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Notes -
Italy’s birth rate is decreasing further to 1,2:
https://archive.is/T6thJ
The article notes that Meloni is herself a single child, but fails to mention that she also only has a single daughter. Still the low birth rate is a core issue for her and her right-wing coalition, but as in leftwing governments elsewhere they can’t find policies to reverse course.
The carrots are not working, so there should be sticks implemented. Not sure how, but we should make childlessness painful.
Limit dispensing of oral contraceptives to married couples with verified children. Ban abortion.
Yes, it will be tough. Lots of terrible situations will pop up. The question to be asked is, “is this worse than literally running out of people?”
We won't run out of people. Subpopulations with higher fertility rates will outcompete. In the short run, though, countries may shrink, and the burden of caring for the elderly fall on a smaller and smaller working population, which in turn makes it harder and harder for that population to also take care of kids of their own.
It's all a result of socialist policies allowing people to offset the cost of their choice to not have children onto others. We still sort of "punish" childrearing in the sense that governments are strongly concerned with the material welfare of the elderly, but not so concerned with the financial capacity of those providing for the elderly to have children of their own.
Putting these figures together, working-class people are shouldered by the elderly with a tax burden equivalent to nearly 40 percent of their earnings. If they did not have to pay for these pensions (not to mention other large expenses such as medical care) their salaries would be 40 percent higher.
I don't have the time to make an effortpost about this right now but this is obviously the issue. These married couples already have the equivalent of many children to look after, through no fault of their own. A frugal, average-earning couple could probably get away with raising 3-4 children on less than 40% of their income. Before banning contraceptives etc. let's fix the broken system that forces poor couples at childrearing age to pay for the luxurious retirements of unrelated elderly people.
The higher fertility rate subpopulation thing does provide a chance of running out of productive workers, though. One of the killer hacks of avoiding the fertility decline associated with being a productive member of industrial civilization is to just call the bluff of the other members when it comes to willingness to let you starve.
In the US that would be basically just the haredim. Ghettos really don’t have that high a TFR anymore and other very high TFR subcultures are at least workers even if they’re not doing particularly skilled work.
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I think it's not so simple. While it is true that the average social security recipient takes out more than he or she put in, this is to some extent balanced by the fact that people who have fewer children have more time and energy to be economically productive and are thus also in a way economically subsidizing people who have more children. One would need to analyze relative economic productivity between people with various numbers of children in order to get a clear view of what is happening.
Well, putting aside the selfish aspect of having kids (there are benefits that go along with the costs after all), I think generally raising kids is harder than putting more time into your job. On average those who have more kids will be working harder overall than those who don't and happen to make more money because they're more career-oriented.
Further, I very much doubt that in countries with such a large tax burden, those without kids are making nearly as much of a financial contribution as the kids themselves will. Three kids each making $100,000 per year will generate much more wealth for the state than the childfree couple making an extra $200,000 per year due to their decision, not to mention the exponential effects of those kids going on to have kids of their own.
So, yes, there are other factors to consider, but I'm confident that if we looked at the actual numbers we'd find this factor in particular pretty negligible.
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