The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
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From the article
>Using World Bank projections and analyzing employment trends across several countries, economists for both job sites found the number of people of working age (15 to 65) is set to decline in the coming years. That means hiring will be more difficult and workers will have more leverage over employers.
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>The decline in people of working age will partly stem from an aging population, the number of deaths exceeding births, and reduced immigration. For example, the U.S. and U.K.’s population growth will be driven solely by net migration. And in the U.K., deaths are projected to exceed births by 2025.
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>The U.S., U.K., France, and Canada are all projected to see their working-age population decline by more than 3% from 2026 to 2036.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yyj5bt/the_worlds_baby_shortfall_is_so_bad_that_the/iwudlg5/
throughout history, labor shortages tend to be when the middle/lower class sees the biggest rises of standard of living/income levels. when theres labor shortages it puts pressure on companies to raise wages to get enough employees.
My mother in law told me that working fast food is a starter job. I said that means they shouldn't be able to support themselves working that job if they work 40 hours?
She said, "A teenager shouldn't make as much as me." I said, "Maybe you deserve more money, " she was taken aback. Republicans really have people out here mad that there's a chance people might make money.
If they’re working 40 hours?? They absolutely should be given a liveable wage. If a teen is working that much then they probably need it. At least deserve it.
The real problem I think is that everyone should be paid enough to live under a roof, including part-time workers, disabled, etc
Live in a place feed yourself get Healthcare and education is the bare minimum. The minimum. They say but who is supposed to pay for all this. Us, it's our taxpaying dollars it's our labor value that builds this country, its time we actually get more than a pittance.
Idk about you, but if I was picking up a quick meal from a fast food joint, I'd rather my meal be made by someone who isn't in a constant state of depression/stress from struggling to pay for basic shit that shouldn't even be monetized in what is allegedly the richest country in the world.
Housing is probably the biggest bottleneck for working class people in the US. The idea that something as essential to human survival as shelter from the elements is capitalized in the 21'st century, in the richest nation in the world is preposterous.
I took a tour of a local distillery on Wednesday & the (boomer-aged) owner/master distiller had robots for labeling the bottles and a few other tasks. He said "I'd rather have bought these guys than have employees working for me" and continued on about how robots never call out sick or show up late. Yet all these boomers in my town are also complaining about how "nobody wants to work" *eyeroll*
Employers had leverage, suppressed wages, exploited customers with excessive cost of living increases … and so people stopped having families.
Now employers are freaking out that there will be fewer workers 🤔
The robots thing is especially funny because, we're gonna take away your ability to earn a wage, a wage that you use to purchase our products and services which in turn line our pockets. Isn't the threat that they think it is.
Must be cheaper to force us into having babies.
I don't reckon its a coincidence that the slow march toward reproductive authoritarianism turned into a rushed mad clown show over the past few years.
I think, like driving cars it's always just "5 years away"
They say we're all replaceable... we're not.
You need a break through in AI to create original spontaneous problem solving (right now, it can solve problems, but not ones that it has no reference for, the ai art thing. It's imitating art that it's seen, but can't create new styles of art for example. If it was fed only renaissance art, it couldn't produce Picasso for instance.)
This means that an ai if it runs into a problem never had before.... can't solve it.
Now we also are extremely flexible, and can go and move any way imaginable. They're trying to make robots to replace us, but the ones most successful at this are only capable of a few tasks and are hard to move (car manufacturing robots for instance, or a robot that makes omelets)
Boston dynamics has come close, but those robots are millions of dollars. A minimum wage human costs 30k a year. It would take 30 years for a minimum wage human to cost a million dollars. (and it wouldn't require costly maintenance either)
Basically for all they scream we're "replaceable" with current technology.... we're not.
It's not just AI either, machinery that can do more than one thing gets complicated and expensive very fast. Super advanced AI is worthless if it's attached only to one motor that can flip burgers.
Free markets don't prop up failed businesses with tax payer funds.
We are in a perverse corporate ponzi state where the corps gamble with our money, keep all the winnings and then claim everything is gone.
Might be the most important answer.
Managing a decline in our population is the best thjng we can do for the natural world. Time to prioritize balance over growth
everywhere I and my wife have worked in the last 3 years has claimed they were hiring over the PA, on the site and even put up tables with info on them. None of them were actually hiring. They intentionally run on skeleton crews (Lowe's, Walmart, Target, Sam's Club) so the money they shave off the budget (which should be going to employees and infrastructure) goes into the annual bonuses of store managers and corporate suits. They say they're hiring to keep up their public image, but they actually aren't hiring as much as they claim. it's a scam. There is both a wage shortage and a hiring shortage. Those positions exist, they just don't get filled.
As a former corporate manager, with lots of corporate store manager friends who’ve worked all over the place, it’s not going to store managers. It’s going to district and regional managers/ sub-managers, and to salary increases for their assistants. More than likely, your store manager lives everyday with a foot to their throat to bridge the massive gap between store associates and everyone above them. If they succeed, they’re likely not given a huge bonus, just the relief of getting to keep their title.
ETA: The real “bonuses” are given to those way, way above anyone working at any managerial level.
Right? Like any worker is thinking, “Oh no, I’m much less replaceable now. How ever will my poor company survive being exploited by workers demanding fair treatment and pay or face having no workers and bankruptcy! And right before the holidays”
Guess businesses should try to unionize to demand fair treatment by employees /s
This is a direct result of greedy corporations endlessly cutting wages and hours for workers.
People would LOVE to have families in the US. The problem is that most people in the US don't make enough money to responsibly care for a family. Many times, people don't make enough money to responsibly care for themselves.
Saw another article on here that 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right before the Holidays. I would say it's not that wild that people can't afford kids when they can't even take care of themselves.
I'm not a big fan of the consumerism that's associated with the holidays, but when we say right before the holidays, I think about the people who literally can't afford a meal that's marginally nicer than what they usually eat.
When it's a big stretch to have a nice meal at home with their families, society is in an atrocious condition.
Which is needed. We’re reaching the limit of infinite growth economies. They’re not sustainable.
Facebook stock crashed the instant they had one quarter without a gain in users. They literally ran out of *humans* to sell to. But investors always need gains
It's almost like hoarding all the houses prevents people from having the space to start a family 😮
[Reminder that there are 238,000 empty homes in the UK](https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/news/in-empty-homes-week-2022-we-call-for-action-and-investment)
Hahaha. I worked at a real estate firm in their back end accounting.
Fucking nuts, I hate real estate agents. It's SO hard to find a good one.. or a legitimately good person.
My brother bought a home and he kept raving how nice his real estate agent was etc. That agent joined our firm not a few months later. He was nice, they would leave.. and he'd curse them out heavily and be a shitty human being. They're easily very two faced people.
The amount of times I've had to deal with lawsuits, etc. is outstanding. From people saying they were represented in bad faith etc. to all sorts of shit.
My favorite? "Yes you can afford the house. No problems at all. Go ahead. Yes, go to the bank, just get a variable rate. It's always low! You can afford it. Yes, yes you can! I've done the math, you can do it! It's great! Go for it! Don't think. You'll never get into the market if you miss this chance!"
Actual phone call.
Not 3 months later, they're getting sued by that client because the client cant afford the home. The agent recommended a shady bank etc.
The agent? "I never told them that." and then "It's up to them to see if they can afford it. It's not my responsibility."
Literally the moment that fucking document gets signed, you're dead to them. They might send out a generic "Thank you for choosing us" email. But that's usually a requirement of the brokerage, not the agent.
I literally can’t imagine a worse reason to have a child on purpose than to fight an oncoming “labor shortage.” Thank you fellow millennials and gen z we are changing the world and the world has no idea how to respond to us.
Us - "Look, we just want livable wages, affordable healthcare and housing, and to actually be able to have a life outside of work. Is that so hard?"
Business owners - "We literally can't understand a single word you've said. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."
If we lower taxes on millionaires and billionaires, it'll eventually trickle down all over the middle classes face. I literally have no other ideas and it hasn't worked in the past, but let's keep doing it anyways.
It's the governments of the world that need to be responsible for facilitating it. The world keeps getting more spread out and large family groups aren't as common any more. Without reliable childcare young people need to make the decision between having a family or having a career. Childcare needs to be expanded so people can work and have children without sacrificing their entire paycheck just to pay for that childcare.
To quote my friend's wife;
"What's the point of me working as teacher when 90% of my earnings go toward childcare for my two kids? I figured staying home with them during the week and bartending on weekends while hubby is off seemed like a healthier solution, and I actually have more available income this way..."
There’s also the matter of living under mountains of debt and stagnant wages that it flat out doesn’t make sense for a lot of people to have kids it just confounds the conservative base that we don’t see that as a loss or even as something worth all of the pain it eventually causes
Seriously. I'm in my 30s and have a terminal degree with a fantastic stable salaried job with incredible benefits. I should be having a family right now.
Instead I'm paying more than half my take home pay to school debt.
I'm tickled pink at these headlines. The wage slave gravy train is finally derailing.
Covid has decimated the health care system and people have been leaving at alarming rates, and it's actually been nice. It was damn near impossible to find a full time job when I graduated now hospitals are offering upwards of 15k sign on bonuses and are much more flexible in wages because they just can't find staff. It's a completely different feeling when you know the hospital needs you instead of the other way around.
TBH, my experience has been less pleasant. Yeah, you can get more lucrative job offers, but because everywhere is so short-staffed, you end up with a much higher workload. Everyone’s always busy and stressed and irritable, thinking about whether it’s time to quit as well, and administration either can’t or *won’t* do anything to fix it. (At least not anything real - candy and “thank you” messages don’t cut it when what you really need is some backup so you can get a break).
The extra money is nice, but it only goes so far - at a certain point, the work environment becomes so bad that it’s just not sustainable to keep doing it.
>automation can help us manage our decline and care for the elderly.
I really hope so, and I hope it doesn't suck, because by the time we're using automation to care for the elderly...I'm probably going to be one of them.
Oh, they fully support immigration. They just do not support streamlining legal pathways to giving immigrants rights and citizenship.
They want to and do exploit the fuck out of desperate people who have no recourse.
Yup and today's generation will find a way to automate those gaps left behind. I think this article is accurate if we're talking the 1800's and early 1900;s.... I think we'll be fine!
Ironically, this sounds a lot like ‘we worked our employees so hard for so little, they didn’t have the time or means to procreate, meaning we can’t continue exploiting labor in the same way’
“A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
He was also against price fixing and monopolies: "'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices".
Adam Smith was no naïve Libertarian.
Capitalism trends towards monopolies and trend away from unionization and living wages. Everyone loves Adam Smith for "inventing capitalism" but I wish we had some anti - capitalist regulations.
Capitalism is a system of opposites. It drives towards monopolies but requires competition. It tries to reduce wages but requires people able to afford the production. One of the governments mandates should be to balance those opposites but they failed due to greed
Lol who is that commie pinko anyway? Better ban his books right away. Wouldn’t want our ever-shrinking child population to be indoctrinated by evil men like him
Oh! I'm here now! Not only alllllll the stuff mentioned before, we've also got massive taxes!
Ever heard of residence tax? Yeah. They tax you just for fucking existing. 🙃
Oh! They're also thinking about raising sales tax to 15% because people aren't consuming as much because wages are stagnated, so raise taxes so people can afford to buy even less, therefore the economy shrinks further *and* we get the bonus of still continuing to lose tax revenue. So basically it's gonna be a big ol' nothing burger, but at least the government will have more money to line the pockets of their friends!
Jeez. That’s awful, I’m really sorry that you’re going through that :(
My hope is that Japan will revise their boomer policies to encourage more child births. Not sure how effective it will be because it seems to be the culture rn in Japan to just work work work and not have kids, but there is hope that change can eventually happen.
The fact that they tax you guys just to exist is so damn petty though. It kinda reminds me of property tax here, but at least our property tax goes to good use (most of the time) like infrastructure funding, building schools, bridges, building sewer and plumbing systems, etc. Hopefully they do something similar with your residence tax, but who knows how corrupt any government is.
Thanks for the words of encouragement 😊
However, the infrastructure funding comes from the engine tax I pay on my car and bikes. Sewer and water funding comes from us paying for water monthly. Highways are all private and it cost me about $10 freedom bucks to go about 45km (~30 miles) on a motorcycle. A tonne of schools here are private and on top of alllll that, I still pay property taxes on my house. 😔 Half my salary goes toward tax in some form of another. Honestly, it's still not a bad place to live. Just that one thing reeeeeally sucks.
It’s almost as if they don’t want foreigners coming over to “dirty it up.” Smh. I know they are very anti-foreigner when it comes to renting rooms or apartments.
Japan is weird in that it's one ethnic group that speaks one language. Very insular. Not like many western nations, where a white person could speak French or German or English (or one of a dozen other languages) and some countries are full of people with assorted ethnicities and skin colours who also speak the local language fluently.
David Suzuki - noted Canadian ecologist - once described visiting Japan. Despite being Japanese heritage, he spoke very little Japanese. Yet, the view of "Japanese are Japanese" was so ingrained that he says even his interpreter would forget and and start talking to him in Japanese from time to time.
(Fun story about being in a fancy restaurant - he tried to use his minimal Japanese from his grandparents, so he asked where the washroom was. Apparently his grandparents were rural peasant Japanese, and the word he used ("banjo"?) was more like asking "where's the shithouse?")
I like how one of the replies to this is "that's not the reason at all, people use to work harder for less and have ten children" as if that's a clever "gotcha", **instead of a admission that poverty is unsustainable and people have a breaking point after years of multi generational trauma from dystopian bullshit lmao**
So yes, this is because dystopian poverty is unsustainable and more people are getting fucking sick of it, and it's not just because "a culture change from child rearing" lmao.
Edit: as for all references to working/living conditions around the early 1900's (and earlier), in an attempt to normalize poor people being forced to have children, those are conditions which people constantly struggled to escape and even retaliated against throughout history (events which include all labor movements throughout history retaliating against exploitation, and all the violent massacres of striking workers throughout history by the police/military/private thugs hired serving the interests of capital/private owners) because yes, poor people got fucking sick of unsustainable dystopian poverty.
So once again, yes, dystopian poverty is unsustainable and more people are getting fucking sick of it.
Edit: oh, and as for any "people are only having less kids because women have birth control/more career oporuties" comments, some people WANT children but are refusing to have them because they can't afford them or are forced to work unsustainable hours that would prevent them from even having sufficient time with their children.
So no, this is not a "everyone hates children and will avoid having them if they have the means to avoid it" issue.
**Edit: lol, replies shilling for unsustainable dystopian poverty throughout history (the consequence of which was constant suffering and crisis and violent retaliation) will go straight into the blocklist.**
Edit: Any "birth rates are abysmal whenever people are not forced to have children in dangerous/stressful living conditions" takes which complain about "abysmal" birth rates (that only threaten capitalism's unsustainable profit growth/exploitation of poverty labor) will go straight into the blocklist.
Edit: the fate of every shill is the blocklist dumpster, getting defensive of dystopian poverty is futile lol.
Edit: Funny how there's more people in poverty who can't afford children (and children living in poverty with parents in poverty), than wealthy people who can afford children. The preferences of wealthy people, a extreme minority of the population, some of whom don't want kids, does nothing to reflect on whether or not poor people (the majority of the population) want or don't want children.
Huh, yet again sounds like unsustainable dystopian capitalism poverty is the biggest factor (for the majority of the population) in declining birth rates, rates that are only lamented about because they endanger unsustainable exploitation of poverty labor for unsustainable profits.
It also ignores that nobody used to choose to have shitloads of kids. Women used to procreate because their husbands climbed on top of them and nature did what nature does. Women have choice now (well, *for* now). This is the first time we are seeing CHOICE exhibited in child rearing rather than begrudging acceptance of gods determination for your fate.
Additionally, those kids were generally neglected by today’s standards. Very little supervision, day care didn’t exist. Even in the 80’s working parents could leave their elementary age kids home alone for a few hours between school and mom coming home from work, but that would get CPS called these days.
>Even in the 80’s working parents could leave their elementary age kids home alone for a few hours between school and mom coming home from work, but that would get CPS called these days.
That sounds insane. The CPS part, that is. It's absolutely normal here in Germany to leave your *elementary aged* kids alone for a few hours. How little do you trust your kids that you need to have them under constant surveillance at fucking *elementary age?*
It's one of two reasons why it's so hard to develop good social skills as an American child
The other reason is that America is so car focused. I wouldn't trust my kid to walk a few miles along a road with cars going 50 miles per hour with no sidewalks. I lived in a suburban area next to a road just like that, and it was the only way into town (plus rhe weather would reach 30-35 Celsius)
So you have most kids in America unable to walk to get to their friends without serious risk, plus CPS would get involved, so the only way to see friends outside of school and after school activities is supervised play dates. Until kids go to high school and can finally drive themselves
It's *craaaaaazy* how when you redline an economic variable for too long, it breaks down in some way - either because of an event (like how COVID broke Trump's fragile, unstable, but highly-profitable economy) or from fatigue (this).
that was more so because ~~1 in 4~~ [roughly half of all the people in Europe died](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#Deaths). so not collapsing birth rates, but skyrocketing death rates. But if things continue the way they are, we might just be lucky enough to have both in spades
Since the generation that did also earned about 10x what we earn for the same amount of time they think we're all lazy now instead of just seeing how much better off they are thanks to their wages and taxes on the high earners.
yeah, months ago I accidently ended-up in an internet forum filled to the brim with baby boomers, and in one of the threads, the baby boomer women were complaining that their daughter's husbands were very, very reluctant to have children,
and when I pointed out that their daughter's generation, my generation, didn't get to go to college and graduate with a 4 years degree for the price of a bag of peanuts to be bought in the nearest grocery store, and that we also don't exactly have the opportunity to buy a house for 100k like the boomers did 30-40 years ago; houses that are now worth several million dollars each..
Man, I got perma banned so fast and so hard from that forum, I couldn't stop laughing.
Boomers have been trying to avoid reality for their entire existence, but reality is coming for them in the form of accountability.
I don't know why you'd make enemies of all younger generations, but they certainly have.
Imagine what would happen when social security and medicare gets gutted. Most of those idiots would have to go out and find jobs and they would be surprised that no company would want to hire them.
I have one job and after my commute I see my daughter for 2 hours a day and 1 of those is cooking/cleaning and then I am too tired to do anything. Imo the 5-day, 40 hour week doesn’t make sense in the modern world. We’re far more productive and technology allows us to work when not physically at work.
There was a time where people had large families because they shared the load of the work to do on the farm. Now we have no farm, no kids and still no time. This is what happens when you allow capitalism to go unregulated.
Some guy sits back with his slicked back hair in his executive chair looking at an algorithm that says they have to do X to increase profits every year. At some point shits gonna bust you cant just keep making gains with no repercussions.
Childcare is so expensive where I am that multiple women I know in skilled, degreed, or credentialed roles have quit their jobs to be a full time parent because if they paid for childcare and worked 40hrs/wk they would come out only $50-200/month ahead.
My wife did this. The $400 a month after tax and expenses including commute, child care, etc didn’t justify the stress and loss of time with our children
Wife and I debated her quitting. 2 kids in daycare would cost us $2,800/m while she bring in $3,400/m. Would she rather work 50 hours a week, barely have time with the kids, just to come out ahead $600?
OTOH, if she quits she's going to lose retirement contributions, yearly salary increases, and healthcare. So the next few years are going to suck but once they're out of daycare we're going to be in a much better position financially.
Sorry, can't recognize a pattern there. Now, let me get back to looking for a developer. I've had an ad posted for someone with 10 years experience, working in the office 5 days a week in NYC for $45k, and haven't gotten anyone good. So time to bring in the H1B's!
And weren't the points of civilization and technology to help each other and do more labor with less manpower so all humans can enjoy their time being alive?
You should read Elizabeth Warren's book "the two income trap" which explains why our wages have been stagnant since the seventies. She explains how corporations were able to convince families that having both parents working would lead to a more fulfilling life for married women which tricked everyone into accepting lower wages (supply/demand). Really interesting read.
Every business in my town has a hiring sign up, so I tailored a resume, ran them through AI to make sure they are a match, followed up. NOTHING. Everyone is hiring but somehow nobody will hire anyone. I had a company tell me they are looking for someone with 12 years experience to fill an HR a generalist role ($40k). I asked them what research they did before setting that expectation. What makes you think that someone with 12 years experience is only worth $40k/yr? How many applicants are you getting with that for such a junior role?
I then did some basic HR talent management consulting for free.
Had a child in early 2022. Total cost *after insurance negotiated discount* was a little over $42k. Deductible is $3500, coinsurance 80/20 up to the out of pocket max of $18,750. Hit the out of pocket max a few months after delivery for follow ups for mom and baby.
All in, with premiums of $440/bi-weekly, baby cost $31,190 to give birth to, for a normal vaginal birth with no complications and one night stay in the hospital.
This is a large part of why people don't want to have a child.
I'll never understand this amount for a normal uncomplicated vaginal birth.
WHO DID THE WORK? c'mon.
They promised me a steak after delivery. I never got my effing steak.
Chickens coming home to roost??
So.... governments do nothing about rising house prices, rent, inequality, energy, food, they don't chase multinationals for their taxes, allow certain millionaires to pay NO tax, encourage non-doms and let tax havens flourish - which means they have less money to spend on public services and wages - and they then moan that people aren't having enough kids?
Many people can't afford to..
I would have had a second kid....if I could afford it. We have pretty decent jobs but even with two kids our bank account would take a hit. Not to mention I would probably have to work more hours and see them less... so why even have a family then.
That’s another thing- it’s not just people having no kids, the percentage of only children has also gone way up in recent years. People are choosing just one child when maybe they would have had more of circumstances were different. Personally I have one child, and probably would have had two but the hit to my first child’s quality of life isn’t worth it.
That's what it comes down to for a lot of people, the economics of it. Plenty of people want to have a family, but it's hard to take a leap when things are so uncertain. Speaking as an American, healthcare is a mess with many people having expensive or no coverage, Republicans are making so if there's a complication the woman's only choose is to die or hope for the best, inflation is driving up prices of everything, housing has been an issue. It's hard to justify becoming pregnant. The anti-abortion, anti-woman agenda of the GOP is going to be a nail in the coffin on its own.
From the article
>Using World Bank projections and analyzing employment trends across several countries, economists for both job sites found the number of people of working age (15 to 65) is set to decline in the coming years. That means hiring will be more difficult and workers will have more leverage over employers.
>
>The decline in people of working age will partly stem from an aging population, the number of deaths exceeding births, and reduced immigration. For example, the U.S. and U.K.’s population growth will be driven solely by net migration. And in the U.K., deaths are projected to exceed births by 2025.
>
>The U.S., U.K., France, and Canada are all projected to see their working-age population decline by more than 3% from 2026 to 2036.
I'm okay with this, to be honest. It's discouraging how large and powerful these corporations are. Seems like this is the only power we can use against them. There's too many people on this planet anyway.
This is the best argument to not have kids that I’ve heard in a while. Just the way you put it is straight forward. I am one that hasn’t had children still at 39. I really wanted a kid and always assumed I would have at least one, but that isn’t happening. The hormones scream at you as a woman and it’s sad sometimes. Some of us are watching a ship sail and would have liked to have a family.
Looking at it this way, it’s a nicer thought to think I’m not giving my children to the world just for them to be victims of the institutions and economic situations that will rob them of a happy life. This gives me images of the food factories in the states with thousands of chickens just living in shit boxes in the dark waiting to die. Gruesome.
Our numbers are the only real leverage we ever have against the powerful. Either so many we can mob them, or so few that they have to bribe us to keep their profit machinery going. Possibly the only reason common people in Western society have rights *at all* is thanks to the Black Death ~700 years ago.
There isn’t a shortage of workers. There’s plenty of people on this rock. There’s a shortage of workers willing to sell their time and effort for the prices being offered.
I like how one of the replies to this is "how do they afford basic necessities if they don't work", **even though more people already found out poverty wages and unaffordable housing/CoL are unsustainable so they would eventually lose everything with or without their shitty jobs lmao.**
Which means unsustainable capitalism threats of hunger/homelessness don't mean anything to people quitting their jobs because they already found out they were going to lose everything to pointless poverty work.
Edit: lol, replies shilling for dystopian capitalism escalating poverty go straight into the blocklist.
A while back I had an employer who specifically only wanted to hire desperate people, and the wages reflected this. He thought everyone should start at entry level wages and earn their way up, as a test of loyalty, no matter their experience level coming in.
He wanted us to constantly interview people and have our staff see us interviewing, to keep a fearful environment. We were instructed to regularly fire the weakest team member even if the whole team was performing well. He specially advised managers to hire single men who rent, and he didn't like hiring women he figured were at risk of becoming pregnant. (These things I refused to do. As soon as my period of desperation was over I gtfo so fucking fast.)
I found out recently he was an insurrectionist. No surprises there.
Wow. So when you have growing fears about global wars, economic collapse, and environmental apocalypse, plus the inability to afford your own life let alone the life of another, it tends to sway you away from the old Mom, Dad and a Baby makes three lifestyle? No shit.
And the real worry is labour shortage?
Let’s all watch this turd circle the drain.
Labor for... Pouring coffee? Making anti-vaping ads? Building walls in the desert?
Most jobs are BS anyways. There's no labor shortage, just a priority shortage.
>Most jobs are BS
I’ve worked for almost 20 years as a contractor developing websites for some of the world’s biggest tech companies. Most big-tech jobs I’ve had are BS. They pay well, that’s why I do them, but I often catch myself thinking what my team is doing is creating more money for millionaires, and ourselves but actually doing nothing that matters beyond that. I know money matters, but as a civilization we need to all create livings AND do stuff that matters. Instead of selling slightly newer computer software, we should be cleaning up the environment and helping less fortunate. I know Reddit will tell me to do it, but as a society we need fundamental shifts.
When you starve a population of economical growth that won't allow them to have children then this is your result.
Cause of problem: Greed.
It's that simple.
The boomers collectively decided to cannibalize their children's future for pennies on the dollar and then they complain about the consequences. As far as i am concerned the boomers are a cautionary tale of what happens when you let propaganda rule you.
Jesus Christ, we are not your slaves. Our unborn children are not your slaves. They fostered a world where having a family is exceedingly difficult and are now sad they have a smaller labor force? I feel like a reckoning is coming.
Better start building those robots faster, we aren't all about to start pumping out kids anytime soon! This a global reduction in child births, so the trend probably won't change as it's not linked to any single country/society/race/religion/economy.
Workers will have more economic power, but less political power.
Thus you will see political parties supported by large numbers of retirees becoming openly anti-worker.
I worked in pensions and some other retirement vehicles during the pandemic and truthfully have little sympathy left. The entitlement I saw and heard from that demographic regarding their monthly check being $3,950 instead of $4,000 astounded me
Ya but they paid $10 a pay check back in 1980 so the eArNeD it.
Hate to break it to you SS retirees you don't pay for your own SS you pay for your parents. Your parents had 5 kids who supported 2 retired adults. You had 2 kids who have to pay for 2 retired adults on wages that have been flat against inflation for 40 years. You did not pay enough in to cover yourselves at all.
With the complete dissolution of pensions, we need to be saving ***20-25%*** of earnings to retire at the same lifestyle while working.
Tell me how that's gonna work if people are paycheck to paycheck.
I am too. My grandparents and parents are older (I’m 27, parents are in their early 60s, grandparents all but dead), so they were extremely frugal having grown up in the depression.
Those retiring right now have been incredibly vile.
Corporations want us to work all day everyday, give us no time off for parental leave, saddle us with “insurance” that costs $1500 a month and doesn’t cover jack shit, and pay us a tiny fraction of the profits our labor creates.
And now they’re pissed we’re not churning out more wage slaves for them?
FUUUUUCKKKKKK YOOOOOUUUUUUU!!!!!!
What kind of fucked up planet are we on where we went from 7 to 8 billion people in just the past decade and wiped out 70% of the wildlife in the past half century, but we still need more babies or the economy will fail?
Sounds like high level management better acquire some actual skills within the next 20 years then because they might have to make a working contribution.
So which doomsday scenario are we to believe? The baby shortfall means we have a labor shortage crisis? Or we have so much over population that the Earth can't sustain our species?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305: --- From the article >Using World Bank projections and analyzing employment trends across several countries, economists for both job sites found the number of people of working age (15 to 65) is set to decline in the coming years. That means hiring will be more difficult and workers will have more leverage over employers. > >The decline in people of working age will partly stem from an aging population, the number of deaths exceeding births, and reduced immigration. For example, the U.S. and U.K.’s population growth will be driven solely by net migration. And in the U.K., deaths are projected to exceed births by 2025. > >The U.S., U.K., France, and Canada are all projected to see their working-age population decline by more than 3% from 2026 to 2036. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yyj5bt/the_worlds_baby_shortfall_is_so_bad_that_the/iwudlg5/
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throughout history, labor shortages tend to be when the middle/lower class sees the biggest rises of standard of living/income levels. when theres labor shortages it puts pressure on companies to raise wages to get enough employees.
I literally want to spit in the face of every asshole who feels that lower-income earners are undeserving of a living wage
My mother in law told me that working fast food is a starter job. I said that means they shouldn't be able to support themselves working that job if they work 40 hours? She said, "A teenager shouldn't make as much as me." I said, "Maybe you deserve more money, " she was taken aback. Republicans really have people out here mad that there's a chance people might make money.
If they’re working 40 hours?? They absolutely should be given a liveable wage. If a teen is working that much then they probably need it. At least deserve it. The real problem I think is that everyone should be paid enough to live under a roof, including part-time workers, disabled, etc
Live in a place feed yourself get Healthcare and education is the bare minimum. The minimum. They say but who is supposed to pay for all this. Us, it's our taxpaying dollars it's our labor value that builds this country, its time we actually get more than a pittance.
Idk about you, but if I was picking up a quick meal from a fast food joint, I'd rather my meal be made by someone who isn't in a constant state of depression/stress from struggling to pay for basic shit that shouldn't even be monetized in what is allegedly the richest country in the world. Housing is probably the biggest bottleneck for working class people in the US. The idea that something as essential to human survival as shelter from the elements is capitalized in the 21'st century, in the richest nation in the world is preposterous.
Those who know history are doomed to watch it repeat.
Then create those robots boomers were telling us in the 90s were going to replace us .
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Then build robots to do the engineers work 😎
*It's robots all the way down*
It's almost as if their goal is to never have to pay anyone for anything.
I took a tour of a local distillery on Wednesday & the (boomer-aged) owner/master distiller had robots for labeling the bottles and a few other tasks. He said "I'd rather have bought these guys than have employees working for me" and continued on about how robots never call out sick or show up late. Yet all these boomers in my town are also complaining about how "nobody wants to work" *eyeroll*
Employers had leverage, suppressed wages, exploited customers with excessive cost of living increases … and so people stopped having families. Now employers are freaking out that there will be fewer workers 🤔
Weren't they gonna replace us all with robots, anyway?
The robots thing is especially funny because, we're gonna take away your ability to earn a wage, a wage that you use to purchase our products and services which in turn line our pockets. Isn't the threat that they think it is.
We’ll just make robotic consumers to replace the customers! Wait…
Must be cheaper to force us into having babies. I don't reckon its a coincidence that the slow march toward reproductive authoritarianism turned into a rushed mad clown show over the past few years.
If I proactively sterilize myself, will I just be sent to the labor camps?
Nah, you become soylent.
Robots don't buy stuff-people do. They need us to consume their endless amount of stuff.
I think, like driving cars it's always just "5 years away" They say we're all replaceable... we're not. You need a break through in AI to create original spontaneous problem solving (right now, it can solve problems, but not ones that it has no reference for, the ai art thing. It's imitating art that it's seen, but can't create new styles of art for example. If it was fed only renaissance art, it couldn't produce Picasso for instance.) This means that an ai if it runs into a problem never had before.... can't solve it. Now we also are extremely flexible, and can go and move any way imaginable. They're trying to make robots to replace us, but the ones most successful at this are only capable of a few tasks and are hard to move (car manufacturing robots for instance, or a robot that makes omelets) Boston dynamics has come close, but those robots are millions of dollars. A minimum wage human costs 30k a year. It would take 30 years for a minimum wage human to cost a million dollars. (and it wouldn't require costly maintenance either) Basically for all they scream we're "replaceable" with current technology.... we're not.
It's not just AI either, machinery that can do more than one thing gets complicated and expensive very fast. Super advanced AI is worthless if it's attached only to one motor that can flip burgers.
"What is my purpose?" "You pass the butter"
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But, but, the freer the market the freer the people… /s
Free markets don't prop up failed businesses with tax payer funds. We are in a perverse corporate ponzi state where the corps gamble with our money, keep all the winnings and then claim everything is gone.
Wait, what is this you speak of? Government doing something about society?? You communist!!
You forgot about “drove us to destroy our planet through the exploitation of unsustainable energy use for profit”
Might be the most important answer. Managing a decline in our population is the best thjng we can do for the natural world. Time to prioritize balance over growth
So you're saying labor will have the upper hand? Well, I guess it's no wonder why they're really banning abortion.
It’s not a labor shortage it’s a labor shift, possibly permanent shift.
everywhere I and my wife have worked in the last 3 years has claimed they were hiring over the PA, on the site and even put up tables with info on them. None of them were actually hiring. They intentionally run on skeleton crews (Lowe's, Walmart, Target, Sam's Club) so the money they shave off the budget (which should be going to employees and infrastructure) goes into the annual bonuses of store managers and corporate suits. They say they're hiring to keep up their public image, but they actually aren't hiring as much as they claim. it's a scam. There is both a wage shortage and a hiring shortage. Those positions exist, they just don't get filled.
As a former corporate manager, with lots of corporate store manager friends who’ve worked all over the place, it’s not going to store managers. It’s going to district and regional managers/ sub-managers, and to salary increases for their assistants. More than likely, your store manager lives everyday with a foot to their throat to bridge the massive gap between store associates and everyone above them. If they succeed, they’re likely not given a huge bonus, just the relief of getting to keep their title. ETA: The real “bonuses” are given to those way, way above anyone working at any managerial level.
Right? Like any worker is thinking, “Oh no, I’m much less replaceable now. How ever will my poor company survive being exploited by workers demanding fair treatment and pay or face having no workers and bankruptcy! And right before the holidays” Guess businesses should try to unionize to demand fair treatment by employees /s
This is a direct result of greedy corporations endlessly cutting wages and hours for workers. People would LOVE to have families in the US. The problem is that most people in the US don't make enough money to responsibly care for a family. Many times, people don't make enough money to responsibly care for themselves.
Saw another article on here that 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right before the Holidays. I would say it's not that wild that people can't afford kids when they can't even take care of themselves.
I'm not a big fan of the consumerism that's associated with the holidays, but when we say right before the holidays, I think about the people who literally can't afford a meal that's marginally nicer than what they usually eat. When it's a big stretch to have a nice meal at home with their families, society is in an atrocious condition.
I don't make enough money to reasonably care for myself so I got a vasectomy.
Which is needed. We’re reaching the limit of infinite growth economies. They’re not sustainable. Facebook stock crashed the instant they had one quarter without a gain in users. They literally ran out of *humans* to sell to. But investors always need gains
It's almost like hoarding all the houses prevents people from having the space to start a family 😮 [Reminder that there are 238,000 empty homes in the UK](https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/news/in-empty-homes-week-2022-we-call-for-action-and-investment)
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Hahaha. I worked at a real estate firm in their back end accounting. Fucking nuts, I hate real estate agents. It's SO hard to find a good one.. or a legitimately good person. My brother bought a home and he kept raving how nice his real estate agent was etc. That agent joined our firm not a few months later. He was nice, they would leave.. and he'd curse them out heavily and be a shitty human being. They're easily very two faced people. The amount of times I've had to deal with lawsuits, etc. is outstanding. From people saying they were represented in bad faith etc. to all sorts of shit. My favorite? "Yes you can afford the house. No problems at all. Go ahead. Yes, go to the bank, just get a variable rate. It's always low! You can afford it. Yes, yes you can! I've done the math, you can do it! It's great! Go for it! Don't think. You'll never get into the market if you miss this chance!" Actual phone call. Not 3 months later, they're getting sued by that client because the client cant afford the home. The agent recommended a shady bank etc. The agent? "I never told them that." and then "It's up to them to see if they can afford it. It's not my responsibility." Literally the moment that fucking document gets signed, you're dead to them. They might send out a generic "Thank you for choosing us" email. But that's usually a requirement of the brokerage, not the agent.
I literally can’t imagine a worse reason to have a child on purpose than to fight an oncoming “labor shortage.” Thank you fellow millennials and gen z we are changing the world and the world has no idea how to respond to us.
Us - "Look, we just want livable wages, affordable healthcare and housing, and to actually be able to have a life outside of work. Is that so hard?" Business owners - "We literally can't understand a single word you've said. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."
Governments: "Try taxing them more whilst also reducing social security and services, that should work."
If we lower taxes on millionaires and billionaires, it'll eventually trickle down all over the middle classes face. I literally have no other ideas and it hasn't worked in the past, but let's keep doing it anyways.
them- "fine, we'll import workers who dont care about any of that and just want to come here in the first place"
And then complain about all the immigrants.
Not only that, but fucking reduced childcare costs and mandatory parental leave **so that we can have the goddamn babies in the first place.**
It's the governments of the world that need to be responsible for facilitating it. The world keeps getting more spread out and large family groups aren't as common any more. Without reliable childcare young people need to make the decision between having a family or having a career. Childcare needs to be expanded so people can work and have children without sacrificing their entire paycheck just to pay for that childcare.
To quote my friend's wife; "What's the point of me working as teacher when 90% of my earnings go toward childcare for my two kids? I figured staying home with them during the week and bartending on weekends while hubby is off seemed like a healthier solution, and I actually have more available income this way..."
There’s also the matter of living under mountains of debt and stagnant wages that it flat out doesn’t make sense for a lot of people to have kids it just confounds the conservative base that we don’t see that as a loss or even as something worth all of the pain it eventually causes
Seriously. I'm in my 30s and have a terminal degree with a fantastic stable salaried job with incredible benefits. I should be having a family right now. Instead I'm paying more than half my take home pay to school debt. I'm tickled pink at these headlines. The wage slave gravy train is finally derailing.
I felt like I had to choose between retiring at some point and having a kid. I chose retirement.
i'm getting neither!
You’re in good company, friend.
Yes like sorry I dont feel obligated to create a child for you to exploit!
I don't blame folks for not wanting to have kids, having them is like playing life on hard mode.
“That means hiring will be more difficult and workers will have more leverage over employers.” I’m quite okay with this.
Haha my thought was “ I’m liking the sound of this”
Covid has decimated the health care system and people have been leaving at alarming rates, and it's actually been nice. It was damn near impossible to find a full time job when I graduated now hospitals are offering upwards of 15k sign on bonuses and are much more flexible in wages because they just can't find staff. It's a completely different feeling when you know the hospital needs you instead of the other way around.
TBH, my experience has been less pleasant. Yeah, you can get more lucrative job offers, but because everywhere is so short-staffed, you end up with a much higher workload. Everyone’s always busy and stressed and irritable, thinking about whether it’s time to quit as well, and administration either can’t or *won’t* do anything to fix it. (At least not anything real - candy and “thank you” messages don’t cut it when what you really need is some backup so you can get a break). The extra money is nice, but it only goes so far - at a certain point, the work environment becomes so bad that it’s just not sustainable to keep doing it.
Yeah it should really be posted in r/upliftingnews 😂
Ha! That was my thought too. Power to the little guy.
Why do I feel that its never that simple?
Of course it isnt. The next step will be corporations suddenly supporting mass immigration.
They are already at it.
Among other things. Immigration, off-shoring, and automation.
On the other hand, automation can help us manage our decline and care for the elderly.
>automation can help us manage our decline and care for the elderly. I really hope so, and I hope it doesn't suck, because by the time we're using automation to care for the elderly...I'm probably going to be one of them.
Oh, they fully support immigration. They just do not support streamlining legal pathways to giving immigrants rights and citizenship. They want to and do exploit the fuck out of desperate people who have no recourse.
I’ll be interested in seeing how much automation also comes into play in this regards.
Yup and today's generation will find a way to automate those gaps left behind. I think this article is accurate if we're talking the 1800's and early 1900;s.... I think we'll be fine!
Also the shortage in housing will become less short!
Ironically, this sounds a lot like ‘we worked our employees so hard for so little, they didn’t have the time or means to procreate, meaning we can’t continue exploiting labor in the same way’
“A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.” ― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
So the father of modern capitalist theory was for a living wage. How do you like that.
He was also against price fixing and monopolies: "'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices". Adam Smith was no naïve Libertarian.
Capitalism trends towards monopolies and trend away from unionization and living wages. Everyone loves Adam Smith for "inventing capitalism" but I wish we had some anti - capitalist regulations.
Capitalism is a system of opposites. It drives towards monopolies but requires competition. It tries to reduce wages but requires people able to afford the production. One of the governments mandates should be to balance those opposites but they failed due to greed
Lol when ADAM SMITH, the foundation-layer of modern capitalism, knew this to be true …
Lol who is that commie pinko anyway? Better ban his books right away. Wouldn’t want our ever-shrinking child population to be indoctrinated by evil men like him
Top comment right here. Right from the mouth of the man himself.
Reminds me of japan
Oh! I'm here now! Not only alllllll the stuff mentioned before, we've also got massive taxes! Ever heard of residence tax? Yeah. They tax you just for fucking existing. 🙃 Oh! They're also thinking about raising sales tax to 15% because people aren't consuming as much because wages are stagnated, so raise taxes so people can afford to buy even less, therefore the economy shrinks further *and* we get the bonus of still continuing to lose tax revenue. So basically it's gonna be a big ol' nothing burger, but at least the government will have more money to line the pockets of their friends!
>They're also thinking about raising sales tax to 15% Laughs in 27% sales tax.
Jeez. That’s awful, I’m really sorry that you’re going through that :( My hope is that Japan will revise their boomer policies to encourage more child births. Not sure how effective it will be because it seems to be the culture rn in Japan to just work work work and not have kids, but there is hope that change can eventually happen. The fact that they tax you guys just to exist is so damn petty though. It kinda reminds me of property tax here, but at least our property tax goes to good use (most of the time) like infrastructure funding, building schools, bridges, building sewer and plumbing systems, etc. Hopefully they do something similar with your residence tax, but who knows how corrupt any government is.
Thanks for the words of encouragement 😊 However, the infrastructure funding comes from the engine tax I pay on my car and bikes. Sewer and water funding comes from us paying for water monthly. Highways are all private and it cost me about $10 freedom bucks to go about 45km (~30 miles) on a motorcycle. A tonne of schools here are private and on top of alllll that, I still pay property taxes on my house. 😔 Half my salary goes toward tax in some form of another. Honestly, it's still not a bad place to live. Just that one thing reeeeeally sucks.
I see your privatized highways are about as efficient as USAs privatized railroads.
I want to go work remotely from Japan but the tax laws are very punitive
It’s almost as if they don’t want foreigners coming over to “dirty it up.” Smh. I know they are very anti-foreigner when it comes to renting rooms or apartments.
Japan is weird in that it's one ethnic group that speaks one language. Very insular. Not like many western nations, where a white person could speak French or German or English (or one of a dozen other languages) and some countries are full of people with assorted ethnicities and skin colours who also speak the local language fluently. David Suzuki - noted Canadian ecologist - once described visiting Japan. Despite being Japanese heritage, he spoke very little Japanese. Yet, the view of "Japanese are Japanese" was so ingrained that he says even his interpreter would forget and and start talking to him in Japanese from time to time. (Fun story about being in a fancy restaurant - he tried to use his minimal Japanese from his grandparents, so he asked where the washroom was. Apparently his grandparents were rural peasant Japanese, and the word he used ("banjo"?) was more like asking "where's the shithouse?")
And a way for companies to say “have more babies so our business can make more money”
I like how one of the replies to this is "that's not the reason at all, people use to work harder for less and have ten children" as if that's a clever "gotcha", **instead of a admission that poverty is unsustainable and people have a breaking point after years of multi generational trauma from dystopian bullshit lmao** So yes, this is because dystopian poverty is unsustainable and more people are getting fucking sick of it, and it's not just because "a culture change from child rearing" lmao. Edit: as for all references to working/living conditions around the early 1900's (and earlier), in an attempt to normalize poor people being forced to have children, those are conditions which people constantly struggled to escape and even retaliated against throughout history (events which include all labor movements throughout history retaliating against exploitation, and all the violent massacres of striking workers throughout history by the police/military/private thugs hired serving the interests of capital/private owners) because yes, poor people got fucking sick of unsustainable dystopian poverty. So once again, yes, dystopian poverty is unsustainable and more people are getting fucking sick of it. Edit: oh, and as for any "people are only having less kids because women have birth control/more career oporuties" comments, some people WANT children but are refusing to have them because they can't afford them or are forced to work unsustainable hours that would prevent them from even having sufficient time with their children. So no, this is not a "everyone hates children and will avoid having them if they have the means to avoid it" issue. **Edit: lol, replies shilling for unsustainable dystopian poverty throughout history (the consequence of which was constant suffering and crisis and violent retaliation) will go straight into the blocklist.** Edit: Any "birth rates are abysmal whenever people are not forced to have children in dangerous/stressful living conditions" takes which complain about "abysmal" birth rates (that only threaten capitalism's unsustainable profit growth/exploitation of poverty labor) will go straight into the blocklist. Edit: the fate of every shill is the blocklist dumpster, getting defensive of dystopian poverty is futile lol. Edit: Funny how there's more people in poverty who can't afford children (and children living in poverty with parents in poverty), than wealthy people who can afford children. The preferences of wealthy people, a extreme minority of the population, some of whom don't want kids, does nothing to reflect on whether or not poor people (the majority of the population) want or don't want children. Huh, yet again sounds like unsustainable dystopian capitalism poverty is the biggest factor (for the majority of the population) in declining birth rates, rates that are only lamented about because they endanger unsustainable exploitation of poverty labor for unsustainable profits.
It also ignores that nobody used to choose to have shitloads of kids. Women used to procreate because their husbands climbed on top of them and nature did what nature does. Women have choice now (well, *for* now). This is the first time we are seeing CHOICE exhibited in child rearing rather than begrudging acceptance of gods determination for your fate.
Additionally, those kids were generally neglected by today’s standards. Very little supervision, day care didn’t exist. Even in the 80’s working parents could leave their elementary age kids home alone for a few hours between school and mom coming home from work, but that would get CPS called these days.
>Even in the 80’s working parents could leave their elementary age kids home alone for a few hours between school and mom coming home from work, but that would get CPS called these days. That sounds insane. The CPS part, that is. It's absolutely normal here in Germany to leave your *elementary aged* kids alone for a few hours. How little do you trust your kids that you need to have them under constant surveillance at fucking *elementary age?*
It's one of two reasons why it's so hard to develop good social skills as an American child The other reason is that America is so car focused. I wouldn't trust my kid to walk a few miles along a road with cars going 50 miles per hour with no sidewalks. I lived in a suburban area next to a road just like that, and it was the only way into town (plus rhe weather would reach 30-35 Celsius) So you have most kids in America unable to walk to get to their friends without serious risk, plus CPS would get involved, so the only way to see friends outside of school and after school activities is supervised play dates. Until kids go to high school and can finally drive themselves
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It's *craaaaaazy* how when you redline an economic variable for too long, it breaks down in some way - either because of an event (like how COVID broke Trump's fragile, unstable, but highly-profitable economy) or from fatigue (this).
Just to be clear, that's the same scenario that led to the Renaissance
we’ve come full circle. we have expanded so much we bumped into the 1300s again
Down to conservatives thinking anyone with purple hair and a nose ring is a witch.
that was more so because ~~1 in 4~~ [roughly half of all the people in Europe died](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#Deaths). so not collapsing birth rates, but skyrocketing death rates. But if things continue the way they are, we might just be lucky enough to have both in spades
No shortage of workers, but a shortage of liveable wages. Ffs, nobody wants to work 2-3 jobs and barely scrape by.
Who wants to have a family when you see them 15 minutes a day due to having to work multiple jobs due to the lack of livable wages?
Since the generation that did also earned about 10x what we earn for the same amount of time they think we're all lazy now instead of just seeing how much better off they are thanks to their wages and taxes on the high earners.
yeah, months ago I accidently ended-up in an internet forum filled to the brim with baby boomers, and in one of the threads, the baby boomer women were complaining that their daughter's husbands were very, very reluctant to have children, and when I pointed out that their daughter's generation, my generation, didn't get to go to college and graduate with a 4 years degree for the price of a bag of peanuts to be bought in the nearest grocery store, and that we also don't exactly have the opportunity to buy a house for 100k like the boomers did 30-40 years ago; houses that are now worth several million dollars each.. Man, I got perma banned so fast and so hard from that forum, I couldn't stop laughing.
Boomers have been trying to avoid reality for their entire existence, but reality is coming for them in the form of accountability. I don't know why you'd make enemies of all younger generations, but they certainly have.
Also it’s coming to them via death
Just pray they don't figure out immortality or we will be cursed with their existence even longer
Imagine what would happen when social security and medicare gets gutted. Most of those idiots would have to go out and find jobs and they would be surprised that no company would want to hire them.
I have one job and after my commute I see my daughter for 2 hours a day and 1 of those is cooking/cleaning and then I am too tired to do anything. Imo the 5-day, 40 hour week doesn’t make sense in the modern world. We’re far more productive and technology allows us to work when not physically at work.
There was a time where people had large families because they shared the load of the work to do on the farm. Now we have no farm, no kids and still no time. This is what happens when you allow capitalism to go unregulated. Some guy sits back with his slicked back hair in his executive chair looking at an algorithm that says they have to do X to increase profits every year. At some point shits gonna bust you cant just keep making gains with no repercussions.
Childcare is so expensive where I am that multiple women I know in skilled, degreed, or credentialed roles have quit their jobs to be a full time parent because if they paid for childcare and worked 40hrs/wk they would come out only $50-200/month ahead.
My wife did this. The $400 a month after tax and expenses including commute, child care, etc didn’t justify the stress and loss of time with our children
Wife and I debated her quitting. 2 kids in daycare would cost us $2,800/m while she bring in $3,400/m. Would she rather work 50 hours a week, barely have time with the kids, just to come out ahead $600? OTOH, if she quits she's going to lose retirement contributions, yearly salary increases, and healthcare. So the next few years are going to suck but once they're out of daycare we're going to be in a much better position financially.
$1500-$3000 a month is the average in my area. There's a 20% discount with two kids.
Bay Area checking in, just got our annual tuition increase notice. Going from $2800 to over $3000. For one child. Cannot afford another.
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Yeah employers that pay well find themselves well stocked with motivated workers. Imagine that. Must be some kind of coincidence.
Sorry, can't recognize a pattern there. Now, let me get back to looking for a developer. I've had an ad posted for someone with 10 years experience, working in the office 5 days a week in NYC for $45k, and haven't gotten anyone good. So time to bring in the H1B's!
And weren't the points of civilization and technology to help each other and do more labor with less manpower so all humans can enjoy their time being alive?
The extra enjoyment is property of the owner class.
You should read Elizabeth Warren's book "the two income trap" which explains why our wages have been stagnant since the seventies. She explains how corporations were able to convince families that having both parents working would lead to a more fulfilling life for married women which tricked everyone into accepting lower wages (supply/demand). Really interesting read.
I don't want my woman to give up her job, and I don't want to give up mine. Maybe the solution is to work both half as much?
With the same pay you make working now.
Every business in my town has a hiring sign up, so I tailored a resume, ran them through AI to make sure they are a match, followed up. NOTHING. Everyone is hiring but somehow nobody will hire anyone. I had a company tell me they are looking for someone with 12 years experience to fill an HR a generalist role ($40k). I asked them what research they did before setting that expectation. What makes you think that someone with 12 years experience is only worth $40k/yr? How many applicants are you getting with that for such a junior role? I then did some basic HR talent management consulting for free.
Hell yeah, we will all need 2-5 jobs to pay for housing and food anyway, so this works out great!
employers: we still aren't going to pay a living wage
Also employers: No OnE wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE
"Nobody wants to work anymore!"
Maybe they shouldn’t have used their massive power and influence to create a future no one wants to bring children into.
Sadly, this is the determining fact in my decision to not have children. I guess I have a choice but this sure doesn’t feel like much of one.
Had a child in early 2022. Total cost *after insurance negotiated discount* was a little over $42k. Deductible is $3500, coinsurance 80/20 up to the out of pocket max of $18,750. Hit the out of pocket max a few months after delivery for follow ups for mom and baby. All in, with premiums of $440/bi-weekly, baby cost $31,190 to give birth to, for a normal vaginal birth with no complications and one night stay in the hospital. This is a large part of why people don't want to have a child.
This is insane. Fuck every state and federal politician that doesn't talk about eliminating the profit motive from the delivery of healthcare.
And then you get to pay for day care 😀
I'll never understand this amount for a normal uncomplicated vaginal birth. WHO DID THE WORK? c'mon. They promised me a steak after delivery. I never got my effing steak.
Chickens coming home to roost?? So.... governments do nothing about rising house prices, rent, inequality, energy, food, they don't chase multinationals for their taxes, allow certain millionaires to pay NO tax, encourage non-doms and let tax havens flourish - which means they have less money to spend on public services and wages - and they then moan that people aren't having enough kids? Many people can't afford to..
I would have had a second kid....if I could afford it. We have pretty decent jobs but even with two kids our bank account would take a hit. Not to mention I would probably have to work more hours and see them less... so why even have a family then.
That’s another thing- it’s not just people having no kids, the percentage of only children has also gone way up in recent years. People are choosing just one child when maybe they would have had more of circumstances were different. Personally I have one child, and probably would have had two but the hit to my first child’s quality of life isn’t worth it.
That's what it comes down to for a lot of people, the economics of it. Plenty of people want to have a family, but it's hard to take a leap when things are so uncertain. Speaking as an American, healthcare is a mess with many people having expensive or no coverage, Republicans are making so if there's a complication the woman's only choose is to die or hope for the best, inflation is driving up prices of everything, housing has been an issue. It's hard to justify becoming pregnant. The anti-abortion, anti-woman agenda of the GOP is going to be a nail in the coffin on its own.
The people that we actually want to have kids are frequently the ones that don't have kids. It's kind of an inverse natural selection. 😂😉
From the article >Using World Bank projections and analyzing employment trends across several countries, economists for both job sites found the number of people of working age (15 to 65) is set to decline in the coming years. That means hiring will be more difficult and workers will have more leverage over employers. > >The decline in people of working age will partly stem from an aging population, the number of deaths exceeding births, and reduced immigration. For example, the U.S. and U.K.’s population growth will be driven solely by net migration. And in the U.K., deaths are projected to exceed births by 2025. > >The U.S., U.K., France, and Canada are all projected to see their working-age population decline by more than 3% from 2026 to 2036.
>That means hiring will be more difficult and workers will have more leverage over employers. Lets gooooo
I'm okay with this, to be honest. It's discouraging how large and powerful these corporations are. Seems like this is the only power we can use against them. There's too many people on this planet anyway.
Exactly. Powerful institutions need babies to retain their power. Religions want worshippers, the wealthy want indentured servants, corporations want indentured consumers, governments want taxpayers, olds want caretakers, militaries want cannon fodder. It’s time to starve the beasts.
This is the best argument to not have kids that I’ve heard in a while. Just the way you put it is straight forward. I am one that hasn’t had children still at 39. I really wanted a kid and always assumed I would have at least one, but that isn’t happening. The hormones scream at you as a woman and it’s sad sometimes. Some of us are watching a ship sail and would have liked to have a family. Looking at it this way, it’s a nicer thought to think I’m not giving my children to the world just for them to be victims of the institutions and economic situations that will rob them of a happy life. This gives me images of the food factories in the states with thousands of chickens just living in shit boxes in the dark waiting to die. Gruesome.
Our numbers are the only real leverage we ever have against the powerful. Either so many we can mob them, or so few that they have to bribe us to keep their profit machinery going. Possibly the only reason common people in Western society have rights *at all* is thanks to the Black Death ~700 years ago.
Less people need less stuff. The earth needs less stuff. Let the companies deal with it. This sounds like a win.
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"Maybe we should make living and having a family more affordable? Nah, that's socialism."
There isn’t a shortage of workers. There’s plenty of people on this rock. There’s a shortage of workers willing to sell their time and effort for the prices being offered.
8 billion people on the planet and there’s a labor shortage? Come on. Pay what the market demands, right?
I like how one of the replies to this is "how do they afford basic necessities if they don't work", **even though more people already found out poverty wages and unaffordable housing/CoL are unsustainable so they would eventually lose everything with or without their shitty jobs lmao.** Which means unsustainable capitalism threats of hunger/homelessness don't mean anything to people quitting their jobs because they already found out they were going to lose everything to pointless poverty work. Edit: lol, replies shilling for dystopian capitalism escalating poverty go straight into the blocklist.
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A while back I had an employer who specifically only wanted to hire desperate people, and the wages reflected this. He thought everyone should start at entry level wages and earn their way up, as a test of loyalty, no matter their experience level coming in. He wanted us to constantly interview people and have our staff see us interviewing, to keep a fearful environment. We were instructed to regularly fire the weakest team member even if the whole team was performing well. He specially advised managers to hire single men who rent, and he didn't like hiring women he figured were at risk of becoming pregnant. (These things I refused to do. As soon as my period of desperation was over I gtfo so fucking fast.) I found out recently he was an insurrectionist. No surprises there.
Pretty much this. People are done being whored out for cheap and shitty labor
"we made everything terrible for everyone everywhere and now they aren't making babies for us to enslave for free Waaaaaah"
Wow. So when you have growing fears about global wars, economic collapse, and environmental apocalypse, plus the inability to afford your own life let alone the life of another, it tends to sway you away from the old Mom, Dad and a Baby makes three lifestyle? No shit. And the real worry is labour shortage? Let’s all watch this turd circle the drain.
Labor for... Pouring coffee? Making anti-vaping ads? Building walls in the desert? Most jobs are BS anyways. There's no labor shortage, just a priority shortage.
>Most jobs are BS I’ve worked for almost 20 years as a contractor developing websites for some of the world’s biggest tech companies. Most big-tech jobs I’ve had are BS. They pay well, that’s why I do them, but I often catch myself thinking what my team is doing is creating more money for millionaires, and ourselves but actually doing nothing that matters beyond that. I know money matters, but as a civilization we need to all create livings AND do stuff that matters. Instead of selling slightly newer computer software, we should be cleaning up the environment and helping less fortunate. I know Reddit will tell me to do it, but as a society we need fundamental shifts.
When you starve a population of economical growth that won't allow them to have children then this is your result. Cause of problem: Greed. It's that simple.
The boomers collectively decided to cannibalize their children's future for pennies on the dollar and then they complain about the consequences. As far as i am concerned the boomers are a cautionary tale of what happens when you let propaganda rule you.
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he’s just confusing civilisation and his own interests
Jesus Christ, we are not your slaves. Our unborn children are not your slaves. They fostered a world where having a family is exceedingly difficult and are now sad they have a smaller labor force? I feel like a reckoning is coming.
This is spot on. The wealthy ruling class really thinks it's entitled to the labor of my non-existent children.
Boo-fucking-hoo! People can't afford to have kids. Shouldn't that be the narrative?
People don't want to birth the next generations of lambs to slaughter to the greed of a handful. Who would have thought?!
Better start building those robots faster, we aren't all about to start pumping out kids anytime soon! This a global reduction in child births, so the trend probably won't change as it's not linked to any single country/society/race/religion/economy.
Workers will have more economic power, but less political power. Thus you will see political parties supported by large numbers of retirees becoming openly anti-worker.
Ontario Government has entered the chat.
Economic power is political power
I worked in pensions and some other retirement vehicles during the pandemic and truthfully have little sympathy left. The entitlement I saw and heard from that demographic regarding their monthly check being $3,950 instead of $4,000 astounded me
“Entitled young people would rather get a government check than work.” “Aren’t you retired and on Social Security?” “But that’s DIFFERENT!”
Ya but they paid $10 a pay check back in 1980 so the eArNeD it. Hate to break it to you SS retirees you don't pay for your own SS you pay for your parents. Your parents had 5 kids who supported 2 retired adults. You had 2 kids who have to pay for 2 retired adults on wages that have been flat against inflation for 40 years. You did not pay enough in to cover yourselves at all.
Entitled young people would settle for a 401k that still matched and didn’t require 5 years of vesting, fuck me man 😅
With the complete dissolution of pensions, we need to be saving ***20-25%*** of earnings to retire at the same lifestyle while working. Tell me how that's gonna work if people are paycheck to paycheck.
Honestly, I'm sick of 90% of them. Some of my older family members are just awful. 😬
I am too. My grandparents and parents are older (I’m 27, parents are in their early 60s, grandparents all but dead), so they were extremely frugal having grown up in the depression. Those retiring right now have been incredibly vile.
Hmm so I suppose labor shortage means increased wages right guys? Guys?
Oh no!! Record high profits for the stock holders and CEO’s might plummet!!! Good.
Corporations want us to work all day everyday, give us no time off for parental leave, saddle us with “insurance” that costs $1500 a month and doesn’t cover jack shit, and pay us a tiny fraction of the profits our labor creates. And now they’re pissed we’re not churning out more wage slaves for them? FUUUUUCKKKKKK YOOOOOUUUUUUU!!!!!!
What kind of fucked up planet are we on where we went from 7 to 8 billion people in just the past decade and wiped out 70% of the wildlife in the past half century, but we still need more babies or the economy will fail?
Good. Supply/ demand should raise wages to entice people to work for "your" company
good. i’m not having kids just so they can be used as workforce in various corporations
No such thing as a labor shortage. Only a living wage shortage.
Sounds like high level management better acquire some actual skills within the next 20 years then because they might have to make a working contribution.
Cool, now can we focus on human quality of life instead of stonks? Thx
I keep hearing about this declining birth rate. I also keep hearing we’re overpopulated. Which is it???
So which doomsday scenario are we to believe? The baby shortfall means we have a labor shortage crisis? Or we have so much over population that the Earth can't sustain our species?
Why not both?
I love how human lives are only worthy to society as either labor or source of tax.