[HN Gopher] Baby shortfall is so bad that the labor shortage wil...
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Baby shortfall is so bad that the labor shortage will last for
years
Author : doener
Score : 32 points
Date : 2022-11-18 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Having a kid in the US is retirement-suicide at best, if you're
| not rich. As in, it'll all but completely kill any hope of a
| decent retirement. And if you get unlucky (as far as the kid's
| health) it's like winning a reverse-lottery ticket that condemns
| you to lifelong poverty. Except the odds of that happening are
| _way_ better than hitting a lotto jackpot.
|
| I get that birth rates are also low in Europe so a good social
| safety net can't be all of the solution, but I know an awful lot
| of people in the US who'd like to have kids, or who'd like to
| have more of them, but it's such a bonkers-bad financial decision
| that they can't bring themselves to do it. That is, I'm pretty
| sure there's a lot of desire in the US to have more kids, but
| you're punished so badly for it that people avoid it anyway. I
| think fixing our healthcare system and improving our public
| pension scheme to something better than "if you have to rely on
| it, you're probably fucked" would help a _ton_.
| dmm wrote:
| > Having a kid in the US is retirement-suicide at best, if
| you're not rich.
|
| Not having kids will create other problems for retirees.
| Retirement is fundamentally the working supporting the retired.
| In 1940 there were 42 workers for every retiree in the US.
| Today there are three and by 2030 there will be two. Three to
| two may not sound like a lot but that's a 50% increase.
|
| Retirement is going to be way, way more expensive in the
| future.
|
| > so a good social safety net can't be all of the solution
|
| Total fertility(# of kids per woman) is falling basically
| everywhere and nobody has found a way to increase it once it
| starts falling.
|
| That doesn't mean a better social safety net is a bad idea but
| I don't think increasing fertility is great argument for it.
| rayiner wrote:
| This sounds like one of those fatfire tropes that's not true.
| See, e.g., all the old people I know who have kids.
| labrador wrote:
| I'm retired and I'd be looking for options like Canada's
| voluntary euthanasia program if I didn't have my adult
| children. It's surprising to me how meaningless money has
| become now that I am old and lacking the energy to enjoy it.
| I'm grateful I still have something to live for.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Right, the in-hindsight value may make it worth it, but when
| you're 25 or 30 or 35 and start to run the numbers on the
| terrible shadow having a kid will cast on your future savings
| and then realize opportunity cost makes it even worse... it
| can be hard to see that less-quantifiable perspective
| clearly.
|
| (for the record, I have some kids, but _damn_ can I ever
| understand why people choose not to, even when they do want
| them)
| labrador wrote:
| > start to run the numbers
|
| The problem is at a young age you don't know the important
| things to include in your formulas or how to value them.
| What's it going to cost to pay someone to make decisions
| for you when you start having trouble making them for
| yourself? It's going to cost a lot to set that up with
| someone trustworthy ahead of time. If you've done a halfway
| decent job of raising your kids they will do that for free
| and you don't even have to set it up. They will be watching
| you and making sure you are ok. They will do it because
| they love you, not because you are paying them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Kids have no obligation to provide elder care though, and
| estrangement rates are material.
|
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/05/20/how-
| many-...
| labrador wrote:
| Right. There are no guarantees when calculating the cost
| benefits of having kids. The biggest risk in having kids is
| not financial in my opinion. The biggest risk is that they
| will bring you an enormous amount of suffering, say by
| becoming drug addicts and committing suicide. I took the
| risk and it paid off for me. All I'm offering here is a
| counter argument.
| rjprins wrote:
| So many problems are created because of the huge number of people
| on earth. A shrinking population is only bad for people with a
| vested interest in growth; investors and employers, but good for
| everybody else, including future generations, the climate, and
| nature.
| kmlx wrote:
| > A shrinking population is only bad for people with a vested
| interest in growth; investors and employers, but good for
| everybody else
|
| a shrinking population is a disaster overall. productivity goes
| down, more elderly, social services strained, smaller taxable
| cohorts. the needs will still be there, the money and the
| people to solve them won't.
| matt3D wrote:
| Productivity as we currently measure it, yes.
|
| It seems we're trending (hopefully) to a more sustainable
| future. Consumerism as we know if today may not exist in the
| near future. If the only thing we care about is producing
| Food, Housing and Art/Culture; we will have plenty of people.
| jmoak3 wrote:
| Yeah exactly. What the original commentor is hoping for is a
| reset to a previous point in time. Which would be nice in
| many of ways they've outlined, but isn't possible. Imagine if
| a large corrupted and bloated city could simply not be large,
| corrupted, or bloated.
|
| In real life we've seen when such a city loses people or
| revenue, the trauma of the pullback is devastating and the
| bloat and corruption do not simply go away. Detroit, 1970s
| NYC after the suburban flight, and the people clinging to
| shrinking regions of Japan come to mind.
|
| As our countries have a population pullback wealth will
| shrink, corners will be cut, innovation will slow, and likely
| more coal than ever will be burned.
| webdood90 wrote:
| Let it burn. I'm not bringing kids into this mess.
|
| Climate change, war, pollution. An endless list of problems
| due to humanity's greed. There is no changing the
| trajectory at this point. Human's are in denial about our
| future but we've already laid our beds.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I believe the phrase is "made our beds" FYI.
|
| No opinion one way or the other with regards to kids/no
| kids. Just thought I'd point it out :)
| Qem wrote:
| *more unassisted elderly.
| tbihl wrote:
| Fewer people means less specialization. If you lose a billion
| people, recognize that you're not losing the billion poorest
| people, but rather a distribution that skews rich. When
| populations are declining, a lot of the things we thought were
| as sure as gravity turn out to be the fun parts of
| cryptocurrency bubbles: infrastructure maintenance; ever-
| increasing division of labor, specialization, and the global
| development initiatives and technologically advanced low-carbon
| energy research those entail; people determined to protect
| trees and wildlife; and all pensions, home value trends, and
| fiat currencies that depend on growth to obscure.
|
| Everyone has a vested interest in growth. Unfortunately, many
| wealthy people have short-term (single lifetime) interests in
| the reverse.
| tsol wrote:
| >investors and employers
|
| When retirement is tied up in stocks for the majority of
| Americans, everyone is an investor.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Automation will make up much of the gap.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| This is good. All the changes after the Black Death lowered
| Europe's population were the end of the medieval world and the
| beginning of the Enlightenment.
|
| Lot's of exciting changes in store!
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The plague killed people of all ages, it didn't just reduce the
| relative proportion of young people.
| poxwole wrote:
| Wonderful, workers will have more power
| notadev wrote:
| Stop overthinking it. Settle down and have kids. I know no one
| else will give you this advice, because it's generally bad
| advice, but seriously...just start trying to make the baby and
| let nature do it's thing. If you wait for the perfect time, it
| may never arrive. Or when it does, you'll regret having waited so
| long. Nothing in my life has been as worthwhile as raising my
| children. It's not always easy, you have to work on resolving
| conflicts between siblings or you and your kids (teens amirite?)
| and you'll have to think of more than just yourself in pretty
| much any decision you make, and everything has extra steps. It
| sounds like a pain, but I wish I could do it 4 more times! My
| mother had me at 16 and thankfully I survived. I'm in a better
| position but not by any means well off or able to stop working,
| but I am happy with my lot. I would definitely say make sure you
| are a functional adult and in a relationship with someone you are
| going to be forced to deal with for at least 18. Aside from that,
| let the adventure begin!
| notch656a wrote:
| It being "worth it" is not really a given though.
|
| I'm also a parent and although I fully execute my duty to the
| best of my abilities in the interest of the child I never found
| it to be particularly advantageous position to be in. You're
| basically on-call constantly for an often rote and laborious
| task and there is no guarantee you're going to enjoy it. If you
| do it well nobody (except if you're very luck the child) gives
| a fuck and if you fail or have remarkably bad luck you end up
| in prison. I doubt I'm the only one that just tries to enjoy it
| to the extent to keep my sanity, for the same reason I would
| try to keep smiling while in prison.
|
| My personal advice is if someone has an enjoyable life now and
| don't absolutely have to have children, stop and think hard
| about the fact you may turn a lifestyle you enjoy into a
| responsibility you can't back out of.
| blahblah1234567 wrote:
| black_13 wrote:
| rayiner wrote:
| I hate the argument we can make up for labor shortfalls with
| immigrants. Chuck Schumer says "we have a population that's not
| reproducing on its own."
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/communi...
|
| He says we can fix that with immigrants. But if there is
| something causing people to not want to "reproduce," it seems
| like that needs to be fixed. Otherwise, you're just shifting the
| burden of dealing with whatever that is onto immigrants trying to
| raise their families here. Like, I'm glad I'm raising my kids
| here instead of in Bangladesh. But it's a lonely and isolating
| here in comparison to the way it is back home.
| ido wrote:
| It's not just "here" though, birth-rates are dropping worldwide
| with economic development.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Meanwhile, there's lots of unemployed people in small towns,
| homeless are filling our cities, and most jobs that can be had
| pay little. Adding a never ending stream of immigrants to that
| mix feels like pouring gas on a fire.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| And we're currently deliberately trying to curb upward
| pressure on wages and increase the unemployment rate. While
| others cry about a labor shortage but apparently conveniently
| forget how market signals work when it's costing _them_
| money. Go figure.
| notch656a wrote:
| The cost and regulation of raising children is much lower
| overseas. It's rational that the US would be a net consumer of
| children and some of these other nations are net producers of
| children. Comparative advantage.
|
| And I do mean consume. These adult immigrants pay taxes into
| the US without having benefitted from US taxpayer provided K-12
| education themselves, and we get to consume their labor without
| having contributed to their upbringing.
|
| It's honestly shocking people have kids at all in the US. Any
| random chucklhead can call and make up whatever they like to
| CPS. If you get divorced, you can actually be thrown in debtors
| prison if you can't come up with a certain amount even if you
| never even spent close to that amount on the child when you
| were married (see American dude who was taken hostage while
| contracted in Iraq, he was imprisoned upon return because he
| didn't pay CS while being a hostage to terrorists). If you let
| the kid walk to the park or home you may end up with criminal
| charges, nevermind both parents need to be busy at work to
| provide the standard of care CPS requires to not take away the
| children. And if you're a woman in some states and you find out
| the kid has debilitating disease you may be forced to go all
| the way to term knowing you're going to wreck their life and
| your own.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I, for one, would love to see more nurses, doctors, elder care
| workers. We should want more of these workers, not less. One
| could argue that AMA needs to be forced to increase the number
| of workers in these fields and reduce occupational liability
| for healthcare workers. But even that will fall short of what
| is required in greying America today. If you want real world
| evidence of this, look at Canada which is frantically trying to
| get immigrants because their elderly population has no one to
| take care of them.
|
| Making people reproduce will take a wholesale change in the
| American way of life. This would include wholesale changes in
| food, healthcare, health insurance, housing, inequality and a
| general well-being of humanity. One party in our country is
| actively attempting to reduce liberties (this party is red in
| color if this is not obvious), which makes living in this
| country a precarious position.
|
| As an older child-free millennial, I am living the scenario
| described in the article. I can assure you that my life path
| hasn't been easy for the first 35 years. I have zero interest
| in making my life even more difficult for the remaining 35, for
| the sake of society.
|
| Make healthcare easy, then we'll talk. Until then, I thank
| immigrants in America.
| notch656a wrote:
| Well the incentives have also shifted.
|
| Long ago your kids were like a retirement policy.
|
| Now society says that's bad. You can't and shouldn't have
| kids to provide for your own future. No the kids are there,
| in the ultimate hypocrisy, to provide _for everyone elses
| future_ via compulsory taxes funding social programs. So
| everyone else benefits from your raising them, while you
| disproportionately shoulder the costs, creating a massive
| "free rider" problem.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > No the kids are there, in the ultimate hypocrisy, to
| provide for everyone elses future
|
| I don't know why this is being downvoted. If you listen to
| any republican biased radio/TV, you'd hear people blaming
| young people all the time. It's like they hate me for not
| having children BECAUSE it reduces the size of the labor
| force.
|
| Sorry republicans. I ain't bringing any kids to this world
| to serve YOU.
| rayiner wrote:
| The working age labor force serves everyone, not just
| "republicans." You also need working age people to pay
| taxes and provide the government services democrats want.
| If native born democrats won't have them, then when they
| consume services in retirement, they'll be free riding on
| republicans and immigrants.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I agree that working age labor force serves everyone. But
| it is only "Republicans" who want to impose rules on
| people so that they have birth. If you truly believe in
| liberty, you also agree to let people live their lives.
|
| > If native born democrats won't have them, then when
| they consume services in retirement, they'll be free
| riding on republicans and immigrants.
|
| No one is preventing Republicans from having as many
| babies as they want. Go ahead. Make 100s of them and
| train them to be skilled. If they can't, I am happy with
| immigrants filling the gap. The real question is, why do
| Republicans feel the need to ask "others" to do what they
| want instead of doing it themselves?
| rayiner wrote:
| But the immigrants have to come here and deal with all those
| problems. (On top of dealing with the fear our children will
| also end up "child-free.") The fact that they will put up
| with doesn't seem like a great reason not to fix the problem.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > The fact that they will put up with doesn't seem like a
| great reason not to fix the problem.
|
| Like I said, the happy-path lifestyle structure in America
| is not suited to reproduction. Sure we must try to fix the
| problem but we all know it's not going to happen soon. I am
| likely to die before significant changes happen.
|
| Until then, I still want skilled labor in the right places.
| I will continue to welcome immigrants who fill that gap.
| [deleted]
| blahblah1234567 wrote:
| mikem170 wrote:
| Declining birth rates are happening everywhere in the world,
| not just in the christian liberal west for the reasons you
| gave. The primary causes seem to be urbanization and women's
| access to education and birth control. It makes sense to have
| more kids living on a farm, not so much in a city.
|
| This will drive lots of changes, both cultural and economic. Is
| it a good thing or a bad thing? Probably depends on who you
| ask. Are lot of people scared of these changes? Definitely.
| advisedwang wrote:
| More info if anyone wants to understand this in depth:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-is-great-replacem...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| "the number of people of working age (15 to 65) is set to decline
| in the coming years."
|
| 1) In richer countries with better working conditions "working
| age" can be, and for many people has already been, extended into
| the 70s and 80s. "Working age" and 'retirement' are new concepts,
| not a fixed part of being human.
|
| 2) While so-called 'unemployment' is low, labor force
| participation rate has continued to drop:
| https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
| Broken out by age: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-
| force-particip...
|
| Both of these things mean that there is still a lot of room to
| accommodate a decreasing "working age" population.
| aliqot wrote:
| This reminds me of when you get 2 or 3 little mosquito fish in
| your tank, soon you have 50 in a few weeks and you're wondering
| what you're going to do. Eventually the brood sizes get smaller
| and the tank finds its own equilibrium.
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