Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 08:31:29 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Mad Times article about tackling the falling birth-rate

Started by Sebastian Cobb, July 03, 2022, 12:35:32 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Sebastian Cobb

Real box ticker right here!

Everything from "what if we made it unaffordable not to have children?"
QuoteIntroduce a "negative child benefit" tax for those who do not have offspring. This may seem unfair on those who can't or won't have children, but it recognises that we all rely on there being a next generation and that everyone should contribute to the cost of creating that generation. Use the funds to fix the UK's broken, expensive early-years care system.

To bog-standard Eugenics
QuoteSecond, we should adopt a "grow our own" policy, aiming to provide most of the population growth from births within our racially and ethnically diverse country rather than immigration. Nearly 30 per cent of births in the UK are now to mothers born overseas — like mine, born in Germany. There will always be a place for some immigration, but we should not be as reliant on it as we have been over the past 20 or 30 years. Plus, many of the countries we might get immigrants from are suffering from the same shortage of working-age people.


To a bit of pressuring women about their biological clocks ticking away:
QuoteEducate people that getting pregnant becomes more difficult with age — as Dorothy Byrne, the master of the all-female Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, suggested last year, to much outrage. Some see subsidised IVF provision as a technological solution — as China is attempting — but, as with natural conception, its success becomes significantly less likely as the age of a woman advances.


Something shit for everyone in there!
https://archive.ph/3qehh

bgmnts

The world population has more than doubled since the 1970s. We fucked our home beyond repair and have destroyed the majority of life on earth single handedly.

We can't share our resources because evil and so most of these people suffer to varying degrees.

So what the fuck is this person on?

QuoteBut his fellow activists shouldn't then complain if there are no binmen or women clearing their rubbish, no drivers delivering food to the supermarket and no doctors to look after sick relations. With labour shortages already a problem in this country, the population winter has only just begun.

Fuck off you disingenuous cunt. If labour shortages are such an issue, get rid of massive executive salaries, get rid of automation and actually pay employees a living wage. FUCK. OFF.

flotemysost

But we don't want immigrants coming over here and taking doing the jobs!!!

And OF COURSE it's illustrated with a photo of two white, slim, able-bodied, rich-looking women with white babies.

LOL, the fuck they on about

Armed Traffic Warden

With population displacement on a mass scale on the horizon surely this is the perfect (and most humane) time to lean into immigration?
  That or we could hook women, good sturdy British woman, up to some sort of insemination machine like a dairy farm - has anyone looked into that?

Fambo Number Mive

QuoteThis may seem unfair on those who can't or won't have children, but it recognises that we all rely on there being a next generation and that everyone should contribute to the cost of creating that generation.

Doesn't everyone already contribute to the cost of creating the next generation by paying taxes to fund schools and nurseries, maternity nurses, etc. I agree with the Times article author that the early years care system needs more funding but that could be done by doing things like taxing large amounts of land not pressuring more people into having children.

The eugenics quote is scary, clearly the Overton window is shifting further and further to the right.

Buelligan

Still, the solution to everything, unbridled capitalism,  must have continuous growth.  So get those non-forrin worker-eggs popped out. 

If we later find there are too many and furlough is over, we can just make them redundant. 

Abortion is out but the police are armed.

All aboard the success train, everyone!

Pink Gregory

Quote from: bgmnts on July 03, 2022, 12:40:00 PMSo what the fuck is this person on?



leaded petrol, BSE mince, inherited postwar trauma, things of that nature

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: bgmnts on July 03, 2022, 12:40:00 PMThe world population has more than doubled since the 1970s. We fucked our home beyond repair and
Fuck off you disingenuous cunt. If labour shortages are such an issue, get rid of massive executive salaries, get rid of automation and actually pay employees a living wage. FUCK. OFF.

Why engineer a situation where are sucked back in to doing trivial work when machines can liberate them from that? Since it's the output of the labour that's generates the obscene profit why not take that and redistribute it rather than this "people need to do jobs so we should invent them" attitude, I dunno about you but knowing I'm inefficiently doing work for the sake of it due to ideological social-engineering wouldn't exactly please or motivate me.

What I'm saying here is there are probably better ways to occupy people than setting fire to tractors and giving everyone a scythe.

Dr Rock


touchingcloth


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Dr Rock on July 03, 2022, 12:52:39 PMJust get the best baby and clone it.

How you defining best? Could fuck this right up if you picked something like wealth and made millions of musk babies or something

Mind you he seems to be having a good go of that himself.

Dr Rock


Johnny Yesno

Quotea telegram from the Queen whenever a family has a third child.

I think they might appreciate the restoration of child benefit for the third child more.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 03, 2022, 12:49:59 PMWhy engineer a situation where are sucked back in to doing trivial work when machines can liberate them from that? Since it's the output of the labour that's generates the obscene profit why not take that and redistribute it rather than this "people need to do jobs so we should invent them" attitude, I dunno about you but knowing I'm inefficiently doing work for the sake of it due to ideological social-engineering wouldn't exactly please or motivate me.

What I'm saying here is there are probably better ways to occupy people than setting fire to tractors and giving everyone a scythe.

Yes, we're clearly going to need more care workers in the future. Solution: higher pay for care workers and get the robots to do all the stuff robots are good at.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on July 03, 2022, 12:59:30 PMI think they might appreciate the restoration of child benefit for the third child more.

that would require the Queen being alive though wouldn't it

bgmnts

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 03, 2022, 12:49:59 PMWhy engineer a situation where are sucked back in to doing trivial work when machines can liberate them from that? Since it's the output of the labour that's generates the obscene profit why not take that and redistribute it rather than this "people need to do jobs so we should invent them" attitude, I dunno about you but knowing I'm inefficiently doing work for the sake of it due to ideological social-engineering wouldn't exactly please or motivate me.

What I'm saying here is there are probably better ways to occupy people than setting fire to tractors and giving everyone a scythe.

Well office work is trivial shit too, I'm be all for automation provided the people are taken care of and reap the benefits, not just the 0.1%. But you can't tell me there is a labour shortage when you go into a supermarket and see 15 self service checkouts and three staff members working on 12 empty tills etc. It's all fucking bollocks.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Pink Gregory on July 03, 2022, 01:01:41 PMthat would require the Queen being alive though wouldn't it

I don't think the qweeeen issues chiled benefit.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on July 03, 2022, 01:03:18 PMI don't think the qweeeen issues chiled benefit.

We'll reach a compromise.  Quin sends you Quin vouchers for third child.  Prezzo, H&M, Vue Cinemas, Wilko.

imitationleather


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: bgmnts on July 03, 2022, 01:01:53 PMWell office work is trivial shit too, I'm be all for automation provided the people are taken care of and reap the benefits, not just the 0.1%. But you can't tell me there is a labour shortage when you go into a supermarket and see 15 self service checkouts and three staff members working on 12 empty tills etc. It's all fucking bollocks.

Well yeah I agree self-service is shit, but then so's working a till (in my experience).

Automating office work would generally be good (if done correctly) because in many cases it can fuck your mind as much as gruelling physical labour can fuck your body. Often because there is no clear usefulness to the outputs of the work - you can barely even see yourself as a cog in a machine sometimes, let alone appraise its usefulness.

Dex Sawash


Has anyone looked at limiting reproductive health choice?

Buelligan

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 03, 2022, 01:08:40 PMWell yeah I agree self-service is shit, but then so's working a till (in my experience).

Just cut out the fucking middleperson and steal like everyone running this shit show.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

QuoteIn developed countries, fertility rates are highest where women are best able to combine childcare with careers and where dads do their share around the house. Men do three times as much housework in Denmark as in Korea, for example, and the fertility rate is nearly twice as high. Generous childcare provision in Norway, which allows women to have one of the highest rates of workforce participation in Europe, has been shown to support fertility.

Oh look he actually mentioned the solution!

TOO BAD THAT'S NOT ON THE LIST OF POLICIES HE SUGGESTS, WHICH INCLUDE SUCH BRILLIANCE AS "TELL WOMEN IT'S HARDER TO HAVE KIDS WHEN YOU'RE OLDER"

Lemming

These articles always go roughly the same way, and they never address what seem to be to be one of the most interesting concerns regarding birth rates: a cultural shift underway on an almost entirely global scale.

Terrible articles on the topic, like the above, say "let's punish people for not having kids!". Better articles investigate the obvious practical economic pressures that act upon people to make having children impossible. But the best articles go up to childless people - typically women - and just ask point blank "why are you not having children". While some people will mention how economically prohibitive it is to have children, many more will just say that they're either not interested or actively averse to the idea of reproducing, and that no amount of money would change it. I've noticed that many more people reject the typical model of having 2+ kids, and aim to only ever have one - still a big "threat", if you consider all this a problem, since having one child doesn't replenish the population.

This is what fascinates me because I can't figure out quite why it's happening, and yet it's also happening to me. Humans have been told for millennia by every society we've created that reproducing is one of the most innate drives we have. "Be fruitful and multiply", "you'll change your mind when you get older", "maternal instinct", and so on and so forth. Just about every human society is built around it - we've had fertility rituals since prehistory, and the models of patriarchy that have made every human society a total living hell were created in order to control and exploit women's reproductive capabilities (hence why intense pressure to marry young or even having arranged/forced marriages is such a prominent feature of so many societies throughout history, and why women wound up getting sold as property for the price of two goats or some evil shit like that).

But over the last handful of decades, people across the globe (I think births are falling in literally every country in the world) have all suddenly and collectively, almost unconsciously, abandoned all of this for the first time in human history. I don't know what the causes are - lifestyle changes brought about by technology? The fruits of feminism (in other words, it turns out a lot of women, as soon as they're given the choice, don't actually want to be forced into marrying some awful man at a young age and having multiple kids - who'd have thought it??)? Microplastics getting into our brain through the bloodstream, disrupting our hormones, and making some of us see kids as weird dripping bags of mucus rather than gifts from god? The fall of religion?

I think a better economic model that makes it not so absurdly expensive to have children and which allows one or both parents to remain home to do domestic/childraising work would help*, and I obviously support that, but I think it would at best merely slow down the freefall in we're seeing in birth rates. Something deeper is happening and I don't think there's any way to stop it - and that's assuming we even want to stop it.

*though it's also worth raising the counter-point that there seems to be a negative correlation between income and fertility - poor people have more children and more affluent people have less, and this even applies to the GDP of entire countries, which doesn't make sense if we believe the typical line that this is all down to economic pressures

Kankurette

Breed to keep the white race going, in other words? I don't want kids anyway, I'd be a shit mum and I can just about cope with a mental reactive cat as is.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Lemming on July 03, 2022, 02:56:26 PMBut over the last handful of decades, people across the globe (I think births are falling in literally every country in the world) have all suddenly and collectively, almost unconsciously, abandoned all of this for the first time in human history. I don't know what the causes are - lifestyle changes brought about by technology? The fruits of feminism (in other words, it turns out a lot of women, as soon as they're given the choice, don't actually want to be forced into marrying some awful man at a young age and having multiple kids - who'd have thought it??)? Microplastics getting into our brain through the bloodstream, disrupting our hormones, and making some of us see kids as weird dripping bags of mucus rather than gifts from god? The fall of religion?

In developing countries:
Greater health outcomes/sanitation improvements/other qol factors almost always cause birth rates to decline but that's largely due to lower infant mortality and requiring fewer of your offspring to support the aging family members as things get slightly less precarious.

In the west:
Safety nets being taken away, inaccessibility of housing (to buy and social rents), environmental collapse - people of child-bearing age have collectively watched a series of closing doors.

superthunderstingcar

Quote from: bgmnts on July 03, 2022, 12:40:00 PMThe world population has more than doubled since the 1970s.
Great, problem solved.

touchingcloth

I reckon this article is a piece of Swiftian satire.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: touchingcloth on July 03, 2022, 12:53:47 PMHave testes, will fuck

I know brevity is key in a CV but you should probably include relevant work history and condensed educational qualifications if they fit.

Johnny Yesno