US Fertility Rate collapsing - new record low!

The US birth rate was highest in the post-WWII era because so much of the financial burdens of raising a family were strongly supported by the state. US manufacturing was heavily protected from competition and also had the advantage of being in tact after much of the rest of the world's manufacturing was bombed out in WWII. So, jobs were plentiful and wages were more than enough to support a family on a single bread winner. Housing, health care and higher education were massively subsidized through the GI bill and federal and state government support for housing through the interstate highway system, mortgage lending assistance etc.

From the 1970s forward, all of those protections and subsidies have been stripped away. Now, it is impossible for a middle class family to be supported by a single bread winner. Factory jobs are gone and wages have been stagnant. The cost of housing, heath care and higher education have risen out of control. And social media, gaming, and tech in general have contributed to the further atomization of young people and away from any sort of community where they can meet a potential mate.

But at the same time, demographic collapse is not necessarily a bad thing. The main concern is that a capitalist economy will fail because there will be economic contraction and no money to pay for the meager social services and benefits that we do have. But at the same time, population decline can lower costs for housing, food, energy, etc. And productivity gains can also offset fewer people in the workplace. Lower demand for energy means no need for resource wars and a reduction of our stress on the environment.

Yep, over $300k per child now (nationwide average)

"The average cost of raising a child over the course of 18 years in the U.S. has reached $303,418, according to a new study from LendingTree.
The total cost varies widely by state. Hawaii is the most expensive state to raise a child, with LendingTree projecting a price tag of $412,661. Alaska and Maryland follow behind with $365,047 and $326,360, respectively. Meanwhile, New Hampshire is the cheapest state to raise a child, costing $201,963, less than half the price of Hawaii. Washington, D.C.—which offers free preschool for three- and four-year-olds—and South Carolina come in second and third place for the least expensive places to raise a child."

fortune.com

'Almost unmanageable’: Raising a child in the U.S. now costs more than $300,000 | Fortune

Jacqueline Munis

Costs are up 1.9% from a year ago, as rent prices have spiked across the country.

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There are a lot of flaws in your statement. People in the 1950s were far less wealthy than we are today. Most families had a single car, most houses did not have air conditioning, very few had TVs, let alone computers, they rarely travelled by plane, they had larger families in smaller houses, healthcare covered far less than it covers today (we have expensive cures for a lot of things that were a death sentence in the 1950s). environmentally things were much more toxic (leaded gasoline, no air pollution standards, no EPA, etc.), people rarely ate out, etc.

If you want to move out to some abandoned country town, you can probably buy yourself a real cheap 1950s style house (with a single outlet per room, full of asbestos, lead soldered pipes, and lead based paint). Your wife can quit her job, cook every meal and take care of four kids in a three bedroom house. You can take your kids on a road trip for vacation each year to visit relatives. Your kids can go to the local rural school and you can see the nurse practitioner that serves as the town doctor a couple days each week.

Or you can sit in your air conditioned suburban McMansion typing away on your high end laptop about how much poorer people are now than in the past in your formal living room with a huge flat screen TV and surround sound system while dining on Uber Eats from the local organic farm to table Asian fusion restaurant while your Tesla Model 3 and Cyber truck charge in your oversized garage. This is, of course, while you and your spouse try to catch back up at work after your biannual vacation to the Caribbean and before your planned spring marathon trip. All this while your single offspring with purple hair chats on line with their therapist about their disphoria and emotional triggers.

One of the undiscussed problems is that our government utilizes growth as an accounting measure or really an assumption when making decisions. This is true for many of our businesses as well. So when the growth doesn't happen due to structure reasons it will send our economy to a tailspend. To say another way, we finance capital projects for buildings, roads, energy production on the assumption that revenue will be constant or increase. When that assumption is violated, debt fails and we get into a debt crises induced recession. We will see how it plays out, it may be much ado about nothing (technology improves productivity so that we have growth), but it's a real risk.

In addition you underestimate the effect of greed. A declining population doesn’t mean there will be no growth. It just means people will demand more things as prices drop. As Cicero once said, a slave dreams not of freedom but of a slave to call his own.

Elon is only worried about future Tesla buyers in Japan. China has already kicked Elon's butt in Europe and the Americas.

Geriatric pregnancy was the long-standing medical term. Your initial statement asserted that acknowledging advanced maternal age "doesn't mean anything" when "so many women are having healthy babies just fine after 35." That glosses over the fact that more than 1 in 5 of those births will be miscarried on average compared to less than 1 in 10 for women under 30.

You seem more concerned with people feeling offended at being told they are aging than with the risks that come with aging. You acknowledge only the risk of death as a meaningful complication. Miscarriage and stillbirth are horrible and traumatic.