Why fewer and fewer couples are having kids. From Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org:
There is a collapse coming.
We can either try to mitigate it or not.
Either way its going to be bad, but if we do nothing — or worse, do more destructive things or continue those we’re doing now, it will be catastrophic.
Its simply the mathematics of the problem; at a 1.6 fertility rate (when 2.0x is required) in 20 years you’re in trouble, and in 40 you’re in really, really serious trouble.
No, you can’t fix it with immigration. That’s a trope and it doesn’t work because if the situation that led to it is still present bringing in more, new people simply result in them making the same decisions in a generation or two and you’ve accomplished nothing.
You have to change the paradigm in a way that reverses the disincentives and threats.
It takes a full generation before what you do will bear fruit. Why? Because that’s how long it takes for the generation growing up now to reach adulthood and have a good childhood themselves, and thus want to have children.
Musk is crowing about screwing like a rabbit; he has the analysis correct but he’s one successful sperm in a vagina and thus the odds of him personally making a difference, even if his mantra was to catch fire with every other billionaire, is zero. He’d do a lot more for humanity if he managed to get every such billionaire to tell the government of the United States to stop importing people via both illegal immigration and H1b/H2 visas and shut down all deficit spending, collapsing both asset prices and the cost of living or else he and the rest of the billionaires will take their money and production to a nation that does.
