If you have kids, even if your partner and you are both high IQ, you're statistically more likely than not to add to this mass of economically unviable peasants unable to be top-tier in the global economy of tomorrow. Maybe that's partly why birthrates in the first and second world have plummeted, as we all kind of know this, if only tacitly.
This cycle continuously makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and that's what's causing economic irrelevance of the masses. They can no longer afford to buy services from each other, because the rich are sucking all the wealth up and not using it to consume/buy services from regular people. Sure, they consume some luxury goods, but not enough to employ the masses. We need a huge wealth redistribution to enable regular people to buy services from each other again and make themselves relevant to each other.
* the process of pregnancy, giving birth and everything postpartum is incredibly taxing to a woman's body, and it's not surprising that women choose not to go through it now that they have a choice.
* our economic system actively punishes people who do choose to have kids.
* our more and more individualistic societies make the upbringing more of a chore than it used to be. It takes a village, but the village is gone.
This is likely true in USA, but false in many other countries.
There are many countries, e.g. in Europe, where people with many children have disproportionate advantages, because the state takes money from the people with few or no children and gives the money to the people with many children.
Moreover, there are adequate protections for parents during pregnancy and during the following time after birth.
Nevertheless, these measures had very little effect on the birth rates, except inside some restricted segments of the populations, which had a tradition of depending on such subsidies. It may be argued that for a majority of the populations these financial measures actually diminish the birth rates, because they take money mostly from the young people not having children yet, which reduces their revenues, which makes them even more reluctant to attempt to have children, due to the fear that they will not have adequate revenues to support them.
Few modern people, when confronted with the fact that their revenue would be insufficient for raising 2 children, would reach the conclusion that the solution to this problem is making 6 children, in order to get enough state aid. Most will choose to make only one child or no children.
No, the state "takes money" from the people with few or no children to ensure that there will be a functioning society even when those people can't contribute to it themselves any more.
> Moreover, there are adequate protections for parents during pregnancy and during the following time after birth.
While that is true, the pure biology is not something you can fully protect from (yet). There are still women for whom a childbirth turns fatal.
> Nevertheless, these measures had very little effect on the birth rates,
Because the measures aren't enough. For example, even despite all the measures, I end up paying € 1200 a month for about 40 hours of childcare, for two kids. Per month. That's a mortgage level of expense. And that's because they go to school now. Before that it was over € 2000, net.
> It may be argued that for a majority of the populations these financial measures actually diminish the birth rates, because they take money mostly from the young people not having children yet, which reduces their revenues, which makes them even more reluctant to attempt to have children, due to the fear that they will not have adequate revenues to support them.
This isn't true. Young people earn less than older people, and thus pay less taxes. What makes young people reluctant to have children are unnaturally high housing costs, not the subsidies towards parents.
Which countries are those? I come from one of the countries with the worlds best support for parents, Sweden, and even there it's an economic burden to have children.
Can you link to this tax that is only levied on "people with few or no children?"
* it's not the "state" that is supposed to look out for you, but your own money invested during the career. I see that money subtracted from my paycheck every month. I only want the state to provide stability and security so that money can be put to good use.
Not as sure about 1.
People are not having as many kids. And we haven’t seen a significant uptake of other forms of child bearing either. Options such as surrogacy, etc haven’t risen as much, and while those may be expensive, neither has adoption.
So it’s not just the child bearing aspect, but the raising of a child that appears to be an issue as well.
Regarding adoption, have you checked how extremely difficult and expensive it is to adopt?
Surrogacy is simply not an option in many places.
Being alive is much more than being economically viable. This kind of economic thinking is alluring because it seems "objective" or "data driven" but it is really just an oversimplified model of the world. These models have long drifted from reflecting reality.
Think of how DJT won two elections despite what all the data said. The data did not reflect reality.
The idea that modern peasants exist or that they do not add to economic output certainly reflects the data. But the data is useless if it does not reflect reality.
If the 2024 DJT win is to be interpreted as a peasant revolt against this system, perhaps it's one that is attempting to use the non-market force of government to create new Schelling points (mostly via protectionism) that meet libidinal (more in the Mark Fisher sense, less Lyotard) desires. Procreation is literally libidinal, after all, so we can see how powerful our system's market forces must be to completely override it.
That argument makes a lot of sense to me. The importance of financial sectors are exaggerated. Ever increasing federal debt acts as a tax on other nations though that wealth doesn't goto the average American. It skews wealth to a few sectors. E.g. The economic data is correct but measures a distorted system.
> Their thinking [centrists] is hard-wired onto a misconception of how capital, trade and money move around the globe. Like the brewer who gets drunk on his own ale, centrists ended up believing their own propaganda: that we live in a world of competitive markets where money is neutral and prices adjust to balance the demand and the supply of everything. The unsophisticated Trump is, in fact, far more sophisticated than them in that he understands how raw economic power, not marginal productivity, decides who does what to whom — both domestically and internationally.
1: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-econ...
The concentration of production today has become one-sided, and lacks the ability for economic calculation. Price discovery for example has completely failed in a number of markets as a result of dark pools, and sieving of business into fewer hands through non-reserve debt issuance is occurring gradually but surely.
The socialist calculation problem defined by Mises seems to be occurring, few have noticed yet because the problem by definition is chaos with no differentiating features aside from the overall volume of chaos growing.
Statistics also really can't tell you anything about chaotic environments (stochastic environments). Islands of consistency within the 3-body problem as an example for the literature that applies.
The auto-inserted stock ticker symbols in this article really drive the point home...
As the article says, the top 10% of income earners account for 50% of the spending. I’d bet the top 1% accounts for over 35%. The rich rule, for now.
And hence climate change and environmental degradation. Something to remember every time someone says think of the poor as an excuse for not dealing our emissions.
* Those people have more money to spend so they are more likely to buy since it doesn't hurt their wallet
* There are fewer of them so it's easier to advertise and communicate to them
* You don't have to make a lot of product, you just have to increase quality, so you don't even have to scale production or think about economies of scale
I thought business did not involve income inequality, but it absolutely does.
That means it's utterly impossible to make a product for lower income people unless it's really really good.
Rather really really cheap. There is definitely a demand for servicing lower income people. It's just not a great place to be for people with middle class sensitivities.
If you use a broad campaign that's targeting more people overall due to a larger pool of potential users...you should see more customers. And a more generic less targeted ad should be cheaper per click or whatever KPI.
Today’s day and age you don’t even have to increase quality. You simply repackage stuff in a new social media friendly way.
I mean, just look at the success of Goop and the general “wellness” industry which keeps criticizing Big Pharma (which deserve a lot of legitimate criticism that need to be solved with better, not necessarily more, regulation) when all the criticisms apply to wellness with the added concern that they’re completely unregulated and have no testing requirements.
The flip side is that products targeted at poor people are actually amazing. Something like a cheap grocery chain involves logistic and technological capabilities that were unachievable through most of human history. And the price points society hits for things that are effectively magical are absurdly low.
The default expectation for someone who can lift heavy objects or maybe do some cleaning would be that they can scrape together just enough food to survive. But the modern economy is so optimised at the low end that most people can actually achieve a pretty reasonable standard of living on very questionable levels of productivity, skill and ability. Although not luxurious by modern standards, obviously.
> pretty reasonable standard of living
This is a deep misunderstanding of what constitutes progress and a reasonable standard of living.
Modern TVs and phones are great, sure, but they're an order of magnitude smaller than big-ticket costs like housing and education. Combined with real wages being stagnant since the 70's, most Americans have seen their standard of living decline.
Not really the way I’d put it: it has to be really, really cheap or really, really indispensable (why is a smartphone a must have for a homeless person…?)
Looking at it from the other end:
- Wealthy people have plenty of extra money. Their biggest worry is finding new shiny trendy luxuries and bling, to show that wealth off. It's relatively easy for entrepreneurs to dream up and make such stuff.
- Poor people don't have extra money. Their biggest worry is having enough to afford food, clothing, housing, transportation, and medical care. It's extremely hard for entrepreneurs to out-compete existing providers of those (to the poor).
In both case you spend all your time working and someone else benefit from it while you're left eating the leftover.
The new whip is starvation, homelessness, no health care, being out on the street amongst dangerous people, etc.
most people have it internalized
this was found to be much more efficient that actual whipping
if you want to live - you will have to work to have access to healthcare
Carrot or stick.
People like to work for carrots, people don't like to be worked under threat of a stick. A horse that doesn't work dies either way, but one is much happier than the other.
Slavery puts the decisions to the slave owners, economic slavery retains the decision with the worker. If workers are in a terrible situation then at least they can reorganise if they see a better. With slaves they probably could think of better ways to organise, but the owners blocked them from acting.
In practice it means workers have and can act on strong incentives to upskill and find more effective working habits.
> As a result, her family is spending thousands of dollars less per month than they did before, Harley said. Fortunately, despite these big changes to their budget, “I really don’t feel like we have gone without” so far, she said.
This family is on $140K and cut their spend by thousands a month without feeling they are going without. A big difference to the first family with a bunch of kids making ends meet thanks to side gigs next to a single $65K income.
Elysium: A tiny group of super rich live in fabulous luxury, while the rest of humanity live in economic slavery and squalor. (Like the film, 'Elysium').
The French Revolution: The bulk of humanity finally have enough of the greed of the oligarch class and do something about it.
The cost of healthcare is also extremely high, 22% on average in the metro area. This is probably skewed by the elderly.
Add in a phone bill, electricity ($150 average), internet, garbage, water & sewer and $1000 a week for a family of 6 seems low to me, actually. They're doing a very good job making do with their relatively modest income ($77k/yr), only 55% of the area median income for a family of 6.
I dont know about Portland, but I live in suburbs of NY. Even an hour away, what you save in rent you end up giving up in the entire drive-park-ride-subway shuffle.
- You have to drive to the train station (pay for car, insurance, gas). Homes walking distance to train station are extra premium costs.
- You have to pay to park at the station (~$10/day for me)
- You have to pay for the rail ticket ($37 roundtrip / day for me)
- You have to pay for the subway/bus from the rail station to the office ($5.50 / day)
All-in, on RTO day trip costs $53 not including the car. Its not huge for a tech worker, but for many people this is prohibitive.
https://www.njtransit.com/fares
You can use pre-tax FSA transit accounts, but 1/3 of the time the cards dont work and you pay out of pocket. Then you cannot reimburse because FSA providers like HealthEquity do not allow transit post-reimbursement, even when their cards malfunction. Then, you lose the balance if you dont (cant) spend your balance in time. The entire system is set up to squeeze people.
The time aspect is huge. I try to load up Udemy courses and podcasts and try to turn it into forced learning time.
w/r/t Annual Costs, note that there are slight monthly discounts available. The discounts break-even at 4days a week, so the discounts dont even work unless you are 5 days RTO. There is no winning!
By the way, for a family of 6 they spend way less on groceries than I would expect.
People love to hate billionaires, but most NIMBY initiatives that block housing development and drive up the rents are pushed by groups of regular citizens, not the super-rich. Also true outside the US. Czechia hardly has any millionaires, but bored pensioners with a quest to meddle in everything are plentiful and they have, uh, results. So do some green NGOs.
That isn't to claim that there aren't issues stemming from income inequality. Just that cost of living issues are some of the most pressing day-to-day and are often self inflicted (voting against infrastructure, voting against public transit, voting in favor of boneheaded zoning, etc).
I have “good” insurance for a family of 4 and on top of my monthly insurance premiums (maybe $500/month? I honestly try to ignore it) I paid at least 3,000 in additional. But one kid did do a 2 week hospital visit.
(looking at my own paycheck and bank statement):
- Rent / Housing
- Health insurance premiums
- Health insurance deductibles
- Health insurance balance bills (what insurance mysteriously doesnt pay)
- Health insurance co-pays
- Prescription co-pays and balance bills from PBM*
- Electric, Gas, Water, Sewer bills
- Phone+internet (often locked into 2yr plans so you cant shop around)
- (for me and some) Car insurance / gas
- (for me and some) Public transport
- (for some) student debt payments
All this is before any restaurants (a luxury, even for qsr), savings (good luck), travel (not realistic for many), dental /orthodontic (often deferred)
For those outside the US or some lucky US states, a PBM is a pharmacy "benefits" manager, which creates many rules for where you can fill your prescription to have it covered by health insurance. Mine (OptumRX) will set higher prices than I could get if I shopped around for medicine. If I choose the lower price, I either pay for it myself (out of pocket, not applying insurance) or they will bill the difference between what I paid and the higher "fair" price they set. There is no winning. Sometimes the PBM price is so high it is better to just pay out of pocket, or even to purchase the meds overseas (which I know people do, esp those closer to Canada.) Also, your doctor has to send the prescription electronically to the pharmacy, which makes it difficult to shop around since you dont actually have the prescription in hand and many doctors wont respond to you once you've left the clinic. Death by a thousand cuts.
The first example sure has a lot of payroll deductions, $680 a week is ~$35,000 a year. I guess health insurance premiums are probably deducted before the $680.
I remember how once CEO of a company my dad worked at has called them. Cattle. Not humans.
That is what we are to the rich.
Afterwards the only reason to keep the underclasses alive is purely sentimental. Which is not too thick a thread.
Seriously, forced equality of outcomes have been tried in the Soviet Union. Have the results been forgotten?
Sorry, what? America makes up 5% of the worlds population, the US cosumer is not running at a 20x rate. This is nonsense.
Go to India or China and look at the average persons buying power, then go to Texas or California. Singapore and Switzerland are in a comparable income bracket, but have a combined population of <15M.
Trick about USA is that it is really open for business and private ownership and investment into anything. Unlike almost any other sizeable country.
Entire world can't avoid the US if they want to say, save for retirement (because stock market everywhere else is an absolute joke because their governments want it so).
Entire world can't avoid the US if they, on the other hand, want VC funding (just because in some countries a "startup" in the American sense is literally illegal, and in almost all countries, in practice impossible because no one will invest without a tangible collateral).
And the list goes on. That's why the world is whole lot frightened now with what Trump is doing because all of us - from Europe to China - know that without America, we are simply not.
It's safe to say that if not the American market, my life and life of literally everyone with any cash who i know, even those not realising it, will simply never happen in any positive way.
I'm a bit confused by the sentiment here. Do I understand correctly that you're saying the rest of the world has made "startups" in the American sense illegal, but is also terrified of losing in America what they've deliberately outlawed domestically?
Quite obviously, interests of people, society, and the state are always in contradiction.
People want to be rich and free.
Government wants to control and redistribute (merely as a tool of control), and make people into slaves.
Society wants equality (inequality creates oligarchy and poor masses too easy to manipulate).
So they are all in inevitable contradiction and countries mostly differ in who of them is stronger: in America, people are the strongest. In Europe, societies are. In Russia, state is.
America provides all of us a way out of the contradiction: countries can be statist of socialist however they like; people channel their capitalist instincts to America. The entire world lives this double life for generations and we are all frightened with the perspective of this ending one day. If that happens, rest of the world could be truly devoured by millions of ambitions people now seeing no way to realise their ambitions.