Billionaires demand more babies but make parenthood unaffordable

215 points by Majano57 a month ago on reddit | 20 comments

explainittothegeese | a month ago

“What suppresses fertility is not prosperity, but precarity. Where income is concentrated, time is scarce and risk is individualised, having children becomes a gamble rather than a choice.”

Nailed it

suspicious_hyperlink | a month ago

B-but in 1874 you could fit 10 families in a NY tenement

Cloudboy9001 | a month ago

Precarity limiting fertility doesn't explain high birth rates in sub-Saharan countries, areas both precarious and lacking wealth. And all else equal, wealth does limit precarity.

fatderp01 | a month ago

Because over there, they lack a pension system and your kids take care of you when you are old. Also a lot of kids don't make it to adulthood.

Cloudboy9001 | a month ago

Lacking a pension system sounds like precarity to me.

Zealousideal_Let_975 | a month ago

Yeah the situation is highly reliant actually on woman’s rights more than anything. Access to birth control and educational opportunities are paramount for reducing birth rate because women with access have kids as an option instead of forced. No wonder republicans want to destroy these things.

Any-Cryptographer-83 | a month ago

They need poor people and their offspring to work the jobs immigrants have been working.

IAmNotMyName | a month ago

Billionaires need more surfs. Fun fact the black plague is what ended the feudal system.

Ok_Builder910 | a month ago

I would have one for a million.

Don't know if it's true but there are plenty of rumors about Elon paying for women to have his babies. He just won't pay taxes for other men's babies

millennial_falcon | a month ago

A million is way too low.

xitizen7 | a month ago

…and celebrate replacing humans with machines and wish for a world where humans have less and less work and more babies they can't afford.

CostMeAllaht | a month ago

They need more consumers that's all Billionaires need only one thing and it rhymes quillotine

xitizen7 | a month ago

They are driven by ego and not the greater good.

MangoSalsa89 | a month ago

These same billionaires also claim that AI is going to replace all of our jobs.

infininme | a month ago

And also that immigrants aren’t a good substitute for babies for some reason.

sugarstarbeam | a month ago

Well the state of the country doesn’t really make for much horny time either.

Billionaires want us to not give consent.

Swimming-Tax-6087 | a month ago

Just like the machines demanded more batteries

knockatize | a month ago

Go to any European country with an expansive social safety net and their birth rates are for crap, too.

Now what?

copperboom129 | a month ago

Yup. The simple fact is children used to be a net positive to a family. They could watch the other children, tend the farm, work and help the family.

Now children are a net negative. They cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of time to rear.

Societal safety nets are awesome (wish we had more in the US) but they dont even come close to paying for a child.