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I'm not a fan of large social engineering projects, and wasn't one of the people advocating for fertility stuff.
The problem will eventually work itself out. The higher fertility places and cultures will become more dominant. It will just happen on timelines that are too long for people to care about. Probably at least two or three generations 40-60 years.
The scenario you bring up reminded me of something ... people like to start by fixing problems at a societal level. They want the federal government to just step in and wave a magic wand to fix things. But if you are forced to actually solve a problem, this is a backwards way of thinking about things. Instead of thinking at the national level, people should be thinking at the personal and local level. "What would make me have more kids?" and then "What would make my close family and neighbors have more kids?"
Me and my wife have good jobs so I don't really find myself money constrained when thinking about having more kids. We are actively trying to have more kids right now. (which will be number three, but earlier in my life I thought about having four kids, and now I don't think I can do it). I feel kid constrained because of time, stress, and space constraints. The two kids I do have I feel like they require a ton of effort, it feels impossible to just get everything done that needs to get done. The time spent hanging out with my kids is often one of the best times to get a bunch of important tasks done.
I tend to feel more stressed, because there is a local expectation of closely watching your kid. There is a playground right behind my house. I'd be able to see my kids from my house if they went to this playground. I think my parents might have just let me wander off and go play at the playground when I was my kids age, but I feel like if I did that for my kids it would be frowned upon.
Our house is a decent size, but we'd like to expand it if we were having more kids. We can't expand it due to regulatory constraints. We might be able to get around these regulatory constraints, but it will take time and stress (areas where I already feel resource constrained).
When I look around at my family and neighbors, the main additional constraint is medical (some of them have trouble having kids).
Its not that money isn't a true constraint for anyone, its just kinda lower on the list. And maybe if we had enough money some of the other constraints could be handled. I've considered hiring a personal assistant to deal with more of my life problems, but my wife hates that idea.
For me, and maybe some of my family and neighbors, we would be having more kids if the following things happened:
Reduced local regulatory constraints on housing expansion.
More communal child care opportunities. (things like birthday parties are great, my kids can get in some social time, and so can I). Its a pain for someone to host these, but everyone else usually enjoys coming along.
More relaxed social attitudes, aka allow free range kids.
Less bullshit bureaucratic things I have to deal with. Car stuff, taxes, and recently the city changed all our street addresses (cuz the old ones were racist or something). Those are annoyances that I wouldn't choose to deal with. But there are also things I choose to deal with that feel like they are made more difficult because of regulatory crap. I am trying to become a wedding officiant for my sister's wedding, trying to get banquet license for a recreational event, trying to setup doctors appointments for myself, trying to apply to some private schools for my daughters, etc. This is just the current stuff that is on my mind, but it feels like I've had a list of things just as long for the last few years even though I keep knocking things off the list every month.
The last one is the real kicker for me. Each one thing is usually no big deal on its own, but there are these constant bureaucratic bullshit things added on top of them that make each item take longer. And the kind of impulse people have that says "the federal government should do a thing to solve some societal issue" is exactly why I think that list of bureaucratic bullshit keeps growing. Everyone always thinks their one issue is so important, and they always think that any minor costs imposed by imposing their top down solution are very minimal. But the shit adds up. I can only imagine the nightmare that a national kids registry might choose to impose. How long before they start tying your kid benefits to other crap they care about. Oh, you can't get your child tax credit unless they have x doctor visits a year, because we need to actually make sure your kid is being taken care of. Submit the reports made by your daycare, or the child visitation officer who comes to inspect your home.
If there is one big societal problem that I want the federal government to fix then it is this one: people having the desire to fix big societal problems all at once via the federal government. I want a federal agency that makes it their goal to determine how much time the average American spends on bureaucracy, and when that number gets too high they have the power to go around axing bureaucratic requirements at other agencies. You think your issue is so important? Too bad, we are gutting your "save everyone at once at the federal level" program that requires hours of every American's time.
That is my little pipe dream. Just writing this should have been a stress reliever. But I feel more stressed now, I could have spent these moments of coffee fueled productivity to slog through another government form. And now I am one day closer to multiple deadlines hanging over my head.
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