A Bold Idea to Raise the Birthrate: Make Parenting Less Torturous

A Bold Idea to Raise the Birthrate: Make Parenting Less Torturous

The collapsing birthrate is another crisis we are supposed to worry about.  I don’t recall when the switch was flipped from over-population to under-population.

When I was a young man, I supported environmental causes.  One was an organization called Negative Population Growth.  This was when the US population was 250 million, and world population was 5 billion. 

NPG didn’t want to kill anyone off, but figured we’d all be more comfortable with Earth resources being spread over fewer people.  They wanted a discussion to establish optimum population levels and institute policies to get us there.  For the US, they figured reduced immigration could get us to about 160 million people over a century or so.  That made sense.

Now, the US populations is 330 million and the world holds 8 billion people, and we are supposed to be worried that birthrates are declining so rapidly, we will run out of people.  That doesn’t make sense.

Articles keep being written about how AI and robots are going to take everyone’s job, and universal basic income is a necessity.

There is no need to fret about running out of people.

The US has build up a huge debt.  We assume that we can grow our way out of it.  Currently, the US debt comes out to $106,000 per American.  If we get a bunch more Americans, it will be less debt per person.  That won’t work because we keep piling on more debt, but we hope to keep kicking the can down the road.

The US needs to institute a wide variety of policies to generate a surplus, and start paying off the debt.  We need to do that now. 

Politicians and economists have a growth mindset.  That made sense at one time.  In 1776, when America became a country, our population was growing by about a third every decade.  We were expanding.  Currently, that’s not true now for the US or the world.

We don’t need to worry about declining birthrates for several more decades.  It’s time to switch our focus away from growth and towards stability.  Some decline in population means more resources for everyone.

Changing the focus to stability, still requires people to do work.  Yeah, that’s tricky.  We may need to figure out what work is really necessary, and find ways to make it attractive to do the work that must be done.

I retired four years ago, because it was my best option.  I’m productive every day, and could be for many more years.  My dad was still cleaning out gutters at 83 years old.  My mother could drive until she was 80 years old.  I could not be tempted to take some bullshit, tedious and unpleasant job.

Many retired people would be happy to take a comfortable, flexible and worthwhile job to have a sense of purpose and for the social aspect.  They won’t if it jeopardizes their healthcare or retirement benefits.

Automation will certainly take on many jobs that currently exist.

Women will not be tricked or rewarded into having more children.  Changes can be made to make children more of a blessing, and less of a burden.  I don’t know much about that, but car seats and the standard tax deduction seem like areas that could be improved.