The world needs more babies.
Does it?
Or do we just need to embrace migrants?
“A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year.
“Have babies,” said the billionaire, “or else who am I going to exploit in the future?”
Or, better yet, do we need to embrace the idea that infinite growth isn’t possible, and adopt economic systems that do not rely on it?
We need the opposite of more babies
Infinite growth is an absolutely insane bar to set for the economy.
The lowered birthrates are because we’re getting ground into dust - my engineering team of twenty millennials has two folks with kids and two folks who openly plan on having kids… we’re aging out of the window and it’s not that we’re trying and failing - most of us just don’t want a fucking family. We’re too fucking busy already.
Mental health never being addressed, so we’re also too tired.
I got an hour long seminar at 12, wagie!
We will fix u
“Burned outs just another word for not taking your bosses shit” - sing it to the tune of Me and Bobby McGee.
Viruses, Pyramid Schemes and Capitalism, oh my!
That means the supply of workers in many countries is quickly diminishing.
I thought AI was going to take our jobs.
Right? They must not think AI and automation can replace very many human laborers, otherwise they wouldn’t consider declining birth rates to be such a crisis.
Of course it is! We are simultaneously facing a labor shortage and mass unemployment. The important thing is to keep being angry and frightened, the specific subject you’re angry about at any given time is flexible.
You can have both a labor shortage and mass unemployment. It occurs when workers are skilled for an industry with decreasing or no demand while another industry that requires different skills has increasing demand.
A good example of this is the high demand in the US for so called “Blue Collar” jobs. We have a shortage of trades people (Electricians, Plumbers, HVAC, etc) and far too many Business and Marketing people. There’s 100,000 MBA’s out there looking for a job and there’s 100,000 Plumbing Contractors trying to hire someone.
"A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year.
And while net immigration has helped offset demographic problems facing rich countries in the past, the shrinking population is now a global phenomenon. “This is critical because it implies advanced economies may start to struggle to ‘import’ labour from such places either via migration or sourcing goods,” wrote Paravani-Mellinghoff.
This is just mask-off capitalism. They want people to have a lot of babies, and/or large numbers of poor and desperate people migrating into the country, so that they have a constant, reliable source of cheap labor.
Paying workers more is inflationary, but raising the cost of goods because you control the supply chain is “business”
Basically, raising product costs to cover increased labour costs are bad because actual workers are getting that money instead of the wealthy capital class.
I wish people understood boycotting more. Sure 6 companies own everything, but remember when the cost of a barrel of oil went significantly negative because people weren’t driving for 2 weeks?
If people collectively decided they didn’t want to buy anything but the absolute necessary staples for a few months there would be an absolute catastrophe in the supply chain and they’d be forced to lower prices significantly.
They may not lower prices forever, but modern business is built entirely on supply chain logistics. If people stop buying anything, or buy things exclusively to return them we would see some serious changes
I’ve tried to convince people that if we can have a No Nut November, we ought to be able to put together a No-Sales September or something. These mentally defective executives would absolutely go back to taking care of the customer if this were a practice.
We should definitely do November for it - holiday shopping and Black Friday specifically.
Hell, if we could just boycott Black Friday and the week before and after, which is the biggest retail spend of the year, we’d probably make a serious dent. They aren’t even good deals, but good luck convincing anyone to skip it who doesn’t already.
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You know what slows down inflation? An upper limit on the cost of goods. But hey im just a filthy commie.
It didn’t, not in the US, not in Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union it caused rationing instead. Here’s your coupon for 1 stick of butter
Sure buddy those are the only two countries that have existed in the world. So can’t work anywhere.
What country would you point to as a success for this policy?
Can i have your list of valid countries to choose from so that my answer doesn’t get disqualified for picking a third world country.
a maximum retail price exists for most if not all goods in India. And it helps slow down inflation.
India would be perfectly valid if it wasn’t experiencing high inflation just like everyone else. Which it is.
https://finimize.com/content/rbi-chief-urges-india-to-cut-inflation-despite-strong-growth
You can’t fix inflation just by setting a max price. It leads to shortages or (more common in India’s case) retailers finding loopholes:
Didn’t say it solves inflation. You cant stop a global phenomenon happening. You can ease it.
It doesn’t work because it’s a stupid idea.
If there’s a cap on the price of a type of good, then obviously only the lowest quality things get made. If you cap shoes to $10, they will only sell shoes imported from sweatshops.
If you specify exactly how something is made, like $20 for made in USA shoes, they will import it from a sweatshop and sew a logo on it in the US.
If you specify how much labor must be done in the US, there’s a chance nobody would bother since selling the $10 sweatshop shoe has better profit margins
Yeah thats not how the prices are set tho so your entire premise and basis is stupid. Have a good day. Do some reading.
I’d like to put Simona’s mind at ease because economics research into the relationship between wages and productivity shows a casual link where higher wages increase productivity. That is, higher wages force firms to invest in technology, equipment and training in order to offset the increased labor cost.
How is this a fertility issue? Are people unable to have children, or just unwilling?
It’s not a fertility issue, it’s a fecundity issue. But we tend to use the 2 terms interchangeably.
It’s the other way around. Fecundity is the measure of how well a person is biologically able to reproduce. Fertility is how many children people actually have, which also depends on voluntary choices.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118896877.wbiehs153
I think the consensus is that it’s mostly as a result of women having greater reproductive choices, greater access to family planning services, and more women choosing to delay having children or choosing to not have children at all, often so they can instead focus on a career.
often so they can instead focus on a career.
Corpo speak people are broke… I expect better here
Vast majority of people don’t have “careers”
Whatever that clown term even means.
We work for money lol
That’s more than a bit insulting to the women of the world choosing to work instead of have kids. Sure, some of them are forced to because they wouldn’t have enough money to live without a job. And many of the jobs these women have chosen aren’t necessarily long term careers.
But it’s condescending and insulting to say those women have no other contributions to the world outside of working a menial day job and would rather stay at home having kids if only they could afford it. Calling a career a clown term is so edgy and cool of you! As if there aren’t people out there who absolutely love what they do for a living and aren’t happily working for crap pay just to do what they love. All of the adult women I know who have chosen not to have kids have really good careers, and all but one have a great salary.
And to your point that the vast majority of people don’t have “careers,” sometimes an entry level position that is just a day job and not really a career can lead to a bigger career. My mom started as a secretary at a small company and showed she knew how to do the job of her boss, so she got his job when he left. Then she ended up starting her own business in that field, which absolutely flourished and became the thing she did for the next 30 years.
“Corpo speak…” you are such a tool.
Nice anecdote but way to miss the point champ jfc
I personally felt like it was a reference to the complete lack of corporate loyalty to it’s employees.
It’s hard to have a “career” in the classical sense the way my 90 year old grandparents did.
You can still choose a field of work and if you’re lucky you’ll get to stay in it for most of your adult life, but between outsourcing in IT, fields being made redundant as technology advances/changes (from cashiers and retail to journalism and marketing, accounting, and phone work) and whole fields of manufacturing work getting shipped overseas, the number of lifelong fields of work available is rapidly shrinking, facing fierce competition for jobs, and becoming a moving playing field faster than most people can retrain for.
“HR” jobs could get halved or more with chatbots providing benefits and payroll adjustment information. “Big data” is doing most of the “market research” that advertisers handled manually 30 years ago.
Big money is still trying to sell us the “career” dream because it leads to the school loan debt they feed off of and temporarily gluts fields with workers to reduce salaries, but only a few handfuls of fields of work really have “career” style options anymore.
I took it not as an insult to the people trying to have one, but as disdain and disgust at how the word gets bandied about like so much bait on a hook when the reality is fastly becoming far different for the 20- and 30- somethings of today.
That might be just me being both charitable and jaded, though.
Sperm motility issue rates are rising worldwide and I found out I was one of them this year. Mid 30s, waited to start a family while we went further in our careers. Now that we’re ready, we got hit with this, fuck me for being responsible I guess.
But you ARE being responsible. The responsible thing to do is not have kids.
why would this be the case?
HEY WORLD LEADERS: make the world a less shitty place, so I don’t feel guilty about bringing a child into it, and I’ll rawdog more often. Do we have a deal?
Sorry, the best I can do…
In a world with too many humans already, can you imagine painting a drop in the birth rate as somehow a bad thing?
lol
I don’t really care about its impact on the economy, but I do feel for those who are attempting to have a child to no avail. I can only imagine how soul crushing that process can be.
Where do you live where the economy doesn’t affect you?
“Fertility crisis” in the headline doesn’t refer to anyone’s inability to have children. It refers to the fertility rate, which is just statistics about how many kids are popping out.
I don’t, those people are selfish. Creating an unwilling life destined to be yet another cog in the machine while the world burns just to satisfy one’s own animalistic desire to have some form of genetic spawn. I silently cheer every time “struggling” couples miscarry and are unwittingly forced to do the right thing and not have kids.
Those people do not share your perspective. I do view it as largely subconsciously selfish, but your take is fucked up.
My take is fucked up only because we continue to ascribe reproduction as some noble, precious thing; rather than a wildly irresponsible and selfish act.
Imagine a couple is driving a truckload of garbage to dump in the ocean. They have no reason to do this except some primal instinct that tells them to, all so they can point at the pile of floating garbage afterwards and say “look, that is MY garbage”.
Now imagine on the way to the ocean, the truck loses a tire and they crash off the road next to a garbage dump, and all the garbage in their truck goes flying over the fence and into the dump.
Then these people want and expect sympathy from others because they lost their garbage. They were really looking forward to standing on the beach and watching their garbage float free into the ocean and cause more of a mess. Oh no, boo hoo, fate accidentally caused them to do the right thing.
Lmao what is this edge-lord shit?
MFW my parents didn’t even attempt to invent a time machine to ask if it was cool to conceive me or not
Lol. There is nothing in existence which has a choice of its being thrown into existence. Is all existence immoral?
Thanks for remembering us Not Rick.
The problem is the average age increases, and you’ll have more of an elderly population, meaning barely any people actually working while a ton of people are on pensions
That’s why I’m living now, not waiting for retirement. I got a good 15 years left, maybe 20 if I push it. Then I’m tapping out. Not a fan of keeping on living just for the sake of breathing.
Then invest in medical research on keeping me young for longer, instead of keeping me old for longer
The solution is obviously to take away womens’ reproductive rights. Duh.
Half my life was spent fearing the result of limitless population growth and contemplating the inevitability of war and famine to shock population levels back down to sustainable levels. They warned us about this starting at least as far back as the sixties.
I see organic population collapse as a categorically good thing.
Long-term, possibly. But if the collapse happens too quickly it may cause a lot of issues. A slow steady decline would be best but may be difficult to achieve.
The oligarchy is welcome to not poison people.
That’s why I tell hard-right folks that childless homosexuality is the cornerstone of God’s plan to save humanity
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Personally, I always substitute it with “rich people’s yacht money”
What is normal?
Is this fair?
Is this sane?
Less people means less stress on the environment though.
In the long term perhaps. But it will probably take too long.
And more houses, and more job opportunities.
We’ll be…the new people will be fine!
Except the population (at least in my country) is quickly growing anyway because so many refugees come. And there will be far more if climate change continues at this speed.
3 people in a 737 don’t make 100people non matter what side they seat at or how many times they change seats…but if they seat at the right place near an emergency exit with no seatbelt on, they could make it 2 people or even 1 person in the plane!
Do not worry. When you refuse to live on in absolute poverty with children, your rukers will import those that will. The capitalist machine marches ON
Looks like not having kids in protest of how shitty things are is working. Everyone keep it up.
We are all Lysistrata now
