Comments

1

Of course people are not terrible. It's just 75% of Slog commenters who are terrible.

2

Of course people are not terrible; it's just 75% of Slog commenters who are terrible--and something like half of the 75% is that one sock puppet troll getting bored in his basement.

3

Sorry, @1 wasn't appearing and I thought they come and got swallowed up so I resubmitted added on.

4

@3 dammit, thought it was one of those poems that adds onto itself.

5

Many people are overworked and underpaid. Lots of people don't have the time, money, or resources to raise a tiny human, let alone 2.

6

Na, just about all Slog commenters are all around good folks - staying informed, offering opinions, engaging in friendly debate over politics and economics, making jokes, and all around good cheer.

God bless each and every one of you.

8

America's population has been propped up by immigration for years, and encouraging people to pop out babies that they can't afford isn't going to help. If you're worried about population declines reform immigration.

10

If an economy needs more population growth to be considered "good" then the structure of the economy isn't that great nor sustainable long term. Reducing the "replacement rate" and reducing total human population over the next several generations isn't a bad thing.

11

The cause of falling birth rates is easy to understand: Our country is packed with forced birthers that don’t give a shit what happens to those babies or their mothers, so it’s just another byproduct of this nation’s hypocrisy, racism, and the insatiably greedy 1%.

The US is a miserable place to raise children compared to Canada and Europe, and the lack of support paired with the obscenely high social, emotional, and economic costs of raising a family in and around urban areas has turned children into another luxury that most people can’t afford.

12

11

So when are you moving to Europe?

13

@9 Yes, if you remove access to birth control and abortion, people who are sexually active will have kids. That's the main point of birth control and abortion, to prevent kids. If I don't have access to birth control, I will get pregnant, and without access to abortions, I will have a kid. Not sure what you're trying to say...

14

So according to Unoriginal Andy, the nations birth rate is going down because the “forced birthers” are, apparently, forcing people to have babies.

Yup, that makes sense.

16

@ 12,

When are you gonna start having thoughts of your own that aren’t just regurgitated bullshit?

/Related/

What if there were no rhetorical questions?

18

Interesting choice to chastise K. Hart and then turn around and post content from Barstool.

You might want to consider your sources, Timothy.

19

16

What if you weren’t a batshit loon?

The mind ponders.....

20

@3

Um, phrasing?

Also, you've been around long enough to know that SLOG's home-built comments-program keels over whenever its load gets up to half a dozen simultaneous users or so, and you have to wait for The Stranger's computer guy to stop playing Minecraft and reboot the server before any new comments will show up.

21

@ 14,

One can’t call those hypocritical morons “pro-life,” because they’re also pro-war, pro-death penalty, and anti-everyone that doesn’t look like them and believe in their nilhilistic cult. “Forced birthers” fits like a glove.

If they actually cared about children and families, then they would support economic programs that provide for children and families. They don’t because then black and Latino people would share in those benefits. It’s the same reason we don’t have universal healthcare.

Even you should be able to understand it.

23

21

it’s fascinating to watch your mind play twisto-logic in order to self-validate your hate and it’s resulting narrative.

I mentioned batshit loon, right?

24

Oscars: Randy Rainbow as host with Dina Martina doing interviews with the nominees on the floor. Sorted!

25

@15 (et al.)

Decades of accumulated evidence tell us that low birth rates are a direct consequence of prosperity. The effect of public policy is minimal, relative to the increase (or decrease) in prosperity. Nobody has a good explanation for this yet (and yes, the one you just came up with has been considered and found lacking) but the data is plentiful and robust.

When we break that data down further, we find that the best way to increase your country's birth rate, by far, is to have a war. It can be a civil war or an external war, but nothing else is nearly as effective as a nice, sold war to reduce your prosperity and elevate your fertility rate.

26

@24- brilliant!

27

@ 23,

You do realize that anyone who can read can see that you’re deeply threatened by my opinions, otherwise why would you care, name-calling included?

Also, are you a bot? You don’t appear to have any thoughts of your own, and you add zilch to the conversation.

29

@27

The simplest explanation, I think, is that that Destroying_your_narrative is primarily interested in destroying narratives.

If someone really has managed to write a deconstruction chatbot, well, color me impressed. I vote we keep it.

29

@ 25,

The common thread among the developed countries is increasing income inequality making housing and raising a family unaffordable for most people. That said, places like Canada and Europe have amazing family support programs that would work in the US given the political will.

30

@29:

Except that they're just really, really bad at doing even that one thing...

32

@29

That's kind of a non-sequitur, isn't it?

There are prosperous countries with very nice social welfare systems and declining birth rates (Scandanavia). There are also prosperous countries with lousy social welfare systems and declining birth rates (US). There are prosperous countries with runaway income inequality and declining birth rates (US again). There are prosperous countries without runaway income inequality and with declining birth rates (Scananavia again, Germany, cf. Piketty)

33

@30

I'm willing to make allowances, AIs tend to be pretty crappy for a while after you first switch them on. Practice makes perfect, you know?

33

31
exactly
all these kids applauding the drop in birthrate must be planning to self fund their retirement, and also change their own shitty diapers when they are 80

34

Of course people are not terrible.
They just recognize that giving more money to the greedy grasping whores in the Homelessness Industrial Complex is immoral and stupid and doesn't help the homeless one iota.

35

27

Pot.....kettle.....something something.....black....

You mean I should type something intelligent and Constructive like “TDumpf!!!” and “republiKKKans!!” and “nazzziisss!!!!” over and over and over again??

Sorry, but I’m gonna pass....it’s more fun to bust your balls and expose what a batshit loon you are.

Have an awesome day!

36

27

And....oh yes, deeeeeeeeply threatened.

Lmfao

37

@31 @33

The SSA, an organization with some 60,000 employees, has been aware of declining US birth rates for several decades now, has produced a large body of research on the topic, and has a number of plans and contingency plans for maintaining the Trust Fund under observed demographic trends.

But what the hell, this is the internet, and on the internet you're the only person who ever thinks about these things, aren't you?

Lord knows there couldn't possibly be a web site somewhere stuffed with data and documents about exactly the thing you mention.

39

@38

So you're saying you're perfectly aware of the fact that there's a solution already in place to the problem you're pretending to be worried about, and that there are plenty of alternate working models from other countries to draw from for those who don't care for the plan currently in place?

But I guess this is just what the Internet is now, eh.

40

A bit of gallows humor between killing Mudede’s post and heading off to explore in my rental Impala, while sitting at, basically, Denny’s with a bar:

I read a book called “America Alone” by Steyn roughly a decade ago.

Turns out he’s kinda right-wing-ish.

Anyways, his stated birth rate to maintain a population is 2.3 per womens.

The foil, the catalyst, the phantom waiting in the wings, was...

Yemeni women having like eight apiece.

;[

41

37
you precious naive credulous little twit...
SS has a number of plans and contingency plans, and a vault with 3 Trillion in IOUs.
It has been paying out more each year than it collects for a decade now.
It is a Pyramid Scam that requires ever more suckers to pay into it to maintain the pretense of viability.
declining birthrates (and a generation of slackers who work as baristas into their 30s paying squat into the system) guarantee it will go bust sooner than later

42

"just throwing money at getting individuals off the street" is a tired and ignorant excuse for inaction. Throwing money to unsheltered people for rental housing is damned useful. It is an antidote to homelessness!

43

Ken actually has a point at #7 (despite his intentional mischaracterizations). Katie Herzog was making the argument for intentional human extinction in order to stave off climate change, just a month or two ago.

@12: If you have a plane ticket and papers for me to emigrate to Scandinavia, I'll happily take them. If it's for Denmark specifically, I'll do it TODAY.

@21: They don't like that being pointed out. Their minds rebel at the thought that maybe they might be awful people, so they have to go through mental gymnastics to preserve their own sense of superiority.

@41: Ah yes, those slackers with $100k+in student loan debt, who can't get an entry-level job without 4+ years of experience, while people work until older and older ages in the industries the "slackers" are trying to enter, industries that want to pay slave wages or outsource the work overseas whenever possible. Those slackers. Yes, they're the ones to blame for the Social Security system being in trouble, not the GOP that's constantly robbing from it and trying to privatize it at any opportunity. Got it.

44

@33:

From the examples I've seen thus far, this one doesn't seem to be learning much through experience (cit ref @35-36)...

45

@41- I'm kinda tired of hearing this. SS is not going bankrupt. Even with all the GOP abuse and 'borrowing' it will be able to meet 100% of it's obligations thru 2034, and without the needed repayments will meet 74% thru 2090. The big shift in thinking required is this: you don't pay for you, you pay for the generation before you- My parents paid for my grandparents, I pay for them, 'These dang kids' will pay for mine. Also the dumb things you're saying about millennials are exactly what every generation said about the next .

47

@46

If you don't like the solution, that's fine, you're allowed to disagree with your government here. If 2034 rolls around and a majority of Americans have indeed decided that our senior citizens will have to get by on a reduced public stipend, well then that's how democracy works, whether you or I like it or not.

If you truly prefer Sweden's society, then if you work hard and apply yourself I'm sure you'll some day be able to achieve your dream of becoming a Swedish Citizen. Plenty of other hard-working people in the world have achieved that kind of dream; there's no reason you can't, too.

48

47

No, that is not how democracy works.


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