The weather was great today, with it sunny and sitting around 16C (60F), which gave us a chance to continue cleaning up the garden in preparation for full spring and summer. We have a lot to do and pretty much everything we are doing is "interim work", because we don't have the money to do it properly yet. We are going to have to get someone in to give us some ballpark quotes though, so we know what to expect. It might be a few years til we can afford it though, so we can't just let it run wild until then.
There is a lot of work to do.
Which leads onto this funny juxtaposition I saw in the Finnish news (English side) yesterday. Kela is the government social security service, and the ex leader has floated the idea that the child income benefit should be means tested, which would break a very long tradition of supporting children. It isn't much (95€) a month, but most people I know put it away for their child for when they turn 18.
Not that it helps the birth rate.
Statistics Finland said the country's fertility rate last year was 1.32 children per woman, the lowest figure recorded since 1776. In comparison, around a decade ago, in 2010, the Finnish fertility rate was 1.87.
That is a 30% drop in 12 years.
That is amazing.
And 50% drop in 60 years.
After being relatively flat since 1980, the drop off from 2010 is quite incredible. And while it is easy to attribute this to the global financial crises, I don't think that is the reason. More likely in my opinion, is that culture has changed in the way we form relationships and especially, how we commit to each other. Due to our increasing disconnection and time spent alone in front of screens, we are of course less likely to meet and form the bonds where we are willing to have children.
On top of this, I think that the internet itself plays a massive role in restricting birth rates, because we have become more isolated from each other. And even when we are in relationships, we don't want to lose our freedoms, with "being free" having the time and money to spend being entertained.
Looking at the Birthrate by country is quite telling.
For instance, Finland has a birth rate of 10.7 per 1000, whilst Niger has 43.6 per 1000.
The population of Finland is 5.5M, the population of Niger is 25M. This means around 58,500 children are born in Finland yearly, compared to 1.01M in Niger, a ratio of 1:18.5 all told. Quite a difference.
With the global population aging rapidly, there is going to very likely be a need for a redistribution of the workforce, just to cope with the elderly, not to mention all the other jobs that will need to be done. And looking at the spread of birth rates, they are likely going to come from Africa, which is going to be interesting, considering the state of culture at the moment and nationalist parties getting so much support. Most developed countries know they have an issue, most are doing very little about it.
Maybe this is a good thing, as the general though is we are overpopulated anyway, but what does the near-term future look like when there aren't enough people in the workforce and far too many elderly? It doesn't sound like recipe for quality aged care, nor does it sound like it is great for those having to work, as they are going to have to work later into their lives, as well as pay more in tax to cover the shortfall.
The economy is incredibly unbalanced currently, with the growing wealth gap playing a big part in creating these conditions. People just can't afford to have children anymore, so they don't, instead choosing to spend their income on entertainment activities. This means that the masses are spending more on things that drive the wealth gap to widen further, but aren't investing into kids or ownership, so there is not only an inadequate workforce, but the masses have little investments, again driving the value to the pointy end to widen that gap even further.
Poor are having less kids than ever, rich more than ever
And it makes sense, because the rich are able to pay for childcare (which has increased in price a hell of a lot) and still go to work, whilst poorer people will have to choose between children and work, with having children being expensive, and not going to work having a massive impact on financial life.
After all, as the rich get richer, they are going to want to have people to hand it down to, and with the change in wealth, there is plenty to go around in those upper income brackets to several children. This keeps wealth in the family, so to speak. And, because of the way things work, the more wealth consolidates, the harder it is for anyone to become wealthy, who isn't born into wealth. There are many reasons for this, from education to cronyism, but this is the way it works.
Success becomes a 0.1 percenter circle jerk.
"Luckily", it is unsustainable and eventually, things will get so bad that they collapse and we move from civil unrest to civil war. It sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? but, this is what tends to happen with centralization, because throughout history, it has never worked. Eventually, all centralized powers collapse and are replaced for a time, until they centralize again, before they collapse again.
It is cyclical stupidity.
And human nature.
We keep doing what we know and we have mechanisms in us to tribalize and maximize ourselves, even if it leads us to collapse. We are the stupidest smart animals there are!
But as long as we are entertained...
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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you summed up me and my generation quite well. I don't have the funds to support a full family, but just enough to pay for some experiences that justify the effort I put in to generate those funds. ACK!
I really feel that there is some planning behind it all - though it is largely through the aligning of incentives and mechanisms to maximize profits.
I think this is happening in a lot of countries but not Nigeria. Hahaha
The birth rate in my country is increasing daily. We have so many teenage pregnancies here and it is increasing the country's population. At the same time, our poverty rate is increasing
Nigeria has a rate of 35 per 1000, 3.5x Finland :D
Lowered birth rate is a consequence of all developed economies though. Even China itself is experience a rapid slowdown and ageing population after its huge economic gains in the past 2 decades or so.
As for the doomsday scenario of war, who knows? Humankind has generally waged war throughout history. These past 50 years have been relatively peaceful with respect to our past.
Yes. The places where people can afford to spend their time, not doing much.
One child policy is coming back to haunt.
Yes, but for how long?
The one child policy had a surprisingly little effect with this; there were so many exceptions, for example farmers and god knows what else, allowing something like 60% of the population to have more than 1 kid in the end, that the differences only became stark recently after it had time to be enforced, and mostly in the cities.
For most of the previous decades, they simply did a rather effective propaganda campaign, which they then just messed up with the one child policy lol:
Now of course, you have an economy built on extremely shaky dependencies on for example, infrastructure and GDP quotas that life has become more unaffordable than ever - Western city folk need about about 7-12x the average median income to buy a home.
Shanghai? 35x. Shenzhen? over 40x... untenable. Who'd have a kid when it'll take until retirement to buy a home... which you are only really renting for 40/70 years. You can't even pass it down.
Insightful sharing there! I always thought (or at least we were always told) that Nordic countries have pretty decent fertility rates compared to rest of the developed economies. Seems like the rates are declining fast over there too (still, much better than some of the developed Asian countries like Singapore, Korea, Japan).
S.K is going to have major issues in coming years.
Instead of,
"You come here and steal our women"
they should change it to
"Come here and impregnate our women"
:D
Cannot argue the closing caption, birth decline in Europeans throughout the world has been happening since the 1960s.
Balance between rich and poor in Africa a massive chasm that needs to be addressed, time will tell.
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It is so out of whack - resource distribution is terrible across the board.
Political forces in play have created current problems.
What most don't realize, thorough DNA going back to what our bodies tell us, most are inter-related.
Realistically we don't know how to work/live together it has become rich vs poor.
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The thought about overpopulation used to be fairly common but these days I've seen more stories about the population cliff we are falling off right now which I think may be a good thing. I wonder where the cycle is going to go, is it going to keep going down with birthrates before it goes back up? Or will it keep going down for a lot longer? If ol' Billy G gets his way, it will keep plummeting. What's so stupid is that it's awful economically and for people that these power hungry elite would be ruling over.
One good thing is with this in mind, I've noticed a lot of multiple families out there, more than I would have ever before. I see a lot of people with multiple kids which is great! I would love to see a lot more 3-4 kid families out there.
Yes, but it also means that there is more consolidation and essentially, it will "clear out" the trash, so to speak (in their eyes).
And this is the interesting thing, as they might very well be the powerhouse families in the future, since they have people who can work and aren't reliant.
That was a nice post, I would like to read more topics like this in Hive because feeds the intelligence of people and inform about reality. Hive isn't only idiots, thanks.
Though there are a few of them too ;)
Wow, the weather there was almost the same with here. It has been rainy, sunny, cloudy, and cooler at nights. It is not the cleaning day yet.
The fertility rate of my country has also decreased as it has been both economically and mentally so difficult to raise a kid in recent years. As I see, people prefer to have one kid or not to marry. Staying alone seems to have some advantages to them.
And it is the "mentally" that I think people are struggling with the most, but justifying it economically.
It sounds like you are facing a lot of challenges in your garden and in life in general, but I want to encourage you to keep going. It's great that you are taking the initiative to clean up your garden and prepare for spring and summer, even if it's not in the most ideal way. Remember that progress is progress, no matter how small it may seem.
As for the issues with birth rates and the economy, it's important to keep in mind that these are complex issues that are not entirely within our control. However, you have made some insightful observations about the reasons behind these trends, and it's important to continue to be aware of them and think about how we can work towards solutions. Keep up the good work and keep striving for progress!
Unfortunately, there isn't much chance to just give up :)
I think that it is largely too late to change the direction of the world at the moment, so it is more about risk mitigation, doing what we can to make it as bright as possible.
I think a lot of companies going on AI and also there is a bot and machines in the workforce being added is where I see the chance of the ageing population finding relief. I am only kind of worried about income sources once AI jumps in. We are going to be having some tough times with economy, population can be gone in one earthquake or virus. But economy is harder to fix.
At the moment at least, AI doesn't change nappies, so it is going to be quite an issue for some of the manual work required for the elderly, since they are already struggling to find enough care workers.
The demographics have been worsening everywhere and I think it can be applied to every single country right now. There are a lot of reasons why it is happening and it's kind of annoying to see how people want to reduce it further. I am also wondering if our reliance on technology has also reduced it because we tend to eat a lot of chemicals too.
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This is an interesting point.
Quite interesting, eh? So many factors involved.
Mass DistrAction.
More stereotypes, loss of ideals and motivations and so on. we know it.
I had dinner with a friend and his daughter (12 yo) that she explained us how the promiscuity is now normal and almost an habit in the school. That's much dangerous
Anyway, talking about birds, on my mother's balcony small blackbirds have just got birth. So I will make a post on the life-creation for black-birds as she could document all the eggs-incubation and the small blackbirds (not yet much black :D ) growth.
Weapons of...
Yes. Hypersexualized children, yet still not translating into more children in later life. It is telling.
We have swifts nest in our roof, but they haven't arrived from south yet. Should be soon!
It's good that birth rate is decreasing there as they have well family planning because here it's increasing due to low class people. I wonder when people can't afford the food and facility for children than why they give birth to more children!!!!!!!!
It is a double edged sword. The developed world is decreasing at an alarmin rate, the underdeveloped increasing at an alarming rate.
Yes it's the fact
@tarazkp In general, poor countries tend to have higher levels of fertility than rich countries. In particular, women tend to give birth to no fewer than three children in countries where GDP per capita is below $1,000 per year.
Ther eis also the reason of life expectancy, as in the poorer countries, less children make it to adulthood.
AI is no doubt informative but it's harm for our people's jobs. I think there should be some rules for using AI because if not then it definitely attacks on our economy. I know people including me want a shortest way of doing everything but this is not good for us at all.
We keep doing what we know and we have mechanisms in us to tribalize and maximize ourselves, even if it leads us to collapse. We are the stupidest smart animals there are! - enough of that regimented lifestyle. There's no harm if we as individuals try to be flexible in our mode of operation and try out new things .
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