Spengler offers economic advice to President Obama. Excerpt:
Your problem is that nervous retirees are making most of the decisions, rather than young families. The trouble is that America is getting grayer. People with young children are spenders rather than savers. Young people take risks, and old people buy insurance. Your country needs more children. Demographic dearth is the root cause of the economic crisis. Too many aging people tried to accumulate too many assets, and created the biggest asset bubble of all time.Lower home prices make it easier for people to start families. The housing price crash transfers wealth from old people to young people. That's exactly what you want to happen.
Rather than spend a trillion dollars to keep overpaid construction-union members busy in infrastructure projects, offer enormous tax cuts and subsidies to young families. Increase the per-child deduction to $20,000, and let low-income taxpayers deduct it against payroll taxes. Subsidize mortgages for families with children.
And if you really want to send a message to America, propose a constitutional amendment to reverse Roe versus Wade. Making sex a contact sport rather than a part of life that includes marriage and babies was the beginning of the problem. It's not enough to tinker with tax incentives, although that surely will help. Americans need to change their own outlook about life. A pro-life Democratic president with a family friendly economic recovery plan would be unbeatable.
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I'm assuming you meant "will NOT occur," ahunt.
I've been there, I've done that, and I know whereof you speak. That's why I'm so reluctant to draw my conclusions...
I don't have to like the conclusions I come to; I didn't like it either, when my thesis project turned out not to do what I was devoutly sure it would do. I just had to follow where the evidence appeared to lead me.
Again Dan...the one-sided consequences of unwanted/unplanned pregnancy appear to be missing from your analysis.
Perhaps if you were subject to those consequences (you've pretty much admitted you were once a horndog) you would be more inclined to view contraception in the light of self-preservation. You also appear to be making women solely responsible for the management of human sexuality, and blaming them for the failure of masculine self-control.
Boys will be boys is NOT acceptable as a reason to excuse self-indulgence.
Re: This is indeed tied to population - that is, it is easier to tend Grandma when you've got a couple of teenagers at home to help out.
But back in the olden days no one needed to tend grandma, at least not for long. People tended not to outlive their health. Grandma's joints might be stiff, her hearing a bit hard, maybe her memory not what it was. But she could still help with the housework, look after the kids, in some cases even contribute financially. And if she had a stroke, or broke her hip or had a cancer start to develop, pneumonia or some other infection carried her off. The pill that is the problem here isn't contraception, it's antibiotics. That and the rest of modern medicine has given us a population that lives decades past its retirement, that survives for years frail and in need of constant care. Hence the need for the elderly to save lots and lots of money, for programs like Social Security and Medicare or (if Lord Karth got his wish) for families to forgo children and instead focus of caring for parents.
Anyone want to get rid of modern medicine? Or just deny it to everyone over 65?
Dan Berger, your response was unexpectedly gracious. I'm used to getting slammed when I post on these topics. You didn't do that--not yet, anyway. ; ) So props to you!
We probably don't agree on how to fix the ills we both see in this culture, but I must say, I'd prefer to have you and John Medaille as adversaries, if need be, than some of the folks I've communed with here.
I would suggest, politely and respectfully, that it might be good to do as ahunt suggests and listen to the women in your family. Just listen, absorb what they have to say, and ponder it. You may still not agree with it, but you would at least have learned something about their situation and point of view.
As a footnote, I used contraception of various kinds and still had four children, and I can assure you that all of them have self-control and do not consume mass quantities, nor are they participants in a culture of self-destruction. I agree wholeheartedly with your complaint about television singles living in huge apartments in Manhattan and eating every meal out, though! What's up with that?! It's only fair to add, however, that TV families are equally unrealistic. Large families always live in palatial homes with a bedroom for every child. They wear brand-new clothes, their houses are spotless, and the cars are big and shiny. I guess they all come from the same world where there are groves of spruce trees and waterfalls in the state of Kansas. . . .
Yet again, voices to punish the childless. Spengler's call for a $20K tax credit per child. Talk about promoting IVF!
I have been responsible and moral. No abortions. (Don't know a single person who's had an abortion). No profligate sex outside of wedlock. I have tried to live reasonably frugally (with a few lapses). I am approaching the age past when I would feel comfortable having a child, whether or not married (and I've never considered having a child outside of marriage).
I'll move to another country if the US starts paying people to have children beyond the already ample subsidies.
I subsidize my niece and nephews by helping with expenses. I pay plenty of taxes already.
Get the government out of meddling in private lives.
You have as many children as you wish--and support them.
I think it would be a violation of my constitutional rights to be forced to subsidize other people's children to the tune of $20K a pop when I can no longer have children myself.
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