2y ago

Millenials being accused of not pumping out enough babies when we can't even support ourselves

113 comments

If you wanted the younger generation to continue producing workers for the capitalist machine, you should have made sure that potential parents had enough resources to actually maintain a family if they started one.
But yeah, that would have slightly reduced quarterly profits, and we can't have that kind of long-sightedness messing with the short-term returns of our shareholders.
- I've been told it's going to trickle down any moment now...
  </s>

Population growth is a pyramid scheme.
- Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.
  FTFY
  
  You can always move to North Korea if you don't like capitalism that much.
- I'd never actually thought of it that way but, holy shit, that's pretty damned close!

If only there were people in this world who would want to come to our country . Heck, we could set up a system where employers can post jobs that they have trouble filling and we could match up people outside country who can fill that need. Then, if those people turn out to be decent and moral, we can let them stay in the country permanently.
It is too bad that everyone outside of the country is a foreigner who wants to steal jobs.
- Immigrants help out in the short term, but then they and their children realize the same thing that people who already live here do: that wages are too low, and that rent and cost of living is too high to support children.
  Plus, corporations can use those immigrants to bust unions and keep wages down and rent prices up. Supply and demand, because we live in an oligrarchic dystopia that doesn't have enough social safety nets to make sure that new workers coming in don't sabotage the ones currently working.
  I'm the children of immigrants and hang around with the children of other immigrants, and we're not having children ourselves, or ware waiting until increasingly later ages (minimum 30) because of how expensive it is to live, even without children. It only takes 1 generation to realize that new immigrants will just get stuck in the same rut that non-immigrants are already in.
  Adding more people just increases the power of corporations (the real government) to treat workers as disposable objects. It's probably why corporate run governments don't try to stabilize unstable regions, but rather prefer to exploit them until there's a mass migration. More people to use for dangerous labor = more expendables that no one can afford to care about.
  
  The very same reason NATO destroyed Libya's infrastructure including water pipelines and plunged all their inhabitants back to the dark ages back in 2011, and now NATO countries are complaining they are getting full of immigrants. Maybe if they hadn't commited war crimes there they would have stayed there. That waterway increased the country's carrying capacity and destroying it could arguably be classified as genocide.
  
  Yeah, globalization is a bit of a trap. The short term gains are enticing but we're just pushing off the inevitable.
  Plus, on a global scale, it's just people moving around. In the short term it may benefit one country or another, but it's just shuffling what we already have.
- Then you're just committing them to taking low paying jobs. Don't you see what is going on? This is what happened after the black plague that ended feudalism. We need to stick to our guns and make them increase wages. Your argument to have immigration solve the baby crisis is EXACTLY what business owners want. They WANT to keep wages low with an infinite influx of people from poor countries because these immigrants won't know they are getting fucked in the ass with low pay.
  
  Immigrants deserve a living wage too.
- Satire? I can't tell.
  
  Pretty sure, but you never can tell anymore.
  
  I would have suggested eating babies , but it would be counterproductive.
- I mean immigration exists in every western country, I dunno what you’re complaining about.
- "if those people turn out to be decent and moral"
  Who decides? Yikes.
  
  ‘Not a rapist, tax cheat, or murderer’ seems like a pretty low bar that most could manage to get over.
  
  Rephrase it to: fit for our justice system
  
  I've started rolling my eyes at "Who decides?" prompts. Whether it's judging people, interpreting laws, etc.
  PEOPLE. People process your grocery purchase at checkout, and verify you found everything okay. People determine whether the charge of murder is substantially proven and justified. People evaluate a person's immigration application.
  This is not a brand new science. Fallible, sure. Imperfect, sure. Useless, absolutely not.

Are baby boomers accusing millennials? Who the fuck is accusing ? I need to know
- @ypulse apparently

Hoooooo boyyyy, just wait until the next few generations are up to bat for breeding more worker bees. Population's gonna plummet :)
- Given the ability to automate production, its not really a bad thing for the population to decrease. Of course the process of decreasing and the sociatal adjustments are going to be... difficult.

Shit, until the west falls, I'm staying rubber'd up and preferably, in the guts of other men rather than doing some shit that can accidentally saddle me with an 18-year money sink in a country that already wants my every last dollar; since that whole 'reversible vasectomy' thing sounds both too good to be true, and outside of my current capability for expenditure.
- You have a way with words my occasional butt cowboy.
  
  Occasional Butt Cowboy
  You should post this to !bandnames@lemmy.world
- 18 years if you're lucky.
  
  18 years feels like an outdated number. I know very few people around that age who are financially secure enough to move out, often even with roommates.

That, and the planet cannot sustain our population with our current systems. Why have a kid when you know their future is doomed?
- I forget where I heard this stat, but the Earth could support 12 billion people if resources were distributed equitably. But, alas, :gestures broadly:
- That's the funny thing to me about this. There's a direct contradiction between the needs of capitalism and the needs of the planet. Infinite growth, overpopulation, it's all grand for $$$
  The economy requires growth, but the actual planet requires less people. The only sustainable countries on earth right now are places like Japan, where the economy is crumbling due to the aging population.
  Really makes it clear that our artificial systems aren't in sync with our actual needs.

Millennials and Gen-Z are truly the lost generation.
Imagine still living with parents in your late twenties or even early thirties because you simply cannot afford to even rent your own place. Now imagine that work pays like shit and you are busting your ass working long hours to chase an eternal pipe dream of economic prosperity. You can't even seek psychiatric help for your ailing mental health because it's expensive, inaccessible and oversubscribed.
For a man, being in that situation makes you downright undateable so it's not like you can rely on the joint incomes that couples do either.
And we wonder why toxic masculinity is on the rise...
The rich have done a smash & grab on the economy and made everybody poorer as a result of their own greed. It's a dangerous game.

Show us where there are conditions that would encourage people to start a family.

The part I don't understand is why it's important to hit the "replacement level". Wouldn't it be better for the planet if there were fewer people living on it and competing for resources?
- but then the megacorporations can't hit their iNfInItE gRoWtH and we can't keep making the billionaires richer.
- @AnnaPlusPlus
  Consider the number of financial instruments that are essentially pyramid schemes built on the assumption of perpetual growth.
  
  Its all of them
- If there's less people than jobs it's easier to ask for better wages.
- It would be, but the economy was built on perpetual growth schemes.
  Don't forget, the economy is here to be served by us, not the other way around!
  
  The economy will crumble if we don't get to replacement levels at least, but it will also crumble, along with everything else if we do. Only way out of this is to change the whole model before it crumbles. But that would mean the rich need to get (willingly) less rich, so I'm not holding out hope...
- The Ponzi scheme, that is American “social security” (I mean actual social security, but all the rest of the social services too), would collapse if there arent more poor people pumping money into, than are taking out of it. Instead of doing shit like taxing the fuck out of the rich, or AI/robots.
  But, yes, it would solve A LOT of the worlds problems if there were less people.
  
  To be fair, I don't think taxing robots will get you far...
- Yes, but our whole economy, and maybe even society itself is built on the requirement and assumption of growth.
  We steal tomorrow to pay for today.
  If we stop having enough people to grow, we will collapse under the requirements of our system until a new non-growth economy/society is formed from the ashes.
  I don't think it will be possible to have a smooth transition to a non-growth or low-growth society since very few people will willingly sacrifice the amenities we pay with in debt, which is paid for by predicted growth.
  When that predicted growth goes negative, collectively, we will not be able to afford the things we want, and that will cause mass chaos and potentially even resource wars.
- Not for capitalism. A lot of our systems were built on the concept of infinite growth.
- Actually, you're right, and I think that lowered populations are a good thing. World needs quality people, not just quantity. A world filled with a smaller amount of environmentally conscious and responsible people is better than a world filled with a large amount of meat eating, gas guzzler driving jackasses that spend all their time being racist, while overconsuming everything and yelling and shooting at anyone who even suggests that maybe they should cut down on consumption.
  
  That's true but the largest impact is caused by billionaires who fly even-more-gas-guzzling private jets, hunt and/or eat endangered species, buy gold and jewelry made with blood materials from Africa and use their spending power to influence the world negatively in multiple ways for profit.

Can't think of any particular reason we need to replace the US population. It seems like we've done enough.
- EXACTLY. The entire fucking world is overpopulated. This is like one of the only good things going on right now on a large scale.
  
  This isnt actually true.
  The surface area of just the land alone on Earth is more than enough to house every human alive right now. Its actually more than enough to house every human that ever lived since the dawn of human history on it with room to spare according to expert calculations. The global population didnt even hit 1 billion people until like 1800. Now, if you subtract out all the currently unlivable areas because of nuclear radiation and harsh weather and such, you're still going to have enough land for every human alive right now to live comfortably.
  Its just that modern humans hate the idea of living so spread out, and apparently all want to be stacked into the same 10 miles of land. Also, governments charge money for land, they're not giving that away for free.
  EDIT: In case you or someone else wants to check exact math, heres the data:
  Earth Land Area: 148,326,000 square km (this is actually only 30% of the Earths total surface area, the other 70% is covered by water)
  Human population (total since dawn of humanity, estimated): ~110,000,000,000
  Human population (current) ~8,000,000,000
  My estimations put it at around 15,000 square feet per person ever born, or approximately 200,000 square feet per person alive right now.
- Maybe it would be better to replace it with Europeans?
  Oh wait, already tried that...
  
  Maybe it would be better for americans to stop creating even more suburbia and increasing their resource consumption transporting tons of food and water away from city centers. As a bonus, vehicle dependency lowers dramatically.

Looking at the way things have been going for years (decades) now, giving someone a birth would be a huge disservice - they'll inherit a simultaneously more globalized and divided world, a world with technology that has the potential to trivialize sharing knowledge and experience, which is instead use to drive up engagement for the sake of profits, effectively breeding hate groups and echo chambers, a world with economy consisting of bubbles and not-so-careful manipulations, leaving our offspring in a position few would probably envy. Oh, and there's rapid climate change that is being ignored and actively accelerated by the people and other entities that are capable of doing anything about it.
I know more than a few people who have never considered any of the above, and I'm sure many people here know such people as well, so it's more than safe to say that whatever the humanity is facing in the near future, it's nothing similar to extinction through lack of birth.
The future seems really good for certain groups of people, but I doubt my kids could be a part of these groups, or even want to a part of these groups. Not that I would actively indoctrinate them, but I'd imagine that living with me through the years when they're developing and shaping themselves is going to leave its mark regardless.
Maybe I'll regret that decision when it's already too late, of course, but then again, this is not going to be a world-ending decision by no merit.
- the vast majority of people who decide to be child-free don't regret the choice later in life. https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed-April2023

It's not just millennials. I was born 5 years after the end of the Baby Boomers and by the time I was 20 everything was becoming out of reach. Add a energy crisis or two, 40 years of Republican austerity for anyone but themselves, and a few financial crashes We the People ended-up bailing out, and I never got anywhere enough traction to do more than just get by without a mountain of debt. We never outran the entitlement of the Boomer generation.
Good luck Millennials - and I mean it - but the only way out is to get out of the US while you can.

They'll kick you and they'll beat you and they'll tell you it's fair…
- Nah, they'll tell you it's either your own or the migrants fault.

Wait until the "Let It Rot" movement takes hold worldwide.

where is $1500 rent?
- Med rent for Chicago area is $1800.
  
  Omg that's crazy. How does anyone afford to live there?
- Rochester NY has been building tons of "luxury" apartments which are just giant buildings made cheaply to fit as many people in them and rent is like 1,800-2,200. Or you can rent an old chopped up into units city home from a slum lord and it's actually old and dirty for like 900.
- Right?

It's fucked that there's even a "replacement level" in the first place
That's so fucking dystopian
Edit: typo
- It's a complex subject that deserves legitimate scientific study. There are known detrimental effects of low fertility rates in a country, but they often take a long time to manifest. However, there are also many examples of horrific consequences of governments trying to affect fertility rate.
  
  I'm trying to think of a real world example of government breeding growth that's gone wrong, but I can't think of any.
  There's plenty of examples of breeding control that have gone horrific of course. I just can't think of the opposite example.
  
  if you can have a baby by buying bottom shelve food products for the last week of a month, what happens if you get twins
- ..It's a really super basic entry level concept in understanding demographics and populations, plus economics, human geography, migration trends, society in general, etc. There's nothing dystopian about it. (Arguably, the fact that people instantly think such studies are dystopic is itself dystopic.)
- it's pretty simple actually, 2.1, a pair to make baby + 0.1 for unforeseen circumstance

Hasn't the fertility rate in the US been going down from the 1960s? With immigrations covering the shortfall?
Actually looking at the data. It went down significantly in the 60 and 70s. Then picked up in the 80s, 90s and early 2000. Then started dropping again from 2010.
But one thing to note to seem to be that it never went past replacement rate after 1972. 2.1 is considered to the global number for replacement. So for the last 60 years or so immigration has kept the population growing in absolute terms.
Not making a political statement, I find it weird when people club a huge group of people into one bucket and brand them.
I do not like the terms but sticking to the terms here. It looks like the young boomers had a similar number of children to today and the older boomers were already dropping the number of children they were having.
But Gen-X had a higher rate for some reason.

Give me economical pro's and I'll consider it

I am a member of Gen X and I think Millenials are doing the best they can with the shitshow they inherited. Earth needs fewer humans, not more.

The people linking kids to capitalism im dead bruh 💀

"Accused", by who, YPulse? Why the fuck would I care about some shitpost article from a dumpster site?

Replacement level shouldn't be a goal when the population increases every year. At the very least house prices should be neutral or decreasing relative to wages, if you want more people than you're already getting.

Me and my gf make ends meet ( sometimes not) just by being alive and eat, we go super rarely out and didn't had vacation the last 10 years.
Doesn't help that I got I'll and need to hold now a special food diet till I die which makes mostly everything I can eat like 2x as expensive and it was rough for us before my illness.
- Easy solution: just don't be born in the first place.
- What's your diet about, Celiac? I have Celiac and so have to eat strictly gluten free, of course. This means bread, pasta, crackers, baking flour, frozen pizza etc all cost twice as much, like you're saying. It's mainly smaller brands and priced like specialty/organic foods. I tend to eat mainly things that are gluten free by default and aren't special versions like potatoes, chicken, tofu, fresh green beans, tomatoes, sour cream and so on. I also have a tree nut allergy, so even some specialty resaurants are difficult. Not being able to eat at almost every restaurant is lame, but one bright side, it must save me a lot of money!

It's like a bully kicking and beating you blue then complaining you won't just tell the teacher you're fine.
Like no shit. Multiple "once in a generation" recessions, rent pricing people out of places to live, inflation out the ass on basically everything, all the while wages stay stagnant as fuck. That's not even accounting for the absolute climate disaster we're inheriting.
Of course people are both less able to have kids and less inclined to have kids to put through the grinder of life. The very people complaining about this are the ones who helped create and continue on this scenario!

Bwahahaha. There are already a billion people in my country. I don't need to make more.

getting a vasectomy was one of the best things I ever did for myself.
- My wife and I are older millenials ('85 and '86). I got my vasectomy 2 years ago and I'm glad I did given that Roe v Wade isn't a thing anymore.
  It's no wonder our government doesn't want easy access to contraceptives or abortion. They need more fresh meat for the grinder!

I absolutely hate the inter-generational blame game. Probably because I don't even feel like I belong to any generation as I was born right at the end of 1980, so I'd be a young genXer or something. I don't even know how these generations are decided upon, but in particular I'm sick of hearing everything getting blamed on Millennials all the time, since it really feels like it's mostly a bunch of old rich conservatives doing all the moaning, and is largely the same kind of people as those moaning about bicycle lanes and wind turbines.
I just did a quick search to find a random list of 40 things Millennials are frequently blamed for. Some of the things in the list are absolutely stupid as fuck, but I'm sure we've all seen such articles. I guess it's easier to generate clicks with headlines blaming Millennials for the downfall of Western civilisation instead of maybe writing a thoughtful article on why there are fewer people having kids, that perhaps investigates issues the commenter mentions.

I'm 33 and me and my so are not having children. Cope you capitalist pigs. I'm living my one life the way I want and you can fk off with your credit cards and apple pies.
- Capitalist pigs: "So Roe is gone, next maybe birth control?"
  
  Get a vasectomy while it's still legal! I got one about 2 years ago.

My family basically adopted a kid that was in need. We aren’t having our own kids. It’s too expensive and we both don’t want to pass on our own mental health traits.
- Get a cat.

That's why you get a better job

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