mrtheforce
3d ago
Historically, a lot of women’s work took place inside the household economy rather than in the formal labor market. That kind of domestic production, cooking, childcare, clothing repair, food preservation, was productive but largely untaxed. When labor shifts into formal employment, it becomes taxable income, increasing the overall tax burden on households.
Higher taxation reduces disposable income, which can make raising children more expensive and is often associated with lower fertility rates in developed economies.
Because of this, maximizing the number of people in the formal workforce isn’t automatically better for families or demographics. You need a high postive money or "energy" inflow for a natural system to be able to reproduce, same physics applies for humans.
mrtheforce
3d ago
It’s not really about feminism or women being “uppity”. It’s about incentives built into the modern economy.
From a purely economic perspective, it’s better for GDP if more people are in the workforce, so governments and industries push for higher labor participation, including women. But what’s good for GDP isn’t automatically what’s good for (non capital owning) people.
The real issue is cost of living. Housing, childcare, and basic living costs are now so high that a single income usually isn’t enough to support a family anymore. When both adults have to work full-time just to qualify for a mortgage, the idea that one parent could stay home becomes unrealistic.
If houses were affordable enough that one income could support a family, my hypothesis is that you would naturally see more more couples with a partner working less and also a higher fertility rate.
So the debate about whether women should work kind of misses the point, most families simply don’t have a choice.
mrtheforce
1mo ago
Let them figure it out themselves, im done paying 50% of my tax.
mrtheforce
1mo ago
The White elite is slowly losing its power, since the demographics are not in its favor. The way I see this is that by using authoritarian tactics, the elite tries to keep its power even when becoming an even bigger minority. Since the democratic system guarantees the loss of power.
The GOP has always been a bit of a white club. Of course there are minorities in the GOP as well, but usually they are followers of the "white" culture (or British/founding father ideas, however you would describe it).
(Ofcourse with integration you can convert new comers to the dominant 'white' culture, but there is a limited quantity and speed to this process.)
These are just some of my two cents.
mrtheforce
5mo ago
My oppinion as a western european:
1 Demographic: The U.S. population has been growing at roughly 1% annually, compared to only about 0.2% in Europe. On top of that, Europe is also aging more rapidly, and migrants to Europe are generally less high quality than those entering the U.S. As a result, the U.S. benefits from a larger and younger and more high quality consumer base.
2 Regulation: Europe also places more regulations and barriers on businesses, which dampens activity and slows innovation. Generally capital flows to where it can generate the highest returns. While Europe does offer opportunities, the U.S. market generally provides a more favorable environment because investments can often go much further.
3 Goverment spending: Another important difference is the role of the state. In Europe, government spending accounts for about 51.5% of GDP, compared to around 36.2% in the U.S. Since state spending is generally less effective at generating long-term growth than private entrepreneurship, this also tilts the balance in favor of the U.S. (See higher income tax and more taxation in general)
There are definitely more factors, but these are just the ones that come quickly to mind right now.
mrtheforce
8mo ago
You could not have formulated it better for me.
mrtheforce
8mo ago
1: Yes
2: Yes
3: No
4: Yes with qualification
5: Yes
6: Yes
mrtheforce
10mo ago
Assuming 1v1 in a vacuum, Russia is the most likely winner in a war of attrition due to bigger population size and more natural resources. Since international support is declining for Ukraine, the situation is heading more to the "1v1".
mrtheforce
11mo ago
Thanks for the read, i think Omniscient AI is a long way of. Almost all current ai models "simply" condence known knowledge. Most new discoveries made is finding patterns that we didnt seen before, but where already present. The current AI models have no capacity to think and rationalize. They are just very complex and high dimensional information vectors (that is what the N-amount of parameters mostly are).
Simply said: Just because a LLM knows the relation between certain human words does not mean it it sentient. The models can only repeat what the humans trained them on.
I agree that focusing only on income tax probably doesn’t capture the full picture. A more useful way to approach the issue is to look at the overall cost of living and the net resources households actually have available. Housing, childcare, healthcare, education, and other expenses can place a significant burden on families regardless of whether their income tax liability is high or low.
Regarding the second point, my argument is simply that reproduction in any natural system requires a positive inflow of resources. For humans, that translates to having sufficient financial stability to support children, and for most people: maintaining a desired standard of living. People have different expectations for quality of life, and most are not willing to significantly lower their living standards just to have one or more additional childeren. I would argue that if families could maintain their current social and economic position while experiencing an increase in disposable income, many would be more inclined to have more children.
More options
Context Copy link