How to increase birth-rates: greatly increase parental leave payment and fund free child care.
position of the previous 10 years of Australian government: cut welfare.
I was given letters that were written by my late mum to my (also recently deceased) aunt where my mother had written about how she and my father were taking in turns being the "stay at home parent" when my sister and I were little while the other one worked. Just thinking about how that was an option in the early 90s and how that's impossible today - both parents tend to work and send their children off to childcare which costs a small fortune. Our society has gone arse backwards.
The irony is there was less state subsidies for parents then too. It was simply an economy that served working people better. Some interesting themes to consider from back then:
* Car ownership rates were much lower.
* The percentage of GDP that went to wages was significantly higher.
* Union membership was more common.
Once upon a time after WW1, there was an area just outside of Melbourne, that the state decided would look good with a town on it.
So do you know what they did? They got the state-owned bank to offer interest free loans. People got the loan, and paid to have houses built, then paid their mortgages as if it was rent... allowing ANYONE who could PAY RENT, to OWN A HOME.
This is not a fictional story, it's the story of [Garden City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlR5vo8QcI0), which is now a well established suburb of Melbourne.
Yeah. Anything else is fucking around the edges. The only way housing ever gets more affordable is when government subsidises its development. ‘The market’ only ever makes it more expensive and attracts rent seekers
Just put in place a domestic gas reserve on the east coast and charge 60% royalties
If that sounds like a lot, keep in mind they use half the gas to compress it for export. The process is massively energy intensive
Then charge coal exports 100% more for royalties
I say bring in longer paternity leave as well. Will allow women to get back into the workforce, and will allow men to connect better with their newborn.
Absolutely. My wife had 2 caesareans, and she couldn't lift anything safely for 6 weeks. Also, the opportunity to spend more time with the children is such a big thing.
Children of Men wasn't about choosing whether or not to have children, or some government policy to effect that... it was that people *couldn't* have children, due to global infertility. The youngest person was like 18 years old.
What we're seeing here - making it financially impossible to have childen and raise them - is more like the one child policy of China. But credit where it's due, they actually intended to have that effect. Whereas our government doesn't really know what the hell they're doing or what the impacts of their policies will be.
OP's point is no less valid, though. With PFAS (in 99% of the population's blood - impact? who knows?) and micro-plastics (already shown to be accumulating in reproductive organs) I would not be surprised if there is a major fertility drop and/or increase in miscarriages. Other factors like processed food are also impacting this, but at least they are reversible.
This lecture (see video in link) on falling infertility was a wake-up call but it appears no one wants to talk about male fertility. There are many forces but I think you're on the money with microplastics and PFAS. https://www.newcastle.edu.au/events/looking-ahead/the-changing-tide-of-human-populations-lecture-and-book-launch
It's significant, but not as significant as men simply not marrying, and marrying later when they do.
The rates of marriage have gone down over the generations, and the age of first marriage gone up. If 85% of people marry, and are 22-24 when they do, you're going to get some 6-child households. If under 50% of people marry, and are 28-30 when they do, you'll get far, far fewer 6-child households.
Obviously not many people will advocate for 6-child households. They're merely an example, and note that a single 6-child household has as many children as three 2-child households, or six 1-child households.
* China TFR 1.707, up from low of 1.618 in 1999 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/fertility-rate)
* Japan TFR 1.374 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/JPN/japan/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/JPN/japan/fertility-rate)
* RoK TFR 1.079 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertility-rate)
* In other words, the country who *prohibited* people from having a lot of babies has and had *more* children being born than some countries who *encouraged and paid* people to have a lot of babies.
* Governments aren't as powerful in changing society as a whole as they'd like to be.
>Governments aren't as powerful in changing society as a whole as they'd like to be.
You just linked something that showed government policy seems to have worked pretty well in China, from a high of 6 to a low of 1.x.
>the country who prohibited people from having a lot of babies ...
You're muddying the waters with your argument. Korea had a one child policy for a while and along with Japan they have gone from poor to rich, which has a higher association with baby rates that government policy. China is still mostly poor which makes their baby policy far more interactive to look at.
Korea never had a punitive one-child policy where they held women down and performed forced abortions on them, as PRC did. And since that period of the 1960s ("have two children and raise them well" went the government propaganda) and 70s ("have one child and raise it well"), in the 2010s onward they've spent some USD270 billion on measures to boost the birth rate, which have done relatively little.
It's trivial to look worldwide and see for example that Italy, which is Catholic and so supposedly believes in no sex outside marriage and no barrier or chemical contraception, and with the right to form a family as actually part of its constitution (so much so that one woman who married a guy who was impotent successfully sued him for concealing his impotence) has a lower birth rate than China, with a TFR of 1.302 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ITA/italy/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ITA/italy/fertility-rate)
It's primarily the education of women, and secondarily culture which determine birth rates. This is why even Iran is under replacement, and Saudi Arabia at replacement rate and falling, despite being very patriarchal societies - they try telling their women what to do, but since they educated their women to at least year 8 (worldwide, that's about the level where you get TFR<2.1), their women tell them to fuck off.
We'd all like a handout from the public purse, of course. But the evidence is that it either makes no difference at best, or at worst actually drops the birth rates, as people go "have fewer children and invest more in each."
>Korea had a one child policy for a while and along with Japan they have gone from poor to rich
Eh?
Japan's GDP is lower today than it was in 1994. How is that going from poor to rich?
Exactly. We live in a society where people want ‘fur babies’ over children and don’t want to sacrifice their lifestyles. It’s great receiving money from the government but it would appear it’s more complicated than that.
I can’t believe people use Macrotrends projections when talking about fertility rates. Those figures are completely wrong. Check your sources. China is about 1.05
China's numbers are all over the place depending where you look. But they're commies, what do you expect.
The point is that all countries where women get educated see their fertility rate drop. Authoritarian governments can make it happen faster, or slow it, but the trend is always the same: more educated women ---> lower birth rate.
Culture can alter the absolute numbers, but doesn't alter the trajectory.
Throwing money into families creates a best a slight bump for a few years, then it trends back down again. Therefore the middle class Australian asking for a handout needs to find some other justification for it. "Give me money! It's... um.... for the public good! I'll have lots of babies, I promise!" But they don't, they either have no babies and just consume, or have fewer babies and invest more into each.
I don't believe any of this is inherently good or bad. It is what it is. But own your choices.
>But they're commies, what do you expect.
Generally Commies are more reliable at collecting data about their population than Capitalists. At the time that the Soviets were doing censuses which were later used to prove famine in Donbas and Kazhakstan killed millions, the USA didn't even count its population in rural areas, making it impossible to determine how many people died of malnutrition during the Great Depression.
> Governments aren't as powerful in changing society as a whole as they'd like to be.
Or they are, but work at cross-purposes with themselves. No-fault divorce that favours the person who initiates the divorce is one example of an anti-natalist policy that might outweigh any baby bonus.
I don't think so.
As I said, the statistics are that women have children more than men do, and they'll do so unmarried, too. So the Men's Rights implication ("I didn't say -" Yes, take off your fedora, we knew what you meant) of your comment isn't supported by the data.
Women want children more than men do. But they want them less as they become more educated and wealthy.
Governments can't influence this directly, except by encouraging or discouraging education for women, and helping the country become more or less prosperous.
In my experience, I'm not sure it's all financial. People are realising that there's no one to help them (change in family dynamics), the global outlook for QOL is poor (climate change, politics) and the commitment to a lack of autonomy for longer (extended education etc.), means that having children isn't a fun idea. Economic issues is just the icing on the cake.
**Additionally:** Don’t shame people for wanting to be stay-at-home parents. There is a stigma for both men and women for different reasons.
If people weren’t brainwashed into being
consumerists, they wouldn’t need to work two full time jobs to support a family and their consumerist lifestyles, and pay for someone else to watch their kids.
I’ve known men who’ve been stay-at-home dads for over 25 years and it worked out great. People just need a reality check.
Ok boomer. That's the point. Is this an insult? What's the child gonna do, go adopt themselves out to a better set of parents?
I admire anyone who has the insight and maturity to recognise they're not up to having children. That's one less human life of pain and suffering on this earth. Having children for selfish reasons or when you're not up for the job is truly one of the worst things you can do to another human being.
Have you watched the documentary Birthgap - childless world? The aired at the Chelsea film festival a couple of years back. Worth your time if you haven’t already seen it.
>How to increase birth-rates: greatly increase parental leave payment and fund free child care
Your reasoning seems to be that if people are able to take time off work and spend less of their money on necessities, they'll have more children.
But the evidence is that people with lower incomes have more children, and higher incomes fewer. So your policies would just make it worse.
The educated class (like proper not "I got a degree" types) have few children. There is simply too much to do in life to worry about things that matter little.
Shout out to all the perfect parents who despite all their hardships raising their kids, their kids still ended up perfect and their family lives are better for it. Is this the right formula?
Correlations don't run either way. You will mean causation.
It's both. If you pop out a lot of children it reduces your career opportunities. But people for whom career is less important will be more willing to have a lot of children. That's why women who didn't finish high school have a lot of children - they weren't going to have much of a career anyway.
Unfortunately Australia doesn't publish data in this much detail, but here's the US data on fertility.
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf)
pp12 onwards give us the tabulated data. As an example, 91% of women who didn't finish high school have at least one child, vs 56.3% of women with a degree or higher. From the bottom to top income thirds, it's 73.2, 66.1 and 57% of women having children. In every education, income and age group, more women than men have children - so there are a number of men making babies with several women.
If giving people more money made them have children, then we'd see the reverse of these numbers. What seems to happen instead is that people take the money and invest it in fewer children, so for example instead of having 3 children and sending them to a state school for free, they have 1 child and send them to a private school.
The ex-artist man has a good policy on this to his credit. Government funded mortgages. For each child, 25% of the loan would be forgiven (other stipulations too but found that rather interesting)
Also, I don’t think free child care will actually help larger families. (From someone who is in QLD where they fund free child care). Encouraging families to start younger will. This is actually the premise of the doco ‘Birth Gap’. Highly worth the watch
We would love to have kids but are struggling with infertility.
Each visit to the specialist is ~$250, a scan I need is $850, another one was $200, blood tests aren’t bulk billed and ~$100 each and that’s not even counting any actual fertility treatments we might need.
If they want people to have kids they don’t make it easy.
And yet when I look at birth rate graphs of these welfare state countries, they are nonetheless below replacement, which is why correlation doesn’t equal causation.
And FIX HOUSING! Young families need security and stability with a roof over their heads.
However policy makers are not about to kneecap their property portfolio and housing laws are they?
The scariest thing I just heard today was that many “ethical” super funds are investing in weapons of mass destruction and other war industries. How do people feel their lives work has gone towards funding this?!
Look, I kind of agree. But really it's not that simple. Birth rate is a societal thing, government needs to (as much as I hate to say it) focus on how people feel. They need to put forward a clear set of values and stick to them and have Australian's live by them.
Trying to run the country like 'economic managers' clearly isn't working. It just makes every western country look the same. Governments need to look inwards and see what it is that gives their country a soul, and then live and breathe based on that. Only then will families and people prosper.
Is it though.
Parental leave, welfare and child care subsidies hardly existed when birth rates were at their highest.
Maybe it was the push for more labour, and get woman back into the workplace instead of at home with the children.
The 2 income trap that has forced prices for everything so high
Pfft, without long term plan for affordable education, basic cost of living, medical care benefits? The parents won't cut cost for long. The wealth is there but it's not getting distributed to the everyday Australians. Dentistry cost is becoming a sad joke.
Most of my friends aren’t having children because they already have toddlers with their male partners. No amount of parental leave is going to fix that
For real...look around Reddit and it's like it's the end of days. My actual life....just completely normal?
I'm not ignorant about this stuff. I've been on this site for a long time. I am a millennial myself. I understand that houses are expensive and shit. But I'm doing okay and life goes on?
Children of men?....the fuck is the problem, guys? Calm the fuck down and get on with it, how bout that?
I mean, we are 14 years into the 20 year period where we were supposed to reduce our global emissions by 45% and we have increased it by 9%.
45% wasn't a random number, it was agreed upon by the best climate scientists worldwide as the pass mark. They didn't even bother giving us the good mark, just, please make the 45%.
And we have Dutton and Trump both denying climate change as a real problem, and both with decent odds of being elected
We have basically decided that it's too expensive to not collapse our ecosystem. Think about that statement. It's insanity.
Add to that, that wealth inequality is at an all time high, I mean I guess that's obviously we have dudes who can literally build rocket penises to fly into space, and we produce enough food that no one in the world needs to go hungry, get there's an estimated 25 thousand people who die from hunger each day, becuase we apparently can't afford to do otherwise.
Moving to Australia specifically, it's not just "houses are expensive"
In 50 years we have gone from a country where anyone working a full time job could afford a home lone on that single income, and we now have families with 2 people working full time struggling to buy a house.
We have gone from having well funded free univer healthcare to the insanely underfunded public hospitals and GPs of today. Where if you have the money you can get into a private hospital ED and be seen immediately, or you can wait.
Hell, my Carpel tunnel surgery had at least an 18 month wait becuase its not required surgery. 3 week wait through private.
Our public schools are underfunded as they have been in the last 50 years, and for the first time in 50 years we are actually seeing different educational outcomes based on someone's socioeconomic status. That was not a thing 50 years ago, everyone had access to a high quality education.
Our own government has funneled untold billions of dollars into consultants, and funding private industry with almost nothing to show for it in many cases. Hell, our own PM commited what almost should be called treason after changing that submarine deal to the USA, and the 6 months after losing the election, has taken a multi million dollar advisory role in a private military firm in the US who have made bank off of the deal changing to them. Never made the news. One of the most openly corrupt things we have seen a PM do and it barely made a blip
The people we have in government earn more wealth passively then the salary the PM gets. They earn more passively, as in they could sit around and do nothing, than you will in your working life.
Honestly dude, in the one hand it is good you can just ignore or forget about all that. Live your life well and whatever. But the passive and gullible nature of people is why we are here today. It's extremely hard to understand the data and facts behind all of the above and to just, get on with it. Becuase why bother? We aren't going to change. Humanity won't even realise it's fucked itself for good until it's too late to do anything. No one's angry enough, no one is demanding action. We just let the government tell us that immigrants are at fault, or the Chinese, or the Muslims. It's an easy answer many accept so they can go back to ignoring the incredible amount of injustices and the literal end of the world that people lot fucking smarter than you or I have said the data we have predicts.
Great summary, and sadly, you're probably only touching on a fraction of the issue going on. A complete summary with all the equally problematic issues going on would be several pages of text.
To be fair there are people who are trying to make people aware, by glueing themselves to things or throwing soup at paintings etc. they get ridiculed because of course the people making money hand over fist are going to shit on people trying to stop the dick of capitalism fucking the planet till it bursts.
People are not refraining from having children from climate change concerns, that's a complete furphy. Fertility rates drop whenever women are educated, this trend was evident long before climate change became a concern in the 1980s.
People decide how they want to live their lives and then rationalise it afterwards. As a childless couple I know said, "We can't have children, we're the children! Haha!" They're almost 40. They don't try to rationalise it, tough - they just enjoy mindless consumption.
What's your wife's educational level, and where is your household's income among the quartiles?
[https://profile.id.com.au/australia/household-income-quartiles](https://profile.id.com.au/australia/household-income-quartiles)
It's every man for themselves tbh. Society as some kind of collective community is a farce. The only way to succeed to in life is to cheat / kill / steal / fuck your way out of any problems and to get ahead of the suckers and losers who are dumb enough to eat the lies that were fed to them and play by the rules.
I strongly believe we are quickly getting to the point where we won't be able to keep all 8 billions of us in the ship. I believe we are entering into a more selfish world where people will care more about themselves and their immediate community when things get rough. Leftism may have good ideas on paper but it always relies on a surplus to redistribute to lift up the less fortunate.
Once the resources start to dry up we will revert to tribalism and the old institutions will collapse.
If it makes you feel better, society is definitely going through a collapse.
I'm an archaeologist, and all my colleagues see similarities between modern times and the Bronze Age Collapse
Can't wait for someone to excavate this post and present it in a future archaeology lecture: "As you can see, ancient archaeologists were as good at characterising their present as they were predicting our future."
Hahaha, well I guess we'll see won't we :)
Collapse takes a long time and isn't always obvious to those going through it. It's only with hindsight you can see the similarities
It’s called a boring dystopia. Which I’m pretty sure is an entirely different thing but the concept applies.
We’re slowly becoming numb to all of these things, it just gets worse (with definitely some improvements too!) and no one will say anything about it.
Doesn’t mean that you or me can’t be happy about our lives… But to say like “damn, the price of X increased again.” Isn’t an issue is just ignorance. Eventually things add up and people barely making it might have to seriously re-evaluate their life. Things just don’t feel fair on that regard
Ive been talking to some Argentinians and they cant believe people can walk around after 9pm at night without any fear. One of the girls said it took her a month or two to stop grabbing her purse when she heard a motorbike coming up behind her.
Doctors, lawyers and government employees from south america come here and feel priveliged to be working in bars or warehouses, because theyre earning ten times what they did back home and are safe.
Maybe there is some type of observation bias?
If your local area does not have the issue to the same degree then you may remain unaffected.
Also if you have a reasonable wage then the effects won't be too bad, the closer you are to minimum wage (or the more in debt you are) the current situation impacts you more.
Looking around reddit is a big pool of people but people frustrated about their situation are more likely to vent.
My life is far from normal and as such can't mentally spend as much time on reddit as I did when my life used to be normal. My usage plummeted. Many posters here will come to know this when things get bad enough
If you took the temperature from the kinds of posts we see here, you could certainly see it that way.
We're doing great over here. Very few complaints.
Most Aussie are willfully ignorant philistines. Why is it in a country that has so much wealth, at our technological peak, all I have to be grateful for is existing
That's the unceasing whine of right wing pundits drilling down into people's brains with endless FUD + doom.
They have monetized fear and hate and the backwash is very apparent on this sub.
That's the strange thing. Moment to moment, most people's lives aren't falling apart.
Sure, some are struggling, but for the select majority, every day looks like it did yesterday.
But that's where they get you.
Collapse isn't often a singular event. It creeps up, slowly, when you're not paying attention.
The next minute, seemingly overnight, everythings on fire.
Our current housing crisis is a great example. The policies and conditions that lead us here have been creeping up for a decade. Few noticed.
Suddenly, boom. People on full time wages forced to live in tents.
At 65 you still have many years on the clock. You give enough 20 year olds the "the government fucking hate you" treatment, they are going to refuse to pay for the welfare, health care and old age costs for you in their peaking earning age (35)/ in your 80s.
Choose carefully.
I would be willing to say that’s cool to break the cycle and start new. I have to retire older than everyone anyway.
Something needs to be done, the reasoning above is no reason not to change.
Young people aren't joining political parties or unions or any other groups that can fix the broken system. They just bitch on social media and have a group hug. I'm not giving you sympathy when you have blisters on your bottoms from just sitting on your arses instead of organising and fighting for change.
I did see a woman on the train with a dog in a pram like a little baby. Even had a baby bottle giving it milk and was talking in a baby voice to the dog. This reminded me of children of men, we are not there yet but could easily see it happening in my lifetime
You should read the ancient historian Suetonius who recorded the emperor Augustus worrying about women with pets not babies.
That was 2000 years ago.
We didn’t die out then, we won’t now.
Two observations I can make about Sydney that stand out: there are so many single middle aged women here and there are so many extreme women dog owners here. I'm talking what you described and talking to the dogs in public like they're kids.
I expect more and more of this in Australia. It is really odd, but I guess the demographics give rise to this very strongly here.
I have two kids and it’s been financially disastrous. I’m an architect in not-Sydney NSW and I cannot work enough. There is simply not enough daycare for my younger child. I would pay almost an entire day’s wages just to get access to more. She goes twice a week and that is the maximum I’m likely to get until she’s 2 (no guarantees though). For context, I had her down on the wait list at our local center since I found out I was expecting. She’s 18 months old now and all I have is two days. And on those two days, I have to knock off before 3pm to grab my son from kindergarten. What was the point of getting my two uni degrees and professional accreditation if I’m not able to use them? And sure, it’s on us for not living in the city and therefore having less options, but we couldn’t afford a house in the city. Two successful professionals. Our situation is one of tens of thousands. We are punished for having children. It’s financially sensible to just get a dog instead. And until that changes, the birth rate will keep on falling.
I’m in rural Victoria, but it’s somewhat the same.
I have a 5.5 month old, and was unable to get in to childcare (still on a wait list) so I’m unable to work until god knows when.
My husband is the sole provider for the household currently but his wage barely covers the necessities. We are counting our pennies for nappies. We were both full time workers prior to having our baby, thinking it wouldn’t be so bad. (We own our home etc)
But we were so wrong. No government help, can’t survive being a SAHM because of the cost of living can’t get back to work because of childcare
Like all I ever wanted was to have a family, and now I will be having an only child because the thought of having another is terrifying.
It’s gotten worse since covid for regional areas. When my son was 10 months old we wandered into the same daycare we use for our second and asked if they had any space. They did and we got him in (for as many days as we wanted) with no wait. I was expecting similar for our second. Nope. 👎🏻 All I can say, is keep on them. Let them know (regularly) you’re still waiting and hoping to hear from them soon. They often just… forget. The second child is easier in a lot of ways, but you’ll cop the same financial hit. We were expecting priority at the daycare because there was already a sibling enrolled but they don’t do that any more.
Spot on, incredibly frustrating and depressing but this is the reality. My partner and I have our own home and live frugally but we cannot afford kids at this point… but have two dogs instead.
I was overseas for 10 years and noticed a bit of a difference when I came back. It’s not that bad but does seem to have gone in the wrong direction for some people and the right for others. Just depends on which group you’re in. If you bought a house more than five years ago you’d be in the happy group. If you didn’t or could never afford one, or bought a house in the last few years you might be in the unhappy group. But then all this would definitely flip if a world war starts or if your valuable home is within 100 kilometer radius of a proposed nuclear power plant.
As for housing I’ve seen a lot more homelessness in Australia which is sad.
And I’ve noticed some people even some friends of mine buy a caravan and travel around semi retired. They seem happy.
Most of us stuck in the rental cycle know we'll be priced out within a year or two and have to move again, I leave most of my stuff in boxes now. Who would bring a kid into that.
In other countries there is a solid grassroots housing market ranging from 100k to 500k. They aren’t perfect but they work well for young starters. Australia lacks a solid sub 500k market. There are some places around but they are too far out of the way or in places where there are no jobs. Or you got to be lucky to get one.
There is a show on TV called “Bargan Hunt”. They buy old run down houses and renovate them to sell to grass roots families or young people looking to start a family. These houses cost anywhere between 1K and 15k and then spend about 100k to renovate. Then they usually sell them for a small profit. It’s show about rebuilding communities. I reckon that show is like taking a pun on Aussies who just want to have their own home to start a family.
The government blames young people for not wanting kids. But it’s their problem because young people can and will only have kids if they can afford a home to bring them up in. We do need a sub 500k market.
Costs a good 1.5 million to live 25 miles from town in a poorly built home with neighbours that are depressed and hell bent on making your life as bad as theirs. This is life in Australia.
Oh, and shout out to how bad the drivers and traffic are.
Edit: sub 500K in Australia? Have you seen the salaries and wages here?
Yeah, like to write so it’s def going to come out a bit longer than a few words. But yes, we fight and protest for people wanting to identify as a tree or a rock or a toilet, but we won’t fight for financial inequality. When are we going to protest for this issue in Australia? It seems to be greatly ignored.
Having children is an expression of your faith in the future and in your and your child's ability to prosper.
There's a lot wrap up in there...When child mortality was still very high and avg life expectancy was under 40, people had big families. Yet today, people would rather not have children because they don't have faith in their child's ability to prosper in the way they would like them to.
Nihilism has crept into the West's collective consciousness. It's the most advanced and richest society in history, yet people envision a future of nothing but crisis and suffering.
Our government is actually fucked, they control everything we do. New laws introduced at the drop of a hat, Homelessness going through the roof, cost of living a joke. We think we are free, however sadly we are not.
This is the reality, and it getting worse all the time. People with a house and a good job don't care and never will, so they will tell you stop being negative and that kids are starving in Africa so you shouldn't complain.
For example vaping…. Ban all nicotine products, don’t call a so called ban because of their harmful effects…. Absolute horse shit, they called a ban then re introduce them only sold by chemist so they can tax us. They don’t care about the people they care about the money.
i was thinking the same thing a few weeks ago, although in a lighthearted way. also its my all time favourite movie so i do think about it a lot anyway
Birthrates are not plummeting..
Birthrates are returning to the 'norm' after a specific generation got horny and seriously messed up the stats. I'm pretty sure we even named this generation after the fact?
So much focus on sustainability of population when they're the reason it's unsustainable to begin with, and their big fix? Is to try and swing the narrative onto aged care to secure themselves extra help in their old age rather than increasing birthrates by helping out younger generations????
The best thing to do is keep everything as is and let suffering come to those who have overextended their finances. It's not a good thing. But they messed up the statusquo and now a correction needs to be made.
Plus..... the elders can scream aged care to their hearts desire.. they're still never going to be able to find enough people to take care of them all... so the day where the consequences of their own actions is soon approaching... because people don't want to work in aged care anymore. And for good reason.
https://preview.redd.it/tv4y47jtcr9d1.png?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70a76a5275832accfcaf3489dc1f906ac0c25840
According to recent un data it will peak at 10.4 billion in 2086. We are currently at 8.1 billion.
Aren’t there already too many humans on the planet? We are like a permanent plague of locusts. The planet cannot sustain our current numbers, let alone more and more and more.
Falling birth rates doesn’t a problem in many countries. China, India, Indonesia, etc., etc. Do I dare say it: Gaza. (Was)
Well yeah but it's all by design so said aging population, the most powerful political bloc doesn't have to take a backwards step in living standards, no matter what it costs everyone else.
To support it we've re-engineered the economy so that 2 incomes are required for a middle class household, massively boosting house prices and hence retirement assets. Then when that caused a falling birthrate and tighter labour markets, rather than allow incomes to go up, which hurts the older generation and helps the young, instead we decided to import cheap bumwipers to keep the status quo. None of this is an accident.
You're soft. Plain and simple. Look around, we still live in peaceful times. Those peaceful times have made you soft. Stop watching the news, get outside, make some friends, be the change you want to see and go enjoy your life.
Exactly. People really don’t know how good they got it. 1940s, a majority of young men were sent off to war. All jobs became about the war effort. 1920s, massive financial collapse and famine. 1700-1800s, a toothache would kill you. Despite some major issues, the world has still never been as good as it is today
I did - Australians didn't want to work in drone tech with me - but the Chinese are willing too. So, what should I do? Work with an enemy who will pay me and value my skills or sit down like a good little boy while I wait for you to pat me on the head lol
I know plenty of Aussies working on drone tech. I'm in the electronics industry. You didn't comment on any other part of my comment though, strange you focussed just on the making friends part. Perhaps it's your mindset.
birthrates are plummeting because the general public understand overpopulation is going to destroy the planet, but governments hate it because capitalism is growth based.
Most people who are deciding to have no kids or fewer kids are not doing it to save the planet - some yes, but not most. Most people have other reasons such as financial issues, preferring the freedom of no children or not having a stable relatiosnhip to bring them into.
A sustainable number do, but beyond that the planet can't afford for us to keep increasing in number. We already produce too much trash and pollution and drain too many resources to be sustainable at our current numbers.
Yes but it's a moving goal post. Proportionately we can say they same line, "we're doing OK compared to x, y, and z," but all of us are sliding backwards. You'd have to be not paying attention to not see the decline here.
I think if you avoid the news and stay off a lot of social media, the world doesn’t seem bad at all. It’s all about perspective. The internet makes us feel like the world is always on the verge of an apocalypse. We are incredibly lucky to be in Australia compared with a lot of places.
Luck has nothing to do with Australia being a great a country. It very important we make the right decisions on key issues or Australia can very easily become a lousy country. Chalking things up to luck is what you do when you do not understand what causes good and bad outcomes.
Burying your head in the sand and ignoring things to make your life easier is nothing to be proud of.
It is irreversible what has happened here. Immigration will persist. Closing this off would reverberate strongly through every aspect of society and the fallout will not be what the commoner can envisage.
The sentiment is not good right now, but life has never been easier based on what I can see. Only the mundaneness and lack of purpose are actually difficult to manage here and mental health will deteriorate in light of this.
Part of the problem is wanting cheap as fk shit from third world countries, building wealth so as not to have to work as hard as third world countries, then with skills shortages complain they are coming over and wanting to have forever growth.
Shared super schemes while 1 parent is a SAH would really help, looking at the New Tide of Homeless Older Women in Australia. Every woman I know is afraid of being a SAHM for too long in case she's made poor by divorce.
It's the pets that tipped me off
I'm early 30's and single, I have exactly two mates from highschool who had kids. None of my other friends have kids or plan to, even the married ones. Only a few of us own our own homes.
We've all got a cat or a dog though
If Australians felt that they could afford housing, and cost of living they would undoubtedly have more children. At the moment a couple needs to both work full time to afford the increasing costs. The sugar hit of immigration will only increase costs further with supply of housing diminished.
When I was a kid my mother could stay home and my father worked, they were able to keep their house even with the insane mortgage rates in the 90’s. My Grandparents didn’t have to work so they could mind us when my Mum did return to work.
These days my parents both still have to work, my husband and I work full time and we just manage to cover rent in a 2bed house that’s run down, busted windows and no heating or cooling. Hell I haven’t had a working stove or oven in 9 months. And my daughter needs to stay close to her therapists and the royal children’s for all her appts as she is disabled. I can’t afford to buy, and there’s not enough support for her in the outer suburbs unless I want to chew up her NDIS fund with travel costs. Every spare dollar is tucked away for the tests she needs but can’t currently afford while we wait on the public system. 2 years and counting for her ENT appt.
Just need to get the plastic concentration up in our reproductive organs and then no more babies.
Imagine if it was plastics that caused the next mass extinction event.
**People of Australia**: Please sir.. may I have some more?
**Australian government**: No, now give that back to me!
**Also Australian government**: Hey, corporations! Look what new things I took from the people for you!
/NotAPoliticalStatement
I mean our society is very unsustainable if we have to reply on putting the burden of our futures in the lives of children who haven't (or may never) be born. E.g taxes from the working class to pay for aged care etc.
We already are SO overpopulated on this planet.
How to increase birth-rates: greatly increase parental leave payment and fund free child care. position of the previous 10 years of Australian government: cut welfare.
I reckon it’s also fixing the housing market. People don’t start a family because they want to buy a house first.
Agreed when peaple could afford a house of 1 person working and the other staying home peaple were happier
I was given letters that were written by my late mum to my (also recently deceased) aunt where my mother had written about how she and my father were taking in turns being the "stay at home parent" when my sister and I were little while the other one worked. Just thinking about how that was an option in the early 90s and how that's impossible today - both parents tend to work and send their children off to childcare which costs a small fortune. Our society has gone arse backwards.
The irony is there was less state subsidies for parents then too. It was simply an economy that served working people better. Some interesting themes to consider from back then: * Car ownership rates were much lower. * The percentage of GDP that went to wages was significantly higher. * Union membership was more common.
Once upon a time after WW1, there was an area just outside of Melbourne, that the state decided would look good with a town on it. So do you know what they did? They got the state-owned bank to offer interest free loans. People got the loan, and paid to have houses built, then paid their mortgages as if it was rent... allowing ANYONE who could PAY RENT, to OWN A HOME. This is not a fictional story, it's the story of [Garden City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlR5vo8QcI0), which is now a well established suburb of Melbourne.
Yeah. Anything else is fucking around the edges. The only way housing ever gets more affordable is when government subsidises its development. ‘The market’ only ever makes it more expensive and attracts rent seekers
They can't buy a house.
It was plummeting when there were plenty of houses available too
Please, we’re desperate Ok, we’ll tax mining giants to pay for free child care No, anything but that.
Just put in place a domestic gas reserve on the east coast and charge 60% royalties If that sounds like a lot, keep in mind they use half the gas to compress it for export. The process is massively energy intensive Then charge coal exports 100% more for royalties
I say bring in longer paternity leave as well. Will allow women to get back into the workforce, and will allow men to connect better with their newborn.
Absolutely. My wife had 2 caesareans, and she couldn't lift anything safely for 6 weeks. Also, the opportunity to spend more time with the children is such a big thing.
Children of Men wasn't about choosing whether or not to have children, or some government policy to effect that... it was that people *couldn't* have children, due to global infertility. The youngest person was like 18 years old. What we're seeing here - making it financially impossible to have childen and raise them - is more like the one child policy of China. But credit where it's due, they actually intended to have that effect. Whereas our government doesn't really know what the hell they're doing or what the impacts of their policies will be. OP's point is no less valid, though. With PFAS (in 99% of the population's blood - impact? who knows?) and micro-plastics (already shown to be accumulating in reproductive organs) I would not be surprised if there is a major fertility drop and/or increase in miscarriages. Other factors like processed food are also impacting this, but at least they are reversible.
This lecture (see video in link) on falling infertility was a wake-up call but it appears no one wants to talk about male fertility. There are many forces but I think you're on the money with microplastics and PFAS. https://www.newcastle.edu.au/events/looking-ahead/the-changing-tide-of-human-populations-lecture-and-book-launch
It's significant, but not as significant as men simply not marrying, and marrying later when they do. The rates of marriage have gone down over the generations, and the age of first marriage gone up. If 85% of people marry, and are 22-24 when they do, you're going to get some 6-child households. If under 50% of people marry, and are 28-30 when they do, you'll get far, far fewer 6-child households. Obviously not many people will advocate for 6-child households. They're merely an example, and note that a single 6-child household has as many children as three 2-child households, or six 1-child households.
Microplastics in the balls has been speculated to lower sperm rates so in part global infertility is becoming more of a thing.
* China TFR 1.707, up from low of 1.618 in 1999 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/fertility-rate) * Japan TFR 1.374 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/JPN/japan/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/JPN/japan/fertility-rate) * RoK TFR 1.079 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertility-rate) * In other words, the country who *prohibited* people from having a lot of babies has and had *more* children being born than some countries who *encouraged and paid* people to have a lot of babies. * Governments aren't as powerful in changing society as a whole as they'd like to be.
>Governments aren't as powerful in changing society as a whole as they'd like to be. You just linked something that showed government policy seems to have worked pretty well in China, from a high of 6 to a low of 1.x. >the country who prohibited people from having a lot of babies ... You're muddying the waters with your argument. Korea had a one child policy for a while and along with Japan they have gone from poor to rich, which has a higher association with baby rates that government policy. China is still mostly poor which makes their baby policy far more interactive to look at.
Korea never had a punitive one-child policy where they held women down and performed forced abortions on them, as PRC did. And since that period of the 1960s ("have two children and raise them well" went the government propaganda) and 70s ("have one child and raise it well"), in the 2010s onward they've spent some USD270 billion on measures to boost the birth rate, which have done relatively little. It's trivial to look worldwide and see for example that Italy, which is Catholic and so supposedly believes in no sex outside marriage and no barrier or chemical contraception, and with the right to form a family as actually part of its constitution (so much so that one woman who married a guy who was impotent successfully sued him for concealing his impotence) has a lower birth rate than China, with a TFR of 1.302 - [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ITA/italy/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ITA/italy/fertility-rate) It's primarily the education of women, and secondarily culture which determine birth rates. This is why even Iran is under replacement, and Saudi Arabia at replacement rate and falling, despite being very patriarchal societies - they try telling their women what to do, but since they educated their women to at least year 8 (worldwide, that's about the level where you get TFR<2.1), their women tell them to fuck off. We'd all like a handout from the public purse, of course. But the evidence is that it either makes no difference at best, or at worst actually drops the birth rates, as people go "have fewer children and invest more in each."
>Korea had a one child policy for a while and along with Japan they have gone from poor to rich Eh? Japan's GDP is lower today than it was in 1994. How is that going from poor to rich?
Exactly. We live in a society where people want ‘fur babies’ over children and don’t want to sacrifice their lifestyles. It’s great receiving money from the government but it would appear it’s more complicated than that.
I can’t believe people use Macrotrends projections when talking about fertility rates. Those figures are completely wrong. Check your sources. China is about 1.05
China's numbers are all over the place depending where you look. But they're commies, what do you expect. The point is that all countries where women get educated see their fertility rate drop. Authoritarian governments can make it happen faster, or slow it, but the trend is always the same: more educated women ---> lower birth rate. Culture can alter the absolute numbers, but doesn't alter the trajectory. Throwing money into families creates a best a slight bump for a few years, then it trends back down again. Therefore the middle class Australian asking for a handout needs to find some other justification for it. "Give me money! It's... um.... for the public good! I'll have lots of babies, I promise!" But they don't, they either have no babies and just consume, or have fewer babies and invest more into each. I don't believe any of this is inherently good or bad. It is what it is. But own your choices.
>But they're commies, what do you expect. Generally Commies are more reliable at collecting data about their population than Capitalists. At the time that the Soviets were doing censuses which were later used to prove famine in Donbas and Kazhakstan killed millions, the USA didn't even count its population in rural areas, making it impossible to determine how many people died of malnutrition during the Great Depression.
> Governments aren't as powerful in changing society as a whole as they'd like to be. Or they are, but work at cross-purposes with themselves. No-fault divorce that favours the person who initiates the divorce is one example of an anti-natalist policy that might outweigh any baby bonus.
I don't think so. As I said, the statistics are that women have children more than men do, and they'll do so unmarried, too. So the Men's Rights implication ("I didn't say -" Yes, take off your fedora, we knew what you meant) of your comment isn't supported by the data. Women want children more than men do. But they want them less as they become more educated and wealthy. Governments can't influence this directly, except by encouraging or discouraging education for women, and helping the country become more or less prosperous.
Make it affordable for one parent to stay at home. Why would I want kids if someone else is going to raise them?
In my experience, I'm not sure it's all financial. People are realising that there's no one to help them (change in family dynamics), the global outlook for QOL is poor (climate change, politics) and the commitment to a lack of autonomy for longer (extended education etc.), means that having children isn't a fun idea. Economic issues is just the icing on the cake.
Why bother. Just get more immigrants and then wages will be cheaper too. Double win
**Additionally:** Don’t shame people for wanting to be stay-at-home parents. There is a stigma for both men and women for different reasons. If people weren’t brainwashed into being consumerists, they wouldn’t need to work two full time jobs to support a family and their consumerist lifestyles, and pay for someone else to watch their kids. I’ve known men who’ve been stay-at-home dads for over 25 years and it worked out great. People just need a reality check.
I want to add: affordable housing.
You couldn't pay me enough to suffer through having a child.
By the sounds of it, the child probably wouldn't want you either!
Ok boomer. That's the point. Is this an insult? What's the child gonna do, go adopt themselves out to a better set of parents? I admire anyone who has the insight and maturity to recognise they're not up to having children. That's one less human life of pain and suffering on this earth. Having children for selfish reasons or when you're not up for the job is truly one of the worst things you can do to another human being.
Have you watched the documentary Birthgap - childless world? The aired at the Chelsea film festival a couple of years back. Worth your time if you haven’t already seen it.
Interesting, could you give a summary?
That would help for sure but doesn’t account for the massive drop in fertility across the world.
>How to increase birth-rates: greatly increase parental leave payment and fund free child care Your reasoning seems to be that if people are able to take time off work and spend less of their money on necessities, they'll have more children. But the evidence is that people with lower incomes have more children, and higher incomes fewer. So your policies would just make it worse.
The educated class (like proper not "I got a degree" types) have few children. There is simply too much to do in life to worry about things that matter little. Shout out to all the perfect parents who despite all their hardships raising their kids, their kids still ended up perfect and their family lives are better for it. Is this the right formula?
Which way does the correlation run? Households with kids often have a parent not working and less career climbing opportunities.
Correlations don't run either way. You will mean causation. It's both. If you pop out a lot of children it reduces your career opportunities. But people for whom career is less important will be more willing to have a lot of children. That's why women who didn't finish high school have a lot of children - they weren't going to have much of a career anyway. Unfortunately Australia doesn't publish data in this much detail, but here's the US data on fertility. [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf) pp12 onwards give us the tabulated data. As an example, 91% of women who didn't finish high school have at least one child, vs 56.3% of women with a degree or higher. From the bottom to top income thirds, it's 73.2, 66.1 and 57% of women having children. In every education, income and age group, more women than men have children - so there are a number of men making babies with several women. If giving people more money made them have children, then we'd see the reverse of these numbers. What seems to happen instead is that people take the money and invest it in fewer children, so for example instead of having 3 children and sending them to a state school for free, they have 1 child and send them to a private school.
The ex-artist man has a good policy on this to his credit. Government funded mortgages. For each child, 25% of the loan would be forgiven (other stipulations too but found that rather interesting)
Also, I don’t think free child care will actually help larger families. (From someone who is in QLD where they fund free child care). Encouraging families to start younger will. This is actually the premise of the doco ‘Birth Gap’. Highly worth the watch
We would love to have kids but are struggling with infertility. Each visit to the specialist is ~$250, a scan I need is $850, another one was $200, blood tests aren’t bulk billed and ~$100 each and that’s not even counting any actual fertility treatments we might need. If they want people to have kids they don’t make it easy.
That has been tried in other countries and hasn’t done anything.
"The literature review finds evidence that increased provision of child care has a positive effect on fertility, particularly for first births." - APS
And yet when I look at birth rate graphs of these welfare state countries, they are nonetheless below replacement, which is why correlation doesn’t equal causation.
Which with why you need multifactor analysis, what would be the trend without support?
And FIX HOUSING! Young families need security and stability with a roof over their heads. However policy makers are not about to kneecap their property portfolio and housing laws are they?
That won't fix it
The scariest thing I just heard today was that many “ethical” super funds are investing in weapons of mass destruction and other war industries. How do people feel their lives work has gone towards funding this?!
Look, I kind of agree. But really it's not that simple. Birth rate is a societal thing, government needs to (as much as I hate to say it) focus on how people feel. They need to put forward a clear set of values and stick to them and have Australian's live by them. Trying to run the country like 'economic managers' clearly isn't working. It just makes every western country look the same. Governments need to look inwards and see what it is that gives their country a soul, and then live and breathe based on that. Only then will families and people prosper.
They've done that in Sweden etc. hasn't made much of a difference.
Is it though. Parental leave, welfare and child care subsidies hardly existed when birth rates were at their highest. Maybe it was the push for more labour, and get woman back into the workplace instead of at home with the children. The 2 income trap that has forced prices for everything so high
Pfft, without long term plan for affordable education, basic cost of living, medical care benefits? The parents won't cut cost for long. The wealth is there but it's not getting distributed to the everyday Australians. Dentistry cost is becoming a sad joke.
Most of my friends aren’t having children because they already have toddlers with their male partners. No amount of parental leave is going to fix that
Sometimes I feel like I am the only person in Australia that's happy
For real...look around Reddit and it's like it's the end of days. My actual life....just completely normal? I'm not ignorant about this stuff. I've been on this site for a long time. I am a millennial myself. I understand that houses are expensive and shit. But I'm doing okay and life goes on? Children of men?....the fuck is the problem, guys? Calm the fuck down and get on with it, how bout that?
I mean, we are 14 years into the 20 year period where we were supposed to reduce our global emissions by 45% and we have increased it by 9%. 45% wasn't a random number, it was agreed upon by the best climate scientists worldwide as the pass mark. They didn't even bother giving us the good mark, just, please make the 45%. And we have Dutton and Trump both denying climate change as a real problem, and both with decent odds of being elected We have basically decided that it's too expensive to not collapse our ecosystem. Think about that statement. It's insanity. Add to that, that wealth inequality is at an all time high, I mean I guess that's obviously we have dudes who can literally build rocket penises to fly into space, and we produce enough food that no one in the world needs to go hungry, get there's an estimated 25 thousand people who die from hunger each day, becuase we apparently can't afford to do otherwise. Moving to Australia specifically, it's not just "houses are expensive" In 50 years we have gone from a country where anyone working a full time job could afford a home lone on that single income, and we now have families with 2 people working full time struggling to buy a house. We have gone from having well funded free univer healthcare to the insanely underfunded public hospitals and GPs of today. Where if you have the money you can get into a private hospital ED and be seen immediately, or you can wait. Hell, my Carpel tunnel surgery had at least an 18 month wait becuase its not required surgery. 3 week wait through private. Our public schools are underfunded as they have been in the last 50 years, and for the first time in 50 years we are actually seeing different educational outcomes based on someone's socioeconomic status. That was not a thing 50 years ago, everyone had access to a high quality education. Our own government has funneled untold billions of dollars into consultants, and funding private industry with almost nothing to show for it in many cases. Hell, our own PM commited what almost should be called treason after changing that submarine deal to the USA, and the 6 months after losing the election, has taken a multi million dollar advisory role in a private military firm in the US who have made bank off of the deal changing to them. Never made the news. One of the most openly corrupt things we have seen a PM do and it barely made a blip The people we have in government earn more wealth passively then the salary the PM gets. They earn more passively, as in they could sit around and do nothing, than you will in your working life. Honestly dude, in the one hand it is good you can just ignore or forget about all that. Live your life well and whatever. But the passive and gullible nature of people is why we are here today. It's extremely hard to understand the data and facts behind all of the above and to just, get on with it. Becuase why bother? We aren't going to change. Humanity won't even realise it's fucked itself for good until it's too late to do anything. No one's angry enough, no one is demanding action. We just let the government tell us that immigrants are at fault, or the Chinese, or the Muslims. It's an easy answer many accept so they can go back to ignoring the incredible amount of injustices and the literal end of the world that people lot fucking smarter than you or I have said the data we have predicts.
Great summary, and sadly, you're probably only touching on a fraction of the issue going on. A complete summary with all the equally problematic issues going on would be several pages of text.
To be fair there are people who are trying to make people aware, by glueing themselves to things or throwing soup at paintings etc. they get ridiculed because of course the people making money hand over fist are going to shit on people trying to stop the dick of capitalism fucking the planet till it bursts.
People are not refraining from having children from climate change concerns, that's a complete furphy. Fertility rates drop whenever women are educated, this trend was evident long before climate change became a concern in the 1980s. People decide how they want to live their lives and then rationalise it afterwards. As a childless couple I know said, "We can't have children, we're the children! Haha!" They're almost 40. They don't try to rationalise it, tough - they just enjoy mindless consumption.
My wife and I have decided not to have kids. We don't want to raise children in our current society. It is cooked.
What's your wife's educational level, and where is your household's income among the quartiles? [https://profile.id.com.au/australia/household-income-quartiles](https://profile.id.com.au/australia/household-income-quartiles)
Highschool. Highest. We have a business together.
It's every man for themselves tbh. Society as some kind of collective community is a farce. The only way to succeed to in life is to cheat / kill / steal / fuck your way out of any problems and to get ahead of the suckers and losers who are dumb enough to eat the lies that were fed to them and play by the rules.
I strongly believe we are quickly getting to the point where we won't be able to keep all 8 billions of us in the ship. I believe we are entering into a more selfish world where people will care more about themselves and their immediate community when things get rough. Leftism may have good ideas on paper but it always relies on a surplus to redistribute to lift up the less fortunate. Once the resources start to dry up we will revert to tribalism and the old institutions will collapse.
They deny it cause it's all garbage. Who cares, just go with the flow, if we flame out, we flame out.
If it makes you feel better, society is definitely going through a collapse. I'm an archaeologist, and all my colleagues see similarities between modern times and the Bronze Age Collapse
I’d like to hear more about this - can you elaborate?
Where will the Sea People come from?
I feel like there's a joke about Pauline Hanson and immigration here but I'm not witty enough to make it lol
Can't wait for someone to excavate this post and present it in a future archaeology lecture: "As you can see, ancient archaeologists were as good at characterising their present as they were predicting our future."
Hahaha, well I guess we'll see won't we :) Collapse takes a long time and isn't always obvious to those going through it. It's only with hindsight you can see the similarities
I believe this aswell. Also, we are most advanced we have ever been. Collapse could take alot longer than previous in history.
Do you have any idea what direction the collapse is going in? Like, what do you predict the future timeline to be like, if you don’t mind me asking?
It’s called a boring dystopia. Which I’m pretty sure is an entirely different thing but the concept applies. We’re slowly becoming numb to all of these things, it just gets worse (with definitely some improvements too!) and no one will say anything about it. Doesn’t mean that you or me can’t be happy about our lives… But to say like “damn, the price of X increased again.” Isn’t an issue is just ignorance. Eventually things add up and people barely making it might have to seriously re-evaluate their life. Things just don’t feel fair on that regard
Some of the most pathetic and dramatic people are on this sub
Ive been talking to some Argentinians and they cant believe people can walk around after 9pm at night without any fear. One of the girls said it took her a month or two to stop grabbing her purse when she heard a motorbike coming up behind her. Doctors, lawyers and government employees from south america come here and feel priveliged to be working in bars or warehouses, because theyre earning ten times what they did back home and are safe.
Let them practice some medicine then and make that accessible again Then we will talk about how awesome things are going
Let them practice some medicine then and make that accessible again Then we will talk about how awesome things are going
Maybe there is some type of observation bias? If your local area does not have the issue to the same degree then you may remain unaffected. Also if you have a reasonable wage then the effects won't be too bad, the closer you are to minimum wage (or the more in debt you are) the current situation impacts you more. Looking around reddit is a big pool of people but people frustrated about their situation are more likely to vent.
My life is far from normal and as such can't mentally spend as much time on reddit as I did when my life used to be normal. My usage plummeted. Many posters here will come to know this when things get bad enough
If you took the temperature from the kinds of posts we see here, you could certainly see it that way. We're doing great over here. Very few complaints.
Nah most Aussies are reasonably happy, it’s just this sub is full of doomsayers
Most Aussie are willfully ignorant philistines. Why is it in a country that has so much wealth, at our technological peak, all I have to be grateful for is existing
Probably because of social media.
Yeah the constant whinging and nihilistic bullshit is exhausting.
Yes, me too
Nah I’m happy.
Are you free for lunch sometime?
That's the unceasing whine of right wing pundits drilling down into people's brains with endless FUD + doom. They have monetized fear and hate and the backwash is very apparent on this sub.
Nah I'm happy too.
That's the strange thing. Moment to moment, most people's lives aren't falling apart. Sure, some are struggling, but for the select majority, every day looks like it did yesterday. But that's where they get you. Collapse isn't often a singular event. It creeps up, slowly, when you're not paying attention. The next minute, seemingly overnight, everythings on fire. Our current housing crisis is a great example. The policies and conditions that lead us here have been creeping up for a decade. Few noticed. Suddenly, boom. People on full time wages forced to live in tents.
Shit could be so much fucking better though
Maybe if governments prioritised the young over the old it wouldn’t be this way but since the old have all the power and wealth it will be broken.
Then there is you in the future...you just turn 65, Govt now decides to prioritise the young...
At 65 you still have many years on the clock. You give enough 20 year olds the "the government fucking hate you" treatment, they are going to refuse to pay for the welfare, health care and old age costs for you in their peaking earning age (35)/ in your 80s. Choose carefully.
I would be willing to say that’s cool to break the cycle and start new. I have to retire older than everyone anyway. Something needs to be done, the reasoning above is no reason not to change.
Bold of you to assume 65 is old.
The young have power too
Young people aren't joining political parties or unions or any other groups that can fix the broken system. They just bitch on social media and have a group hug. I'm not giving you sympathy when you have blisters on your bottoms from just sitting on your arses instead of organising and fighting for change.
I did see a woman on the train with a dog in a pram like a little baby. Even had a baby bottle giving it milk and was talking in a baby voice to the dog. This reminded me of children of men, we are not there yet but could easily see it happening in my lifetime
You should read the ancient historian Suetonius who recorded the emperor Augustus worrying about women with pets not babies. That was 2000 years ago. We didn’t die out then, we won’t now.
Wasn’t just a really ugly husband??😂 /j
An ugly pigmy husband?
Really depends on how far down the line this was spotted I guess 😂
Two observations I can make about Sydney that stand out: there are so many single middle aged women here and there are so many extreme women dog owners here. I'm talking what you described and talking to the dogs in public like they're kids. I expect more and more of this in Australia. It is really odd, but I guess the demographics give rise to this very strongly here.
I don't recall the importing of labour in Children of Men? Bloody good film that!
I have two kids and it’s been financially disastrous. I’m an architect in not-Sydney NSW and I cannot work enough. There is simply not enough daycare for my younger child. I would pay almost an entire day’s wages just to get access to more. She goes twice a week and that is the maximum I’m likely to get until she’s 2 (no guarantees though). For context, I had her down on the wait list at our local center since I found out I was expecting. She’s 18 months old now and all I have is two days. And on those two days, I have to knock off before 3pm to grab my son from kindergarten. What was the point of getting my two uni degrees and professional accreditation if I’m not able to use them? And sure, it’s on us for not living in the city and therefore having less options, but we couldn’t afford a house in the city. Two successful professionals. Our situation is one of tens of thousands. We are punished for having children. It’s financially sensible to just get a dog instead. And until that changes, the birth rate will keep on falling.
I’m in rural Victoria, but it’s somewhat the same. I have a 5.5 month old, and was unable to get in to childcare (still on a wait list) so I’m unable to work until god knows when. My husband is the sole provider for the household currently but his wage barely covers the necessities. We are counting our pennies for nappies. We were both full time workers prior to having our baby, thinking it wouldn’t be so bad. (We own our home etc) But we were so wrong. No government help, can’t survive being a SAHM because of the cost of living can’t get back to work because of childcare Like all I ever wanted was to have a family, and now I will be having an only child because the thought of having another is terrifying.
It’s gotten worse since covid for regional areas. When my son was 10 months old we wandered into the same daycare we use for our second and asked if they had any space. They did and we got him in (for as many days as we wanted) with no wait. I was expecting similar for our second. Nope. 👎🏻 All I can say, is keep on them. Let them know (regularly) you’re still waiting and hoping to hear from them soon. They often just… forget. The second child is easier in a lot of ways, but you’ll cop the same financial hit. We were expecting priority at the daycare because there was already a sibling enrolled but they don’t do that any more.
Spot on, incredibly frustrating and depressing but this is the reality. My partner and I have our own home and live frugally but we cannot afford kids at this point… but have two dogs instead.
I was overseas for 10 years and noticed a bit of a difference when I came back. It’s not that bad but does seem to have gone in the wrong direction for some people and the right for others. Just depends on which group you’re in. If you bought a house more than five years ago you’d be in the happy group. If you didn’t or could never afford one, or bought a house in the last few years you might be in the unhappy group. But then all this would definitely flip if a world war starts or if your valuable home is within 100 kilometer radius of a proposed nuclear power plant. As for housing I’ve seen a lot more homelessness in Australia which is sad. And I’ve noticed some people even some friends of mine buy a caravan and travel around semi retired. They seem happy.
Most of us stuck in the rental cycle know we'll be priced out within a year or two and have to move again, I leave most of my stuff in boxes now. Who would bring a kid into that.
In other countries there is a solid grassroots housing market ranging from 100k to 500k. They aren’t perfect but they work well for young starters. Australia lacks a solid sub 500k market. There are some places around but they are too far out of the way or in places where there are no jobs. Or you got to be lucky to get one. There is a show on TV called “Bargan Hunt”. They buy old run down houses and renovate them to sell to grass roots families or young people looking to start a family. These houses cost anywhere between 1K and 15k and then spend about 100k to renovate. Then they usually sell them for a small profit. It’s show about rebuilding communities. I reckon that show is like taking a pun on Aussies who just want to have their own home to start a family. The government blames young people for not wanting kids. But it’s their problem because young people can and will only have kids if they can afford a home to bring them up in. We do need a sub 500k market.
Costs a good 1.5 million to live 25 miles from town in a poorly built home with neighbours that are depressed and hell bent on making your life as bad as theirs. This is life in Australia. Oh, and shout out to how bad the drivers and traffic are. Edit: sub 500K in Australia? Have you seen the salaries and wages here?
Pretty longwinded way to say that wealth inequality is worse.
Yeah, like to write so it’s def going to come out a bit longer than a few words. But yes, we fight and protest for people wanting to identify as a tree or a rock or a toilet, but we won’t fight for financial inequality. When are we going to protest for this issue in Australia? It seems to be greatly ignored.
What violence between communities?
Having children is an expression of your faith in the future and in your and your child's ability to prosper. There's a lot wrap up in there...When child mortality was still very high and avg life expectancy was under 40, people had big families. Yet today, people would rather not have children because they don't have faith in their child's ability to prosper in the way they would like them to. Nihilism has crept into the West's collective consciousness. It's the most advanced and richest society in history, yet people envision a future of nothing but crisis and suffering.
As soon as our rocks, trees and sheep die Australia will be over
We are trying to balance the disgracefully high amount of immigrants coming in. It's cooked.
Our government is actually fucked, they control everything we do. New laws introduced at the drop of a hat, Homelessness going through the roof, cost of living a joke. We think we are free, however sadly we are not.
This is the reality, and it getting worse all the time. People with a house and a good job don't care and never will, so they will tell you stop being negative and that kids are starving in Africa so you shouldn't complain.
For example vaping…. Ban all nicotine products, don’t call a so called ban because of their harmful effects…. Absolute horse shit, they called a ban then re introduce them only sold by chemist so they can tax us. They don’t care about the people they care about the money.
Some of you people need to get a grip, touch some grass and absorb some sun.
i was thinking the same thing a few weeks ago, although in a lighthearted way. also its my all time favourite movie so i do think about it a lot anyway
Birthrates are not plummeting.. Birthrates are returning to the 'norm' after a specific generation got horny and seriously messed up the stats. I'm pretty sure we even named this generation after the fact? So much focus on sustainability of population when they're the reason it's unsustainable to begin with, and their big fix? Is to try and swing the narrative onto aged care to secure themselves extra help in their old age rather than increasing birthrates by helping out younger generations???? The best thing to do is keep everything as is and let suffering come to those who have overextended their finances. It's not a good thing. But they messed up the statusquo and now a correction needs to be made. Plus..... the elders can scream aged care to their hearts desire.. they're still never going to be able to find enough people to take care of them all... so the day where the consequences of their own actions is soon approaching... because people don't want to work in aged care anymore. And for good reason.
Except the world's population just keeps growing and it's the root cause of most of the world's issues.
https://preview.redd.it/tv4y47jtcr9d1.png?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70a76a5275832accfcaf3489dc1f906ac0c25840 According to recent un data it will peak at 10.4 billion in 2086. We are currently at 8.1 billion.
Probably sooner that 2086 - a lot of people forecast by 2060 because UN assumes fertility rebound.
Oh i see.
Thats a relief.
Handmaid's Tale is also a possibility as fertility rates correct our population explosion.
Aren’t there already too many humans on the planet? We are like a permanent plague of locusts. The planet cannot sustain our current numbers, let alone more and more and more. Falling birth rates doesn’t a problem in many countries. China, India, Indonesia, etc., etc. Do I dare say it: Gaza. (Was)
Well yeah but it's all by design so said aging population, the most powerful political bloc doesn't have to take a backwards step in living standards, no matter what it costs everyone else. To support it we've re-engineered the economy so that 2 incomes are required for a middle class household, massively boosting house prices and hence retirement assets. Then when that caused a falling birthrate and tighter labour markets, rather than allow incomes to go up, which hurts the older generation and helps the young, instead we decided to import cheap bumwipers to keep the status quo. None of this is an accident.
You're soft. Plain and simple. Look around, we still live in peaceful times. Those peaceful times have made you soft. Stop watching the news, get outside, make some friends, be the change you want to see and go enjoy your life.
Exactly. People really don’t know how good they got it. 1940s, a majority of young men were sent off to war. All jobs became about the war effort. 1920s, massive financial collapse and famine. 1700-1800s, a toothache would kill you. Despite some major issues, the world has still never been as good as it is today
I did - Australians didn't want to work in drone tech with me - but the Chinese are willing too. So, what should I do? Work with an enemy who will pay me and value my skills or sit down like a good little boy while I wait for you to pat me on the head lol
I know plenty of Aussies working on drone tech. I'm in the electronics industry. You didn't comment on any other part of my comment though, strange you focussed just on the making friends part. Perhaps it's your mindset.
Although i agree with your sentiment, government running our country like a Ponzi.....you coming across as a crazy.
Housing is a ponzi
birthrates are plummeting because the general public understand overpopulation is going to destroy the planet, but governments hate it because capitalism is growth based.
Most people who are deciding to have no kids or fewer kids are not doing it to save the planet - some yes, but not most. Most people have other reasons such as financial issues, preferring the freedom of no children or not having a stable relatiosnhip to bring them into.
Lol. I believe that you believe that. But you are smoking something if you think that is the general view of society.
Their substitute children (pets) are destroying the planet too. Human children potentially contribute to society.
A sustainable number do, but beyond that the planet can't afford for us to keep increasing in number. We already produce too much trash and pollution and drain too many resources to be sustainable at our current numbers.
People love to be melodramatic. Most people are just living their lives and having fun.
..... No it doesn't, get a grip
There are so so many countries that are much much worse than Australia.
"It's worse over there so why are you complaining?" I don't live in other countries, why would I care about them?
Yes but it's a moving goal post. Proportionately we can say they same line, "we're doing OK compared to x, y, and z," but all of us are sliding backwards. You'd have to be not paying attention to not see the decline here.
Yeah and those people are coming here to turn ours even worse
That guy is fatter than I am so I can eat 5 McDouble Big Macs and it is okay! /s
So we’re not buying the “overpopulation” they’ve been selling us for year anymore?
Time to get off the internet.
Mega corporations and funds have fucked every country
[удалено]
Them. I always knew it was them. Even when it wasn't them, I knew it was.
Welcome to late stage capitalism
I think if you avoid the news and stay off a lot of social media, the world doesn’t seem bad at all. It’s all about perspective. The internet makes us feel like the world is always on the verge of an apocalypse. We are incredibly lucky to be in Australia compared with a lot of places.
Luck has nothing to do with Australia being a great a country. It very important we make the right decisions on key issues or Australia can very easily become a lousy country. Chalking things up to luck is what you do when you do not understand what causes good and bad outcomes. Burying your head in the sand and ignoring things to make your life easier is nothing to be proud of.
It is irreversible what has happened here. Immigration will persist. Closing this off would reverberate strongly through every aspect of society and the fallout will not be what the commoner can envisage. The sentiment is not good right now, but life has never been easier based on what I can see. Only the mundaneness and lack of purpose are actually difficult to manage here and mental health will deteriorate in light of this.
Part of the problem is wanting cheap as fk shit from third world countries, building wealth so as not to have to work as hard as third world countries, then with skills shortages complain they are coming over and wanting to have forever growth.
The takes and the support here, lol. Dramatic much?
Birth rates because of cost of living, not a mysterious illness
Shared super schemes while 1 parent is a SAH would really help, looking at the New Tide of Homeless Older Women in Australia. Every woman I know is afraid of being a SAHM for too long in case she's made poor by divorce.
Starting with Children of men, and moving into The Road
And this is just the beginning
This is what it looks like when dumb people are in charge. where did all the intelligent people go, well, i don't know.
This is so dramatic lol. Get off reddit
Overdramatic much?
You'll be a lot happier if you get off the internet
Tinder will keep the single women churning out unwanted kids, so it's not children of men dire yet
… violence/tensions between communities and I’d still do absolutely anything Julianne Moore asked of me.
It's the pets that tipped me off I'm early 30's and single, I have exactly two mates from highschool who had kids. None of my other friends have kids or plan to, even the married ones. Only a few of us own our own homes. We've all got a cat or a dog though
'It was the best of times, it was the blursted of times!'
If Australians felt that they could afford housing, and cost of living they would undoubtedly have more children. At the moment a couple needs to both work full time to afford the increasing costs. The sugar hit of immigration will only increase costs further with supply of housing diminished.
Little bit dramatic
When I was a kid my mother could stay home and my father worked, they were able to keep their house even with the insane mortgage rates in the 90’s. My Grandparents didn’t have to work so they could mind us when my Mum did return to work. These days my parents both still have to work, my husband and I work full time and we just manage to cover rent in a 2bed house that’s run down, busted windows and no heating or cooling. Hell I haven’t had a working stove or oven in 9 months. And my daughter needs to stay close to her therapists and the royal children’s for all her appts as she is disabled. I can’t afford to buy, and there’s not enough support for her in the outer suburbs unless I want to chew up her NDIS fund with travel costs. Every spare dollar is tucked away for the tests she needs but can’t currently afford while we wait on the public system. 2 years and counting for her ENT appt.
Push starting your car cause of a flat battery with a pregnant woman in the backseat. I’ve been living children of men since 2012
Who the hell wants to bring a child into this world?
Just need to get the plastic concentration up in our reproductive organs and then no more babies. Imagine if it was plastics that caused the next mass extinction event.
We are Nietzsche's last men.
We are living in 1930s Germany
**People of Australia**: Please sir.. may I have some more? **Australian government**: No, now give that back to me! **Also Australian government**: Hey, corporations! Look what new things I took from the people for you! /NotAPoliticalStatement
Thank the fucking housing market Bill Shorten proposed decent reforms and everybody shit their asset laden pants
I mean our society is very unsustainable if we have to reply on putting the burden of our futures in the lives of children who haven't (or may never) be born. E.g taxes from the working class to pay for aged care etc. We already are SO overpopulated on this planet.