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I've previously posted on the Motte about the state-funded Swedish Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility. Recently the Committee released its second report more closely detailing the root cause of the decline – which women are not having children anymore? As before here's a link in case you know the Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/rapport/nr-2-fran-hoga-till-sjunkande-fruktsamhetstal-hur-ser-situationen-i-sverige-ut/
The focus of this report is a lot narrower than the previous one which means there are fewer fun takeaways. Two facts stand out. There's been a lot of speculation about coupling not working, people delaying childrearing so they are unable to get that third child, et cetera, but the report doesn't bear any of these concerns out. Men and women are still moving in together, but the major driver of the decline is that there's a growing cohort in which the couple never decides to have kids. A lot of DINK-couple (Double Income, No Kids) are no longer as eager to become DICKs (Double Income, Couple o' Kids) as they used to be. This fact is concerning because I have a suspicion it has a strong potential to rapidly initiate a self-replicating demographic spiral. DINKs have more resources compared to DICKs, and if more people choose to stay DINKs then life for DICKs will probably become even harder, which in turn will lead to even fewer DICKs. I think the carrot for DICKs probably won't be enough here: society probably also needs to put a dent in the wallet of the DINKs, maybe throught some tax scheme, to encourage more childrearing.
Beyond that the report also has a few tidbits of interest here and there. The common narrative of a foreign underclass quickly and decisively outbreeding the native population isn't quite on the mark for example, as the report points out that second-generation immigrants tend to have about as many children as natives (first-generation is another story, and a large part of the very justifiable demographic anxiety in Europe). On the other hand that also means immigration cannot possibly solve the issue long term or even medium term; while many children of immigrants often learn Swedish quite poorly, commit more crimes than average and remain largely unintegrated for vast periods of time, they at least seem to take our individualistic childless culture to heart.
This is less meaty than the previous post on the subject, but I think that's enough to bring some fodder for discussion. What do you think should be done to support our DICKs? Should DINKs be made to pay to make their lives easier? Is the reports take naive on the questions of immigration and demography?
Less kids means higher taxes on working aged people to pay for retirements. All one needs to do to properly apportion the costs to those that cause them is to raise taxes and give a tax break to those with kids. If you're footing the bill to bring in someone to pay for your retirement on average then you gotta contribute enough to pay for your own. pretty simple. Someone with a TFR of 0 should be paying roughly twice the redistribution portion of the tax bill(excluding more fixed costs like military spending that don't really figure into the per capita societal upkeep). I wouldn't consider this punitive or coercive, just making people internalize their externalities.
Sure, I'll internalize it further by voting to remove funding from Grandma because the boomer's couldn't save a 401k like the rest of the following generations and couldn't not blood-let the economy either.
Sure, that'd reduce the redistributive tax burden and proportional reduce the difference expect from those producing the next generation and they who must contribute in other ways. Still there are many other ways you implicitly free ride on the parents. Even in ancapistan where you've hoarded capital, durable goods and gold for your retirement when it comes to you needing to exchange those things for youthful labor you are depending on someone to have brought that youthful labor into existence. One could probably come up with a fancy financial product to have parents paid now as some kind of royalty for future labor of their offspring by anyone who expects to benefit from it, but that simplifies to a general transfer.
The problem with any redistributive scheme around this topic is that you are in essence punishing people for things that are generally outside their control. I'm a man. I cannot have kids. No about of forced taxes to pay for the privileged people who can is going to change biology. In order for me to have kids I'd need to find a woman who wants them. Single rates are up and unless the State is going to do something dysgenic like make it legal for me to go around raping woman or forcing them to marry me to get my TFR quota in, I'm not sure what there is much I can do about it.
This entire exercise is some weird technocratic meddling. Just go full authoritarian already. We already think that men don't have a right to bodily autonomy in times of crisis. Make the same argument for women, this is a fertility crisis. Go draft women to be mothers. A state that can't get its citizens to volunteer to make sacrifices for it has no right to exist. Apparently people have forgotten that quintessential rule. If that means most of the first world then let them die. Maybe the next batch of cultures will learn from our mistakes.
You can probably not do much personally about whether other nations seek to make war with your country either. And if you're unfit for military service you can't serve a direct role in the conflict. But you can contribute through taxation. As I said in the outset, this isn't meant to be punitive or coercive. It's meant to get everyone to contribute their fair share, those having children are sacrificing their own consumption in a real way. If you were crippled and thus unable to participate on the front lines you might reasonable be jealous of able bodied men who returned with heroic stories, like people who always wanted to be parents and had great kids that brought them glory they were very fortunate in a way. But there are also soldiers that die in ditches as their lungs slowly fill with fluids, and there are parent's who's kids come out with severe disabilities. Life is not fair in that way and never will be.
And whether it's military defense of the nation or the production of the next generation we as a society simply cannot survive without it. If tax policy can be used a tool to prevent either the birth rate or the military from collapsing it ought to irrespective of how it might make some individuals feel.
You're bemoaning that you might be made to make the sacrifice of marginally higher tax rates.
Trampling on the rights of the individuals because a State cannot get people to volunteer is a state that shouldn't exist. Let it collapse.
Why should I sacrifice for my society? What has my society sacrificed for me? It is a give and take reciprocal relationship. The state seems to have forgotten that and it has failed to instill a sense of civic responsibility in its citizens. Probably the REAL problem, is when the state exist merely for the interests of the mercenary elites. All this other stuff seems downstream of that.
Your rights are not being trampled because you're asked to pay for taxes to support things that will pay dividends to you in your old age dude, be serious.
Every society we know about is struggling with fertility. Even the bright spots are just declining more slowly. There is wide diversity in the makeup of each of these societies so it can't actually be that mercenary elite capture is the monocause. It's almost certainly something economic(in the very broad sense, concerning modern industrial incentives) in nature. In fact the darkest spots of fertility are some of the most abject patriarchal eastern societies so your general axe to grind about how awful western women are is particularly ill suited to explain the problem.
Nah my axe is with how awful western elites are, its not gendered. I wouldn't even say its a western elites vs eastern elites, I just live in the west. Rather it seems that the current crop of elites are particularly incompetent and out-of-touch with the world. Despite centralizing power and authority they seem incapable of actually using it to make things better for anyone besides themselves.
What dividends am I getting? I'm pretty sure if I just invested that money I would get better returns be it in stocks, gold, or lead and rations. Considering the last time the government got money for people's elderly age they spent it all on booze and hookers, and setup the current ponzi scheme we have now.
Some problems can't be solved with money. And if raising taxes is a means to punish the childless, then yes it is trampling rights.
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