- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
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“The challenge is that no single cause can be identified for the declining rate.” Sure you can: capitalism.
So true. Over and over again in the article it says that people can’t afford children and universities. It keeps saying the cost of living is up and then says there is no single cause people won’t have children.
And you can’t discount Japan’s absurdly toxic work culture.
Exacerbated by……. Capitalism.
Feudal-inspired work culture, ultra-liberal capitalism, and xenophobia what a combo!
I agree with capitalism being a main cause. Additionally, many people also just don’t want to raise a child. They don’t want the added responsibilities and lack of freedom. Even people for whom capitalism works would rather enjoy their own life.
I just don’t want to go through pregnancy, personally. Love kids but not enough to risk my life and permanent bodily changes. The being poor part is secondary
My mother had to have pelvic floor surgery after having three kids. Prior to that, she had to get her gallbladder removed shortly after my brother’s birth. Pregnancy is extremely unappealing to me, and I don’t think the long term effects of it are talked about enough.
Even people for whom capitalism works would rather enjoy their own life.
Is that why the ruling class has no problem having kids, usually with a bunch of different people?
I guess you still have a point. They typically have these children and then go off to live their rich lives instead of being a parent.
It is after all, the only thing you people know how to call out as a systemic issue in the world, so it might as well be solely responsible for every gripe you have I suppose huh.
Let’s read the article and look the causes:
“With the rising cost of living, I don’t think people feel they can afford to, or comfortably say they want to, have children,” said 23-year-old Anna Tanaka.
In 2020, women got married for the first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in 1985, government data shows.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each child than families have in the past. That drives up the average cost of raising a child for the broader population
Tuition at private universities jumped fivefold between 1975 and 2021, and by 19 times at public universities, data shows.
These are all symptoms of capitalism. Alienation and seeking “class mobility” leads to people getting married later. The cost of living is a capitalist construct, and it rises primarily due to seeking profit. Colleges are also seeking to profit, and have successfully convinced people that taking debt early in life is good for individuals going into the labor pool. The debt also increases alienation and people who would have children are suddenly priced out of it due to education debt.
It’s hilarious to me that you linked this as somehow a result of capitalism
In 2020, women got married for the first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in 1985, government data shows.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each child than families have in the past. That drives up the average cost of raising a child for the broader population
I mean the whole post is silly but this part especially is just chef’s kiss as a response to the poster above.
I explained how they were symptoms of capitalism. If you can’t understand it, then maybe you need a deeper understanding of the topic. How doesn’t it make sense?
Having fewer children means you spend more on the fewer children, driving up average cost of raising children
We have one President indicted 91 times so on average Presidents are indicted twice because we’ve had 46 of them.
This is just how math works, and has nothing to do with any economic system
“average cost” can vary in meaning on this topic. I read it as “fewer people are buying goods necessary for children, leading to raised prices and a higher average cost of raising children”. Considering studies done on the cost of raising children, this is how I interpreted the quote. But your interpretation is also technically correct, and I won’t fault you for reading something differently than I did.
That’s the incorrect way to read this. Rather, people are spending more on their children, and people without children are seeing average cost of raising children.
Effectively, the standard of living for children is going up and people who feel they cannot hit that standard of living are (in Japan’s case especially) opting not to have them.
I assure you that poor people are still having children that survive.
Capitalism is surely partly to blame but it’s laughable to identify it as the sole cause.
I’ll never understand statements like these. Capitalism is the #1 reason there’s a profit incentive for any given thing to be horrible.
So it was because of capitalism that the communist revolution killed millions of people around the world.
Uh, the more you know…
I think people define capitalism vastly differently. To some capitalism is simply the ability to trade goods for personal profit, which exists in almost every society. To others its the dictionary definition of an economic and political system.
That’s unfair, you made a valid point, but I’m going to make this goalposts flexible for others
You, just now
What? I don’t even have a stake in this debate. I am just pointing out how often I notice that two people seem to be discussing entirely different ideas.
What you’re missing is that the first group there is populated by idiots.
I don’t know where you people get this concept. Humans are the issue, not capitalism. There’s literally no functioning system of trade without capitalism. It’s just human nature. We are greedy and we want more than others so that we feel secure in our own future. It’s not fucking rocket scientist, and it’s not fucking capitalism.
Do you really Envision a world where everyone works equally and gets paid equally and nobody makes extra profit but somehow people are happy? That doesn’t sound like any of the humans I’ve ever known, even the nice ones. You need to be a little bit more realistic and get your childish ass out of the playground.
We couldn’t even get people to wear masks to not kill each other and you’re over here holding your breath for agapelandia lmao
Did you read the article?
https://lemmy.world/comment/2996502
You can’t make long ass statements like this witbout even reading the reasons cited in the article through government data.
The cost of living is a capitalist concept.
the cost of living is a capitalist concept
No, it isn’t. Lol
There are fundamental costs to human survival and those costs must be borne out somewhere. Hunter/gatherers also had a cost of living.
Animals foraging resources in nature is capitalism mannnnn
The rising disparity in wealth is a result of capitalism.
The cost of living is so high because we’re funneling as much money as possible to as few people as possible.
Every day it gets worse, and this is by design.
It’s just human nature. We are greedy and we want more than others so that we feel secure in our own future.
you’re projecting your own terrible views here, not stating universal fact
and it’s not fucking capitalism.
fucking lol
https://theconversation.com/humans-arent-inherently-selfish-were-actually-hardwired-to-work-together-144145
https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/human-nature-and-social-change/
Workers owning a company would also have a profit incentive because the workers would like to make more money.
Workers owning their own company would incentivize creating stable growth, since the workers aren’t going to willfully destroy the company they all have a stake in.
Whereas now we have unstable growth because the C suites, executives and shareholders milk companies dry and then toss them. They have no concerns about whether the bottom rung guys are sustainable.
You’re going to need to define “stable” and “unstable” growth here.
Frankly it’s laughable to assert there is a sole cause in the first place when there’s a myriad of different people here with a myriad of their own personal factors at play.
“It’s all about the money.”
You’ll understand when you’re older.
“It’s all about the money.”
Funny how it’s always you people pretending like we have our heads in the clouds, when you don’t understand this simple fact of life yet.
It’s okay, maybe when you’ll older you’ll get it.
Let’s be real though. You do understand it but you want things to stay how they are. You’re afraid to come out and say it and I don’t hold you above that behavior.
There’s a term for people like you, useful something. I can’t remember it.
So brave. What an insightful comment. If you people stub your toe you will find a way to blame capitalism. Such a vacuous statement with no real world application.
If people dont have enough time to spend and raise their kids, dont have enough money to raise them without despair, if they dont have where to drop them during work hours, people cant have kids.
You really should think before doing a vacuous remark about anything.
“hey guys capitalism bad amirite? Haha”
Now what? Walk us to the next step, because 99% of comments here are just declarations with no actionable framework. Give me more and I’ll listen, but if all you’ll do is repeat the same thing ad nauseam without a roadmap then people will get bored and move on.
I can tell you’re mad he’s criticizing the system you’ve been indoctrinated to believe is flawless.
I don’t think you’re above the behavior of saying something is ‘a vacuous statement with no real world application’ just because you don’t like what’s being said.
At the end of the day it’s just circlejerk with no real world discussion. All the same catchphrases diluted into meaningless statements with no intended outcome except for some feeling of moral superiority. DAE Les capitalism amirite guys? “Indoctrinated” “flawless system”. Are you 14?
We got a live one, boys.
See guys. Pirky gets it.
Is this a Corky reference?
Sounds great to me. Wish every country had a declining birth rate.
Honestly, if everyone woman only had 2 children that would still reduce the population without causing demographic collapse which is what Japan is undergoing. A rapid decline in population creates misery for everyone. You really what a birth rate that hovers around 2 for gentle population decline.
I’ve heard the claim rapid decline is terrible before. I imagine there may be some adjustments people dislike which is easier to adjust on a slower rate of decline… but “misery”, how?
Let’s just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you’re gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.
That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.
SoOo rather than pressuring people to have kids they don’t want, maybe we can shift our attention to the absurdity of the system? At the very least tax billionaires out of existence worldwide
nonsense, let’s just ban abortions and wait for the magic to happen. surely people won’t resort to dangerous practices like coat hangers and poison because there’s no precedent of that in history, like ever. we’ll just head over for a pint and wait for all of this to blow over. the dragons demand their hoard, and by dog they shall have it!
Supporting old people is already a sector of business. A wealthy country should already be on top of this? Can we not improve using automation to meet the higher demand?
Basically every government planned for what has been the norm over the entirety of human history. Which seemed logical up until recently. That means for decades policy and economic decisions were based on the idea that every generation would be equal to or greater in size than the previous one.
The knock on effects of these assumptions are the reason government pension programs like social security are a concern world wide. People are living longer and less people are paying into the systems. This is an issue with nearly all government programs. There are less people paying taxes, paying into social programs. Costs are not going down anytime soon. It’s a recipe for instability.
Ew. Glad you’re not representative of everyone.
It appears a lot more are comming globally, and into a world we’ve badly treated and poorly prepaired for them. I bet we mostly agree on that.
Do you prefer the population size as it is, or a bit more?
Declining birthrates can be good when controlled and slow but like this in Japan it’s not a good thing and it will cause many issues and suffering.
Get real, the only reason it’s a problem for them is they’re too racist to encourage immigration from more populous nations.
That is a whole different problem.
Declining birthrates like japan has can cause huge problems that immigrants alone can’t fix and that is not mentioning that the required amount of immigration to fix it would cause a whole set of other problems
Oh, go on about those problems.
Problems understanding and accepting reality, eh?
Aww, likkle racist too scared to dogwhistle because number go down :(
That is not a sustainable solution. What’ll happen when countries with currently high birth rates develop, reduce their birthrates and you don’t have as much immigration as before?
What happens when a neutron pulse eradicates everyone on the planet in 2075?
To add onto the capitalist blame: people are conditioned to think in a capitalist way, and raising a child is a definite losing venture, hence people won’t invest in that shit.
Quite the opposite, capitalists want more human resources, human capital. There’s an entire ideology, at least centuries old, about this. You can most easily read about it as: pronatalism.
People aren’t conditioned to think in a capitalist way, they’re conditioned to think about their kids future not being worse than their present, since having kids can throw you into poverty.
Some wrong language I guess. You talk capitalists as those who possess stuff, and you’re right in this way. I talk about the liberal ideology of capitalism that produces consumer citizens and the glorification of individualism. The people a capitalist society produce.
Well, it takes a village to raise a child. The capitalist culture also brings this idea of “nuclear family” which generates this impossible situation for the “nuclear family” to afford kids. Of course, the other aspect of this is the eugenicist/fascist aspect of: only the rich can afford kids, so them it makes sense, this nuclear family. It’s not a problem to have a nuclear family if you’re rich, and you can just replace the village by paying for extra caretakers… another type of commodified relationship. The rich can afford to pay a woman to babysit for years, while that woman can’t afford to have a family or to see her kids (often because her family is in a different country). Family for me, but not for thee.
If you can hardly feed and house yourself … you can’t afford to woo a wife or raise a kid :/ but that won’t stop some people trying to half-ass it I guess
They’re not just brainwashed they are living a capitalist reality where those thoughts are rational observations of the truth around them.
definite losing venture
I get it now. You’re some teenager who doesn’t know that raising kids is literally massively expensive. Gee you must think you’re so bright for coming up with this idea that people are conditioned to think of kids as revenue negative enterprise! I can’t believe the size of the whoosh here.
I don’t think I disagree with you, but with this comment you’re kinda being an ass
You uh… don’t know what you’re talking about.
Does he not? From a purely selfish financial pov having a kid is a terrible idea.
Sure, most people don’t explicitly think in those terms, but financial stability absolutely is a factor many people consider before having kids
Tho, you make it once and have it for the rest of your life.
The purchase price is negligible, but the total cost of ownership is staggering.
Sigh. All right. Guess I’ll have to do my part. I can impregnate them. /s
I loved when the news came out that Japan didn’t have enough male porn stars and you could hear a bunch of chubby white guys considering a career change.
What’s this news?
It’s more surprising that 2/3 of Japanese women have children before they turn 19!
Good.
