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"WAAAHHH! Why don' anyone want us no more?"
"If you’ve traveled to remote places, or if you had the roads all to yourself during the pandemic lockdowns, you know firsthand that the World is a better place with fewer people in it. The coming population crash is Nature’s way of trying to correct a problem. Don’t fight it; Embrace it." - NY Times comment
"It is now the willingly childless woman who is the heroine of our planet. She is the one who now deserves all the kudos and praise, for helping to do what is necessary to spare humanity from the ravages of over-population" - Isaac Asimov, Feb. 6, 1976 Barbados lecture.
The recent NY Times piece (The White House can’t make babies great again) is spot on and it's time people accepted it. As I wrote in my March 25, 2024 post:
"An astonishing fact of modern history is taking hold: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids. Many are opting to have no kids at all. What gives? Is the human race on the verge of self- annihilation owing to population collapse? Nope. In fact the opposite is true, we are on track to hit 10 billion by the year 2050, it's just that the majority will be in 3rd world (i.e. African, Asian) nations.
According to an article in 'Population Connection' (March) the U.S. birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population.
In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87."
Meanwhile, the recent NY Times piece warns:
"MAGA movement is probably hoping to encourage well-educated families in the classier suburbs to add to their broods, rather than mothers motivated by bigger government checks. But that’s a losing proposition. In developed economies, having an additional child is such a huge, life-changing decision that there is virtually nothing the government can do to influence it one way or the other.
The U.S. fertility rate hit a record low of 1.6 average births per woman in 2024, putting it on a par with most of Europe. The rate was 2.1 in 2007 and 3.5 in the early 1960s. If, as Whitney Houston sang, the children are our future, then the United States doesn’t have one. Demographic decline is a huge economic and social challenge, and one that any serious government needs to address. Once birth rates fall below 2, workers are increasingly in short supply, welfare bills soar, health care costs spiral and, perhaps worst of all, the elderly acquire such electoral power that 20- and 30-somethings are crushed by the costs of supporting their parents and grandparents.
The White House may be trying to make babies great again. But it is going to fail, no matter how hard its leading figures try to lead by example. The task is beyond government. Instead of trying to annex Greenland or build a new ballroom, the Trump administration should be devoting more energy and creativity to working out ways to cope with fewer people."
And I'm afraid those specialized, tax-deferred, long-term Trump 530A investment accounts for children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028- won't help either. Created under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, these accounts provide a $1,000 initial Treasury-funded deposit, invested in stocks to build wealth. Oh, they will help pad the net worths of the already wealthy 1 percent, but won't make much of a difference to population growth.
The smarter portion of the populace already is aware that we have outrun our sustainability on this finite planet, e.g.
The interpretation of the graph is straightforward. By June, 2030, two full Earths will be needed to support the then human population. Already we are at 1.5 Earths, or 0.5 Earths beyond where we ought to be in terms of our sustainable numbers.
Isaac Asimov himself, in his 1976 Barbados lecture, believed the carrying capacity of Earth had to be 3 billion, no more. We are already past that by more than 4.5 billion. Again, the severe limiting of numbers ought to have been from 30+ years ago - not acted on just now!
Beyond this, there is the sheer economics of the situation, and given the degree to which Gen Z (the most plausible baby makers) are saddled with student loan debt and job-income instability, i.e.
A Skewed Economic System (Weighted for the Wealthy) Explains Why Gen Z Is Embracing "Financial Nihilism"
It is doubtful they can or will be contributors to any future 'baby boom'. Bottom line: raising kids now is simply too costly, on top of paying off college loans and scraping enough moola to rent a decent apartment, far less buy a home. Hell, the student situation alone is now so bad that many could see their wages garnished in the coming months, i.e.
Student Loan Borrowers in Default Could See Wages Garnished in Early 2026
So no, don't expect these young uns to suddenly pop out babies. Ain't gonna happen. So what's the practical solution? Well, to stop deporting millions of immigrants already here lawfully - with either green cards, or already in the asylum queue. Contrary to Right wing propaganda immigrants have helped cap inflationary pressures by expanding the workforce - despite falling birthrates - and have the potential to boost growth and public finances for years.
But the Trumpers' ICE assault, has cratered a whole array of needed jobs, from child care, to elder care, to landscaping to construction - basically decimating jobs few Americans gravitate to even in bad times. The likely outcome over years will be much lower growth in the economy and even potential stagflation - by 2030. Don't buy it? Then check out any or all of the following links:
Trump's immigration crackdown is hurting the construction industry : NPR
A Chilling Effect: Increased Immigration Enforcement Jeopardizes Child Care and Mothers’ Employment
How the current immigration crackdown is impacting food and farmworkers - FoodPrint
As for the pro-natalist political faction which still insists on more American-born babies, and more American workers, here are the ways to make a start:
PROVIDE:
Long term FREE child care. No mere subsidies or tax credits!
Long term free child education as well as nutritional support (for at risk families)
Long term (i.e. 3 months) PAID family leave available each year for either parent.
But don't look for any of these solutions any time soon, any more than seeing a pull back on immigrant raids, deportations. All this shows that while there are options that can help, there's little chance they'll be pursued in an unstable economy - which would rather destroy health care for 23 m people and give most of that money to the DHS for ICE invasions of more blue cities. Then people wonder why more babies aren't being made, but of course the wondering types are the same ones that can afford them but won't have them.
We behold some of them in a recent WSJ article ('What $25,000 a Night Buys on a Luxury Cruise', January 26, p.A12) wherein we learn that the 1 percent are so desperate to escape the maddening crowds on typical cruises ("lounge hogs parking themselves on tanning chairs for hours on end, insufferable screaming brats poolside") they will happily pay up to $25,000 a day for a luxury cruise. That is, one that is severely limited in population - no hoi polloi with screaming kids or their lowbrow parents hogging tanning chairs- and besides these elites can have "crab legs delivered to the room every afternoon".
Of course, what these high livers have done by their example is highlighted the very major drawbacks in a nation (or a planet) having too many people living cheek by jowl. Another reason also why many of the lesser income demographic are also choosing not to have kids, apart from the costs.
See Also:
“The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.”
—Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976
The Washington Post published an article this week titled A Middle-Class Family’s Only Option: A $43,000 Health Insurance Premium about how the GOP’s refusal to extend ACA/Obamacare subsidies means that Stacy Newton’s family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming will have to pay $43,000 a year for health insurance if they want to stay covered.
If, however, the United States had an extra trillion dollars a year — the amount we’re now spending every year on interest payments against the GOP’s $38 trillion national debt — the Newtons would only pay a few hundred dollars a month and we could also have Universal Childcare & Pre-K, Paid Family & Medical Leave, Tuition-Free College, Affordable Housing & No More Homelessness, End Child Poverty & Hunger, and, as mentioned, Affordable Healthcare for all Americans.
Yesterday, both Trump and his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development told us that 50-year home mortgages may soon be a thing. While seemingly insane (you could end up paying more than three times the cost of the house and never escape the burden of debt before you die), this is just the latest iteration of one of American businesses’ most profitable scams: the rental economy.
It’s a growing threat to the American middle class that rarely gets named, even as it reshapes our lives every day. Over the past two decades, it’s snuck in quietly, disguised as convenience, efficiency, and “innovation.”
As a result, nothing is “ours” any more. Instead, we’re renting our lives away.
There was a time when you bought things.
