[Politics] have the right amount of kids you can afford, or should the govt stump up costs?

[portlock seagull]

Which world experts? I tend to post links when I make a point, but you don't post anything to back up your opinion.

Edit to add links which back up the technology creating jobs, not destroying them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matty-mariansky/technology-is-creating-jo_b_14266770.html

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ore-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census

I don't feel that's at all relevant! Just because you can provide a link to something on the internet, even a newspaper column, does that make it more valid? I'm sorry I've not kept a list of sources over the last 30 years just in case someone called Thunder Bolt on a football chat site might demand evidence! You sound resourceful, and especially persuaded by, so suggest you go find. Plenty of stuff out there if interested in reading about.

 

[portlock seagull]

yes, the bedwetter experts are wrong. its nothing new, a couple of generations ago there were no tractors and nearly all farming was done by hand, with a few horse and oxen. harvesting required dozens of people, the reason for the long summer holiday so kids could help. mechanisation allowed single famer and couple of labourers to manage over hundred acres. what happened to all those unemployed farmer workers? they found new jobs, new industry and business soaked up the labour. and same will do so if further automation makes current jobs redundant.

That's just not true though is it, take a look at the demographic curve over the last 30 years and compare to the last 300 whilst explaining to me how tech.jobs today and in future are 'soaking up' this amount of labour. Which btw, is growing exponentially at a rate never seen before in history. It's not about just our population but the hundreds of millions without work heading to and trying to find work in W.Europe now and over the next few decades to come - who's providing the equivalent numbers of decent income earning jobs required for these people? Nobody currently and unless I'm very much mistaken, Google and Facebook don't have that many vacancies

 

[portlock seagull]

But this is a losers mentality; Britain really needs to snap out of this. Grow the economy accordingly and the country will be minted. During the Brexit period I have heard nothing but how brilliant Britain is, and brilliant Britain can and will be. So there’s nothing to worry about. If Germany can grow an economy which needs more people then Britain can certainly do the same.

No country, including the mighty techtonic (see what I did there?) nation, is immune to economic shocks and forces which are extremely unpredictable except that they're going to happen in time. It's not a simple matter of continuing to find new ways of stimulating the economy, or adopting 'winning mentalities'. The fact is every country is facing unprecedented stresses - unique in history - that are placing intolerable strains on it whichever economic country you are. And will continue to worsen. And the root cause of this is a population growth like we've never seen before.

 

[beorhthelm]

That's just not true though is it, take a look at the demographic curve over the last 30 years and compare to the last 300 whilst explaining to me how tech.jobs today and in future are 'soaking up' this amount of labour.

who said they would be replaced by tech jobs? demographic curves are irrelevant, when technological change it is usually rapid, within 10 years, half a generation tops. old jobs are redundant, new jobs emerge. how many stable hands and saddle makers became obsolete in the 1920's as cars replaced horse and carriages as a primary method of transport?

 

[portlock seagull]

who said they would be replaced by tech jobs? demographic curves are irrelevant, when technological change it is usually rapid, within 10 years, half a generation tops. old jobs are redundant, new jobs emerge. how many stable hands and saddle makers became obsolete in the 1920's as cars replaced horse and carriages as a primary method of transport?

So are there suddenly going to be more manufacturing jobs now, when we shifted to a service economy 30 years ago? Agriculture? Public sector? Your example is a simplistic as it is self defeating. It's precisely because technology is reducing the need for labour, whilst the pool of labour (population) is growing globally at unsustainable levels, that we need less people in the planet. Not more. Only someone not grasping the argument would dismiss demographic curves as irrelevant to a conversation about population and the cost of sustaining one i.e. how much it costs, with the levels of entitlement such as they are today, to raise the next generation and how and by whom it should be paid for.

 

[Tokyohands]

The more children you have, the more you can send out to work = more cash for dad to spend on booze, drugs and hookers.

 

[RexCathedra]

A below-replacement fertility rate (1.8 births per woman for the UK) and an aging population means either: 1.) someone's got to be added to the workforce, 2.) Granny gets put out on one of the few remaining ice floes, or 3.) taxes go through the roof.

An increase in rate of natural increase, or immigration -- hence more workers paying NI is one solution.
Immigration is faster, you don't have to raise them up first.
Or higher and higher taxes on the fewer young 'uns working.

No one here apparently likes any of the three choices....

 

[Gwylan]

A below-replacement fertility rate (1.8 births per woman for the UK) and an aging population means either: 1.) someone's got to be added to the workforce, 2.) Granny gets put out on one of the few remaining ice floes, or 3.) taxes go through the roof.

An increase in rate of natural increase, or immigration -- hence more workers paying NI is one solution.
Immigration is faster, you don't have to raise them up first.
Or higher and higher taxes on the fewer young 'uns working.

No one here apparently likes any of the three choices....

Those aren't quite the only three choices - there's the suggestion floated a few weeks ago of higher taxes on the elderly and reduced taxes for the youngsters working. It came from Philip Hammond (or one of his team) so it would seem to be hitting his own supporters, but it was an interesting idea,

The option you didn't mention is a universal basic income. Although it's an idea that's emerged from the ranks of people that I'd normally consider right-wing nutters, it has a lot of merit: it introduces flexibility to the workforce, does away with the benefit trap, would improve childcare and allow more people to set up meaningful businesses. It's an idea that's increasingly being tried in various parts of the world (trials in Canada, Finland and Netherlands at the moment) and I can see it being brought in here at some point.

 

[heathgate]

Multiple Births
Death of parent(s)
Loss of job

I don't necessarily disagree but some people need help through no fault of their own. We're not clairvoyant.

Well Yes, and that is where the welfare state comes into its own... not to support those who pop out kids at will who then expect the state to support their chosen lifestyle.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

[looney]

A below-replacement fertility rate (1.8 births per woman for the UK) and an aging population means either: 1.) someone's got to be added to the workforce, 2.) Granny gets put out on one of the few remaining ice floes, or 3.) taxes go through the roof.

An increase in rate of natural increase, or immigration -- hence more workers paying NI is one solution.
Immigration is faster, you don't have to raise them up first.
Or higher and higher taxes on the fewer young 'uns working.

No one here apparently likes any of the three choices....

Or you could ban abortion to raise birth rates. You are in effect advocating one problem in an attempt to solve another. Also investment is increasingly geared to the old where it should be in the young, this is something else not sustainable.

 

[Gwylan]

Also investment is increasingly geared to the old where it should be in the young, this is something else not sustainable.

Blimey, I agree with something that looney's said - I think I need a lie-down

 

[sir albion]

No country, including the mighty techtonic (see what I did there?) nation, is immune to economic shocks and forces which are extremely unpredictable except that they're going to happen in time. It's not a simple matter of continuing to find new ways of stimulating the economy, or adopting 'winning mentalities'. The fact is every country is facing unprecedented stresses - unique in history - that are placing intolerable strains on it whichever economic country you are. And will continue to worsen. And the root cause of this is a population growth like we've never seen before.

Nail on the head
The quality of life dininishes when the population grows and this country is seeing what really happens.

Hasn't the world population doubled in 50 odd years?

 

[Bold Seagull]

Nail on the head
The quality of life dininishes when the population grows and this country is seeing what really happens.

Hasn't the world population doubled in 50 odd years?

Population growth is the capitalist economic model. There is no two ways about it. The two go hand in hand in a profit driven free market economy. The more people you have, the more your economy will grow. The more successful your economy, the more people want to be there. That economy shrinks, immigration always shrinks. It is a simple truth.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

My apologies, I didn’t mean to insinuate that you held this attitude. I initially raised the housing issue in response to the view that millennials feel self-entitled or are too lazy to put in the work it requires to afford things like houses, instead preferring to spend their money on smart phones and partying. I must admit, I know people a bit younger that myself who are inclined to do that but most of my friends in their late 20s are absolutely desperate to own their own home. And although owning a home isn’t a right, the fact they can’t scrape together the deposit due to rent being too expensive to save any money or simply because that houses are now, on average, 8 times more expensive than an annual salary, causes a lot of frustration which, I suppose, could be misconstrued by others as a sense of entitlement.

No worries

As someone who is fighting against grumpy old man syndrome, a phenomenon that has been around since Roman times and beyond, with the old tut tutting at the young and bemoaning how things are not like they were, how things don't taste the same etc., I am convinced that despite perceptions (which are entirly dependent on our filters, which change with age), nothing really changes, and on the whole the trajctory is towards 'better'. As I have mentioned before, people are largely better dressed, better fed and much les smelly than they were when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. That does not make everything perfect by any means, and struggle and suffering are part of the human condition. The house market is of course a problem, but one that is paradoxically made worse by the increasing wealth in the country and the increasing numbers of people willing and able to meet whatever asking price. Also, it is artificially skewed, by the fact that there are parents who are willing and able to dip into their pension funds to front the deposit for the kids. Meanwhile those outside that life boat of comfort are stuffed. I may sound a bit complacent but to be fair my house is small, and I live 90 miles from the Amex and could never afford to move back to Sussex, so I am an economic exile myself in as much as I can't live where I'd like to live. Perhaps one solution for peopl is to look farther afield. If living round the corner from the in laws is the main requirement then renting may be the only solution.

 

[narly101]

Maybe the answer is to change the model, move more towards a China model where you don't have a right to any more than one child. Despite what everyone says on this about subsidising couples to enable them back into work, it's still fundamentally about whether you can "afford" children or not. If you can't, don't have children.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Maybe the answer is to change the model, move more towards a China model where you don't have a right to any more than one child. Despite what everyone says on this about subsidising couples to enable them back into work, it's still fundamentally about whether you can "afford" children or not. If you can't, don't have children.

The China model is flawed. People got fined if they had a second child, so the rich people had children, and the poor people abandoned their girls in orphanages.

 

[narly101]

The China model is flawed. People got fined if they had a second child, so the rich people had children, and the poor people abandoned their girls in orphanages.

Agreed, I didn't say it wasn't, but I don't see how the current economical model is sustainable. Portlock Seagull nailed it with the quote "The fact is every country is facing unprecedented stresses - unique in history - that are placing intolerable strains on it whichever economic country you are. And will continue to worsen. And the root cause of this is a population growth like we've never seen before."

 

[Bold Seagull]

Agreed, I didn't say it wasn't, but I don't see how the current economical model is sustainable. Portlock Seagull nailed it with the quote "The fact is every country is facing unprecedented stresses - unique in history - that are placing intolerable strains on it whichever economic country you are. And will continue to worsen. And the root cause of this is a population growth like we've never seen before."

Except it is wrong.

Many developed countries, Japan, Australia, Spain to name just 3, have a negative birth rates and face unprecedented stresses for the very opposite reason of the population not growing enough. 10 years ago Australia actually had a policy to give a Baby Bonus payment of $3000 per child, they actually said that Australian families should have 3 kids, 1 for mum, 1 for dad and 1 for the state! Japan increasingly has an unbalanced population of far too many elderly compared to youth.

A large number of developed countries don't have positive birth rates, with fertility rates per women 2 or below, UK 1.8. It is in the developing and 3rd world where you still see larger population growth through births out stripping deaths. This will only be solved through development and education. This is known as the fertility-income paradox where the lower the standard of living, the higher the birth rate appears to be.

Population growth through economic migration is an entirely different matter, but global fertility rates are dropping more quickly than previously thought, even though overall human population will continue to grow toward 2050. The main driver of this is Africa, India, Pakistan.

This intolerable strains are equally matched if your population stagnates or decreases such as Spain, or even Germany. Merkel didn't open the doors in some philanthropic act to migrants, they need workers to grow the economy to look after their ageing population. It is the elephant in the room for a lot of us.

 

[wellquickwoody]

My daughter is 10 months old and is currently at a mix of nursery and grandparents to allow my wife to go back to work, it is affordable but only just about makes sense. We are fortunate to have help from grandparents, without that I don't think my wife would have been able to return to work until our daughter is 3. Why not just provide 30 hours free a week from say 1 years old?

So who should pay for the free 30 hours?

 

[Bold Seagull]

So who should pay for the free 30 hours?

Says the man who lives in a country who paid $5000 per birth to boost their economy in the future and still pay to this day!