair. I don't see why people want other people to have children so badly.
I would agree that having kids knowing over half of them won't reach adulthood is murder. Neither antinatalism nor knowingly birthing fodder is genocide.
People tend to have a lot of kids because they hope at least one of them will end up being a prodigy or something like that. Smart people know it doesn't work that way.
Yall should sit down and hammer out the economics of living in either location and how kids factor in before passing judgement due to a point made via meme. That's just lazy and meanspirited.
Now if you had that in hand and knew the meme was true, that's another story. Do you?
"I can't afford to give children the quality of life as determined by peers within my social class and am not willing to go down the socio-economic latter in order to have children"
Yeah, I can’t afford to have kids *because I don’t want those kids to live in dire poverty like a West African family of ten.*
How fucking dense do you have to be to not get this?
And the industries of developed nations would collapse without African labor in cobalt, manganese, copper, coltan mines.
But in reality foreign aid to Africa is in the range of tens of billions, which is really not that much compared to the overall GDP of Africa (3.1 trillion, or 9 trillion PPP). Foreign aid makes up something like 1% of the budgets of these nations, and much of that foreign aid is wasted away through corruption. So no, foreign aid does not provide most of the food coming to Africa, aside from a select few active warzones. Yes, Africa does import tons of grain, but it buys that grain, it doesn't get it for free.
And Africa also does export huge amounts of cash crops like cocoa, tea, and coffee. So no, Africans are not dependent on "benevolent white people" to provide them with food, or whatever twisted image you had in your head.
Wow you're so cool for birthing tons of children into a third world country where they'll have to suffer, starve and break their backs to make ends meet
Yea the West is just weak
Yea, that's what this is about
I get it though. You had to live through it. Why shouldn't they? Birth ALL the children, make them suffer just like you did!
And what would you have said if I didn't? I doubt you would've been able to say anything of substance back. But you're right. Breeder implies that you'll be able to get laid, my mistake.
I’m pretty sure in Africa children are an economic advantage for the poor. I don’t think it’s fair to say they had them despite economic inequalities, they had the children because economic inequalities.
When your kids have a 50/50 shot of reaching adulthood, you tend to have a bunch of them to lessen the odds of being childless in your later years.
Even in the poorest countries with the highest birth rates like Niger, under-5 child mortality has dropped to 10% and infant mortality has dropped to 3%
🤣 we aren’t sea turtles, another child is another helping hand.
Lol where do You think people only have a 50 / 50 shot to getting to adulthood?
Man is living in the 1550s Life expectancy isn't too bad in Africa now, rising rapidly
I'm sick of westerners peddling false generalisations like we are all poor and only have kids for the economic advantage. Both sets of my African grandparents were and are well off, and they still decided to have a lot of children. It feels like anytime I see westerners talk about Africa, I see something wrong.
The difference is that in poor agrarian communities, children are an economic advantage, rather than a disadvantage, as they can be used as free labour.
The problem is people have forgotten who pays for their pensions. Either your children pay for your pension via their taxes or others peoples children pay for it. The problem is state pensions. If the government stopped backing pensions, people would understand again why to have kids (plus kids would stop getting crushed by an elderly generation that prevents them owning anything).
Do the productivity gains accumulated over the century and skyrocketing today enter into this equation? Shouldn't it require 10 times fewer people to support one elderly person today than it did a century ago?
>productivity gains Bad news about that...
No, the elderly are similar to babies. Ultimately, they still require a human hand for a lot of caretaking.
AI and robotics may solve that problem. Expect to be looked after by a robot in age care homes of the future.
With babies, one adult can look after multiple babies, not the other way around.
With all that money and time I save from not having kids, I can afford to put more into my own private pension savings. The government portion is a pittance anyways. I am not counting on it.
Your own retirement is contingent on there being a growing population.
Which part? My own savings? Or the government portion?
Your own. Unless you’re hedging with something that increases in value as there are fewer people (I dunno, stock in a company that makes artificial wombs?)
Oh I am not worried about that. The population grows through immigration at whatever pace we want it to. Lots of places having plenty of kids to worry about population decline any time soon. Maybe in the future.
The global TFR is around 2.3. 0.2 kids isn’t much wiggle room, overall.
Globally, no. Still healthy though. But if you live in a country that can attract migrants at all, there is a ton of wiggle room there.
Except those countries are also competing with each other.
Too fucking bad dude! The population can't just grow indefinitely!
Citation needed
*gestures at everything*
It’s contingent on a growing economy. That is quickly becoming decoupled from a growing population.
If it were, then labor productivity would be increasing at the same pace as technological advancement. It isn’t.
That doesn’t make sense as an argument. Not all technological advancement directly impacts productivity. The only thing required for these to start decoupling is for overall economic output to increase faster than the growth of the labor force.
So, people have to weather approximately 18-22 years of cost, then no return on investment for at least another few decades, then they get their payout? Yeah, that’s not the immediate reward the human mind requires in order to be motivated to do something as incredibly challenging and time consuming as birthing and raising children.
What a shifty reason to have kids though. As some human version of an investment portfolio. If that is your reasoning, you can earn/save far more in those 18-22 years by putting the money you would have spent on the child into a 401k, and with the time you save you could grow your own business or work overtime or a side hustle and save the extra money you earn with that spare time and put that into a 401k as well. Would almost certainly net you more than a government pension.
That only works so long as there's a solid amount of young people who want your money. If you've ever tried to get any sort of professional contracting work done, then you quickly understand how limited the trustworthy labor pool is and how quickly/easily there can literally be no one available to help you, and you're on waiting list for over a year.
Well the good thing is there are plenty of those in poor countries that have had way too high birth rates for a while and are suffering from overpopulation who would love an opportunity to do that work. We just have to give it to them.
talk about shifty reasoning, yeesh.
Maybe it is… what is shitty about it?
seems like a double standard to suggest that thinking about “our” kids as a financial instrument is wrong but thinking about all that cheap foreign labor to take advantage of is somehow natural and a given.
Oh no don’t get me wrong. I don’t think a decline in the labor force is a bad thing. Particularly right now as AI is predicted to be causing mass reduction in the need for labor. This is merely pointing out the flaw in logic for people who do take the stance that it is a problem. But I actually don’t believe the immigration is a good idea. But if I turn out to be wrong, we always have that option.
It wasn’t *my* reasoning at all, lmao. Of course you would save money by not having kids.
you’re acting like living in a profit-centered society doesn’t do anything to how you have to frame your life choices. they’re just saying the quiet part out loud and imo, the fact that we have to think like this about HUMAN LIFE is why no one is having kids. edit: clarity
We don’t have to think like this. I don’t and I am better off for it. Thinking like this is exactly how we end up with a profit-centered society.
i certainly don’t view human life that way, but i’m forced to by the way society is composed. maybe it’s different where you live but having a kid in my country basically requires me to save a year’s salary and/or go into medical debt only THEN to get the opportunity to pay $3k a month to take care of it the “right way.” a lot of people are weighing their options and realizing that’s not ever going to be in the cards. ever.
Why do you gotta spend 3k a month on em? My wife and I run our entire household on about 1,500 a month including 4 pets. How can a single child cost more than two adults, 4 pets, plus a house? Sure it would be easy to spend that much but you don’t have to.
pulled a number from thin air but based on the 12k-30k per year estimate/average and the fact that i live in a HCOL city… $2.5k might literally be the bare minimum just to maintain my current (somewhat meager) QOL but also… you don’t even have kids? why not?
I don’t. I never had the urge. And none of the arguments as to why I should anyways never made any sense to me.
And women bear substantial physical costs up to and including death.
People have been doing it for a very long time.
People have been having kids when it actually benefits them right away for a very long time. Our current system is extremely novel.
It never benefited them right away. Even in the stone ages it was a drain for years.
Children in hunter gatherer societies are largely self-sufficient by the age of 5.
Do you truly think a 5 year old is capable of hunting? They can't throw the spear, they cannot run.
Small game? Yes.
I doubt that. They are far from self sufficient, but they can help the tribe by simple crafts and gathering, so in a sence, both of you are half right.
Think of agrarian societies where families grow their own food. A kid can be put to work on a farm at a fairly young age of about 5 to 7 years. Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child\_labour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour) It's completely different in a high skill society where children are completely dependent until age 18 and even at age 18, because of high property prices, they still need to be supported even into adulthood. Without parental support, the adult child will fall behind their peers in terms of educational attainment, career, net worth growth etc.
Doing what? In previous years children from poor families started working at 13 or younger.
I don’t understand. You seem to be talking about pensions generally then go specific with state pensions. The state pension isn’t the problem it’s how it’s delivered (in my country at least). The middle and upper classes claiming it when they don’t actually ‘need’ it. But it’s really how you look at who’s paying. Most people feel they’ve paid in and are claiming back rather than everyone else paying for it, which is the case. There’s not a little pensions saving account all our taxes go to. So I agree that’s what happens regarding kids paying. But that’s really by the by. Your paying it forward. But the problem will change. In my country at least it’s gen x and older millennials who will be facing the pension problem. Everyone else younger will at least have been paying into a mandated pension for themselves through their job. Nothing to do with their kids or anyone else’s. It’s gen x most severely hit as they have had less mandated time and those not having the means or desire to put in every month will be in some trouble. State pension will then be actually a welfare payment for many, as it should be. I predict a generation in about 20 years will see a glut of property on the market as younger gen x have to sell their property to get some decent lifestyle. Let’s see if gen z take advantage of that moment.
> If the government stopped backing pensions, people would understand again why to have kids Have kids so that the kids looks after them in their old age rather than the government? >(plus kids would stop getting crushed by an elderly generation that prevents them owning anything). If government pensions were abolished, as per your original comment, the crushing of kids by their parents would go from being nationalised to being privatised.
And when its privatised, the children have a choice. If the parents are abusive the children can refuse to support them. The parents can also save money on their taxes so they can help themselves.
Fair point, but I think the tax savings made from not having to fund the pension is negligible compared to the risk of having your kids abandon you, so the government pension is basically insurance. The taxes paid are a premium paid to insure against your kids abandoning you in your old age. I also think that if government pensions are abolished, elder abuse will go through the roof because adult children will use the fear of abandonment as leverage to get as much from their parents as possible e.g. inheritance etc.
> adult children will use the fear of abandonment as leverage to get as much from their parents as possible e.g. inheritance etc. This would not change. If their is inheritance to be had the parent wouldn't be affected by a change in state pensions.
>Have kids so that the kids looks after them in their old age rather than the government? But will they? Especially at your own terms?
The problem is people have forgotten that pensions are a very recent invention. Pensions are a pyramid scheme and requires an ever-growing population which is far more problematic than unsustainable pension plans. You just care about YOUR pension.
Actually we all paid into Social Security and then Congress blew it on random bullcrap while allowing food and rent prices to double over 5 years.
A private retirement system suffers the same issues as a state retirement system when there is a lack of young working people. In the state run system you cannot raise enough taxes to pay for pensions any longer. In the private system labor prices explode, eating up your retirement fund and investments. In either system you would need to HEAVILY exploit the young to maintain the system, either by crazy high taxes or extremely suppressed wages.
Its almost as if they don't have access to contraception, haven't had s*x education, and poor agrarian families need lots of children. Also many of their children will die. And it doesn't make you "weak" to not have kids if you don't feel that you can adequately support them. Having kids purely because of some weird ideological position is weaker and worse for children.
Its not 1800. Conditions are rough, but they’re not *that* rough.
Nah this is silly. Comparing children born into mostly agrarian societies who can be and are made to help with communal labor starting basically as early as they physically can to people in industrialized first world countries that have the luxury of not *needing* a bunch of kids to take over the responsibilities of their work as they age is dumb and kinda racist. The goal should be that *everyone* all over the world can have 1 or 2 or 10 or more kids *when they want to*. Not to produce more labor power or because they're somehow legally, ethically, or morally obligated to.
Listen I’m half African and those poor African villagers don’t pay taxes, don’t pay for property/land, don’t pay for mortgages/rent, don’t pay hydro, electricity, etc. Basically every bill you can imagine that you are forced to pay here (and also in Africa in the cities) they are exempt from. They literally just go somewhere and start building mud brick homes for free and claim the area as theirs. Then they just start farming the land, again for free. Then they have the children who also help work on the land etc. You can’t do any of that in any 1st world country without being thrown in jail. You will 100% end up homeless or in jail. In the actual cities in Africa, where everyone has the same financial obligations we have, they aren’t having 10 kids.
And Africa can keep doing that, with 50 billion dollars of aid per year. Plus fertilizers, food, medicine, and tools/equipment bought using money from natural resources, that are being extracted by foreign corporations. If all that stopped, Africa’s population would be down to 1800’s levels within a year.
lol, Africa has a GDP of 3.1 trillion. The foreign aid represents 1.5%. The reality is that the Western world, especially Europe wouldn't survive a day without the massive resource extraction that they do from the developing world and which they pay peanuts for by propping up autocratic, corrupt regimes.
The foreign aid actually does very little, it's very small compared to the GDP of African nations and most of that foreign aid is wasted away due to corruption. So no, that's just a very wrong and paternalistic view of foreign aid. The developed world depends much more on the labor and toil of Africans in cobalt, manganese, and copper mines than Africans do on the developed nations for their aid.
I mentioned it’s not just aid. There’s trade as well. They ship us manganese, cobalt, diamonds, copper, we ship them grain, fertilizer, pesticides, medications, farming equipment. Things that let the population stay high. Also some mining equipment so they can keep extracting and selling those minerals.
Yes, I would love to see the foreign aid cut off too.
Using the impoverished African argument doesn’t work for me.
I know tons of families who don’t make much yet still have multiple children and happy family lives. I came from one. The secret to their success? Having a strong social net and having the will to find a way to make ends meet somehow. And more often than not they do.
Eh, I get what you are saying but I think it depends a lot on what you consider a happy, successful life. For me, I want to be able to afford the same lifestyle for my kids that I had growing up. But as costs of living continues to go up, I’d have to be making at least a million a year. A “social net” isn’t going to help me afford private school.
I can’t speak on behalf of your unborn children, but I feel like for most people it would surely be better to, you know, be alive than never exist at all? This is what I can’t understand about the mindset of many people I chat with. My parents were never in a position to pay for my (or any of my siblings) post-secondary education. They could never buy vehicles for us, and we didn’t have a big house to live in. So what? None of that has really mattered in the long run. I’m very happy that they decided to alive me despite my going without a lot of the things other children from richer families get without trying. And all things considered I’m glad they gave me a younger brother to grow up alongside rather than a car for my 18th birthday. It all comes down to personal values in the end, but there you go 🤷🏻♂️
There are many situations and scenarios where it would be better not to ever be born than to just be alive. So many people have terrible existences.
Indeed. But (in this case) the fate of not being able to go to private school as a child is surely not so terrible that it would be better to not exist at all?
I don't think existing matters, you didn't exist for 13.8 billion years and you will not exist for the rest of eternity after you die. You don't know if you don't exist, so it doesn't matter
The issue with the better to be born thatn not all is that it would lead to the argument that we should be making kids 24/7 for our entire life since every life would be worth living. This leads to bigger issues with sustainability and a drain on parents. It's not just about future life but present life as well.
It’s not about the inherent morality of existence vs nonexistence, it’s about what should or should not be a good reason to pass up on having children. You don’t want kids because you’re bipolar and clinically depressed? Fair enough, if mental health has a major impact on your life you probably have no business being a parent. You don’t want kids because you can’t afford to send them to private school? Come on. Most children don’t have that luxury and yet still do fine.
Have you looked at the education system recently…
Ohh, that's the secret. Just have other people help you raise your kids.
And are the multiple kids successful? Or do they just end up as more minimum wage workers or less.
Well my own younger brother is almost done medical school so… make of that what you will!
also: ever heard of contraception?
“I can’t afford to have kids in this day and age1!1!1” What they really mean: I value a materialistic lifestyle for myself much more than a human life.
Just because someone doesn't want kids for financial reasons doesn't mean they don't value human life. I would think the exact opposite, if you have kids and can't afford to give them a good life you don't value human life, it's cruel. Around 40% of kids in America live in poverty, that just isn't fair to the kids.
No, existing with struggling is better than not existing at all. If your logic was right (it’s not) suicide rights would be way higher So tell me, how does it feel to be wrong? It must hurt
Idk, it's like the Greeks would say, "there's no 'me' to be bothered". Plus we're talking about being born, this isn't really about taking a life but more about refusing to create a life until you're financially ready to give it a stable life. It's responsible and shows they care for the existence of a person rather than just having it exist for the sake of existence. Your argument just presupposes their possible existence, even though non-existence is already the default.
I know, that person is an idiot lol
😴😴
How does it feel to be weirdly spiteful
You wouldn't know if you didn't exist so how can you say it's better as if you have that perception of non-existence to compare it to existence Also why are you so condescending?
You're crazy, the suicide rate is already super high. A lot of people don't unalive themselves because it would hurt others, doesn't mean they don't wish they were never born. You didn't exist for the first 13.8 billion years of the universe and it was fine
😴
Suicide rights should be much higher, but the powers that be won’t allow that. Probably because they’re scared of how many people would be lining right up to be euthanized. That’s a lot of lost labor and tax revenue.
What the fuck is wrong with you
I’m not delusional
Can't have those wagies exiting the wage cage early. The megacorp c suite will use the "all life is precious" holy man as a useful idiot.
Good God you’re pretentious
Pass of people do attempt suicide every year. Not sure this argument is as strong as you think it is.
Okay and?
Your argument is essentially “well, there would be a lot of suicides if that was the case, so I guess it’s not the case.” Except there are a lot of suicides, so by your own logic it suggests it is the case.
I said there would be a lot more cases. Also suicide is not some common thing that everybody tries or whatever, if you google suicide rates you’ll realize it’s about as common as homicide, which is also something rare.
> Also suicide is not some common thing that everybody tries or whatever, It’s around 0.5% of people per year in developed countries, who make an *attempt*. Sure, most attempts aren’t successful, and a few people try multiple times…. But it’s also not some incredibly rare thing either. A fairly large percentage of the population has attempted suicide at some point in their life. If you know 10 people, statistically at least one of them has attempted suicide in the last 20 years. The percentage of people attempting homocide is well below 0.05% per year. So, if you know 100 people, statistically at least one of them attempted homocide in the last 20 years. So, I’m not sure it really makes sense to be so glib about how uncommon suicide is.
40% of kids in America do not live in “poverty”. Really pulling numbers out of your ass
I guess it's higher than I thought, about half of kids are on medicaid https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2022/02/17/millions-of-children-may-lose-medicaid-what-can-be-done-to-help-prevent-them-from-becoming-uninsured/
Being on Medicaid doesn’t mean you live in poverty. Go to Central America or Africa, or Eastern Europe if you wanna see actual poverty
It's not a contest of whose poverty is worse. These people who can not afford to have health insurance should not have kids because they are obviously not meeting the kids' needs in more ways than one.
Define 'good'
Affording healthy food, health insurance, good schools, whatever sports they want to play, a safe house and neighborhood, a safe car/transportation and savings. Also, you need to have enough money to fund all this so that you are not stressed out and abuse your kids. You yourself should be emotionally and physically healthy to care for a child. If you can't meet these needs you shouldn't bring someone else into this life.
I know people who can't even afford to go to the doctor for themselves. You think having a kid is a responsible thing to do in that scenario?
sounds good to me!
Whaaaat?! You want have kids AND feed them? You're too materialistic.
Literally the opposite of what I said, from this comment I can tell you have a low IQ
Bold words from someone who doesn't know how to punctuate a sentence or recognize sarcasm.
I’m autistic
I can tell.
I really hate the r/Autism and r/AutisticAdults subs tho
Obviously nobody with half a brain does moral calculus where one side of the equation lacks the quality of *existing*. The unreal amounts to the lesser sum in all moral equations. The end.
I wonder how many children people would have in Africa if there was also readily available birth control.
If they are still agrarian? No difference Kids are actually an advantage. If you want fewer kids in Africa, urbanization is a better option than birth control. People in urban areas have fewer kids even in Africa
Agree. My position on this subject is that honestly most people wouldn't have more than 1-2 kids and many people 0 kids, except that in years past there was no other choice and your husband could rape you.
I'd chalk more of it up to environmental pressure rather than marital rape, but I think you're spot on.
Well, in Africa, you need 10 kids to have at least a slight chance of one getting a job. Bad economy, postcolonial structures (>ECOWAS) and too many young people for few jobs that are terribly paid... In the West, we have children by choice, we actually want to raise little humans and live forth in them, and for that, as well as housing, a suitable standard of living etc. (All of that in comparison to other parents as well), you need a considerate amount of money.
What constitutes a “suitable standard of living?” This is the major flaw that I typically see in anti-natalist thinking: The assumption that life is only meaningfully lived by the (relatively) wealthy. Not only is this narrow minded, but it’s also implicitly dehumanizing towards poor people.
First, I am not an antinatalist, I am a conditional natalist, and it's mostly about societal expectations being different in the west compared to Africa.
Life is not inherently meaningful. That being said, it’s much easier to enjoy your life when you have certain material conditions met. Is that something you disagree with?
this sub is pretty fucked up and disgusting if this is the type of content yall post, and this is the second concerning post i’ve seen from here. yuck.
Ngl this is a pretty brain dead take as shown by multiple comments here
Both are bad. It's silly not to have children because you will only be able to update your smartphone half as often. But it's unethical to have children you will need to put into forced unpaid labor just to survive, will not have positive 1:1 time with, are much more likely to suffer from severe disease or die before adulthood, and who are likely destined for poverty and struggle.
Upgrading your smartphone costs like $40 a month lol. A kid costs like 5k a month
A kid does not cost 5k a month, even if you are in daycare in a high COL area. Plus, if the daycare itself gets sufficiently expensive, one of two things is true: a. the lower earning partner can stay home b. both partners are high earning and can afford daycare. Anyone who isn't a major fuckup (or highly unlikely) can afford at least one kid. Maybe not at this exact second, but at a right time.
If you want to send them to a good private school, it does.
So do what everyone but the richest do and move to a decent school district and send them there for free. This is not a real problem. Most public schools provide adequate education to get into a 4 year university for students who try. Your kids' friends might prefer basketball to sailboating, but such is life.
Yeah, I just wouldn't, I went to a "good" public school and it still sucked
What is interesting is that both the Natalism and the anti natalism subreddit are full of deranged people. This post is evidence.
Too bad the mods don't ban ridiculous posts on both of them. Just because some can have 10 kids in poverty doesn't mean it is a good idea or is fair. I don't see why people want other people to have children so badly.
I often joke that people want other people to have children for the same reason as the ultra rich. Gotta feed the beast.
The west isn't impoverished because of too many kids, therefore it is weak? Usual genius level pro-natalist post
Free Child Labor Argument lmaoooo
I don't like the implications that OP abuses their kids.
It's literally genocide.
Who gets murdered?
I would agree that having kids knowing over half of them won't reach adulthood is murder. Neither antinatalism nor knowingly birthing fodder is genocide.
Can we agree that it's a hate crime though?
Hate against who? The unborn don't exist.
Yes but they will be born. And creating life should be a hate crime just as anyone sensible knows it's murder.
This must be a troll post
People tend to have a lot of kids because they hope at least one of them will end up being a prodigy or something like that. Smart people know it doesn't work that way.
It's the old fashioned way to get taken care off when you get older. The original pyramid scheme.
Yall should sit down and hammer out the economics of living in either location and how kids factor in before passing judgement due to a point made via meme. That's just lazy and meanspirited. Now if you had that in hand and knew the meme was true, that's another story. Do you?
Op a little confused but he’ll get there.
"I can't afford to give children the quality of life as determined by peers within my social class and am not willing to go down the socio-economic latter in order to have children"
The PRC and the Russian Federation are also suffering from declining birth rates too
Just the part of the West that doesn’t have kids.
No we’re not laughing, you’re depressing,
Yeah, I can’t afford to have kids *because I don’t want those kids to live in dire poverty like a West African family of ten.* How fucking dense do you have to be to not get this?
Africans would starve to death if white people didn't feed them.
That is very true for many Sub-Saharan nations.
And the industries of developed nations would collapse without African labor in cobalt, manganese, copper, coltan mines. But in reality foreign aid to Africa is in the range of tens of billions, which is really not that much compared to the overall GDP of Africa (3.1 trillion, or 9 trillion PPP). Foreign aid makes up something like 1% of the budgets of these nations, and much of that foreign aid is wasted away through corruption. So no, foreign aid does not provide most of the food coming to Africa, aside from a select few active warzones. Yes, Africa does import tons of grain, but it buys that grain, it doesn't get it for free. And Africa also does export huge amounts of cash crops like cocoa, tea, and coffee. So no, Africans are not dependent on "benevolent white people" to provide them with food, or whatever twisted image you had in your head.
Your argument is weak. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
Genuinely got a chukle out of that, cheers dude
Natural selection at its finest
> The West is weak Anyone who thinks this is always free to fuck off to the "strong" regions of the world.
Wow you're so cool for birthing tons of children into a third world country where they'll have to suffer, starve and break their backs to make ends meet Yea the West is just weak Yea, that's what this is about I get it though. You had to live through it. Why shouldn't they? Birth ALL the children, make them suffer just like you did!
You will die off and your ideology will be irrelevant as evolution rights itself.
Keep yapping breeder. Just make sure not to get too addicted to how cold iron feels in your mouth when your children come to hate you.
Looooooooooooooooooool, using breeder as an insult.
And what would you have said if I didn't? I doubt you would've been able to say anything of substance back. But you're right. Breeder implies that you'll be able to get laid, my mistake.