Didn’t we always hunt?

Then why do people like Elon Musk, Trump and so many other rich/upper class people usually have 4 or more children? I don’t think technology, things becoming easier or more comfortable lower birthrates, if anything, they increase it as we saw in the baby boomer era, which had a fertility rate similar to those in medieval times 2000 years ago, so. I am sure people said the same thing as you every 100 years whenever there was a downward trend in the fertility rate, no? “It’s because people are happier, more comfortable now, more educated too”. But imo, those things make you want to have more children, not less.

I think this is a common observation because most societies that become big start to get ran by greedy evil oligarchs and leaders who stagnate the economy for the working class. It does still talk a lot about humanity’s nature as a whole, but not the individual, because, we all can see how our baby boomer grandparents had so many children when their living standards were higher than ours. They’d have 7+ children in average, a home at 19 years old, economic stability, more social lives, physical human contact, not isolation in front of a machine online, all without a college degree like my grandpa, who had 10 children like that. He lived really happy. I wish having children was easier, I’d like to have 1 or 2, teach them how to play videogames like me someday, but it won’t happen, because it’s insanely expensive, I am 28 and still cannot afford a home even after working for 3 years as a software engineer who graduated from ITESM, the “top #1 college in all Latin America” a college a lot of Americans and people from other countries send their children to, has a very hgih reputation. I was a good student too, I was the dude of that meme that says every group has these 3 teammates: the dude that does 91% of the work (that was always me because I had to maintain a scholarship that paid 80% of my debt and I am poor asf so), the dude that helps the first guy by doing the other 9%, the third guy who does nothing but is motivated asking questions and willing to do the presentation, and the 4th guy, the one we all didn’t even know was part of the group, but he showed up in the presentation day. I noticed so, so many people procrastinate and don’t work or try hard in school at all. They are so lazy, and I guess I can’t blame them as I used to anymore, it is not worth working for this world and system.

You also see people like Elon Musk, having more than 10 children. Trump has a lot too. A lot of rich people have so many children, like both of my grandparents, or the politicians and doctors with no free time I know in the family, most have at least 3 children and so on, and they’d have more if they had the same wealth as my grandparents, but they never achieved it either. Not even by being the co-founder of an hospital, like my uncle, who has 2 children, but also has fun collecting motorcycles, built a gaming room for his son, a room with 6 high-end computers for his friends to join him in videogames right there, a LAN party room. He had the entire Disney Infinity or Skylanders figurines collection to play with, forgot which. Those you place on a console, like Amiboos in a Nintendo Switch or UB Funkeys… I don’t think technology or becoming educated are the problem, it’s the lack of money/resources 100%.

I don’t think the existence of the Internet, smartphones, videogames, or whatever you want to name that our grandparents didn’t have back then, are the issue. It’s the lack of money, and that’s thanks to Reagan who convinced and influenced multiple countries, including mine, Mexico, of adopting his Trickle Down Economics, of lowering taxes to the rich, who used to pay about 70%, some say 91% in rare cases, of taxes back then; today, they pay near 0% and they are not creating jobs as we were promised they would, they are instead replacing us with AI.

So, it’s simpler: When people have a lot of resources, birthrates rise. If they don’t have the resources, they drop. It’s not about how easy, how comfortable technology has made us or whatever, that’s a lie, and that’d be something the government, feds or whoever would try to convince us of it being the problem so we stop blaming the rich and continue fighting sideways like they want us to. No, it is the rich the cause people are not having children, they are creating an artificial difficult living standard, which is having to work 5x times LONGER than your grandparents to get even a quarter of what they had at your age.

After you turn 30, your chances of having children with disabilities increase significantly too. So, time is ticking for many.

The ideal society, in my opinion, would be that one that is highly educated and capable and motivated of adapting the fertility rate to what humanity can currently afford, that’d be jumping between having 1 child or 3. A fertility rate under 2.1 means the population is declining, which could be a good thing is overpopulation is being problematic, we need time to build more houses, we need time to prepare more jobs too, people here could have only 1 child, which is still better than 0. If society needs to keep the population constant, people would be recommended to have no more than 2 children, which is still better than 0. If we need to grow and expand, we could have 3 or more children, whatever the experts said at the time. Still better than 0.

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There is the question if the birthrates just dropped because the market now expects both people in a relationship to be working, making it impossible for the parents to care for their kids by reducing hours and childcare costs being more or close to what one person earns, especially in lower paying jobs. The effects on lifetime income for a mother are still devastating, and domestic work is still VERY undervalued. Fix this, and I am sure that birth rates will go up. But that would mean that our corporate overlords will make less.

Maybe if the population numbers in the US crash hard there will be a rethinking of priorities. The combination of xenophobia and economic pressure to keep working without having kids will take care of that in the next decade or two.

But none of the low income / high birth rate countries are mostly white and Protestant 😭😭

The problem is the sub replacement birth rate of 1.53 per woman.

This is not actually a problem, except we want to keep the completely unsustainable economic system unchanged.

Birth rates are down all over the developed world with Japan being the hardest hit

What reality are you living in? Are you 16?

whoring around is so fun tho

You must be joking if you think “I genuinely don’t understand why the oligarchs are mad kids aren’t having babies…”

Honestly I’m concerned just why that’s the age range the “Oligarchs” are specifically calling out, not having enough babies. All I’m saying is, why is it up to the kids, and not the adults who have JOBS and MENTAL stability.

And I’ll go back on my first sentence, WHO in their right mind, in 2026, is like "Yeah, the economy is in such a great place today, that I think I’ll raw dog my wife until she becomes pregnant, and in 9 months I’ll dish out thousands of dollars just for her to birth a child, and then dish out even more thousands of dollars for doctor bills, diapers, formula, etc. And that’s just their infancy. Ok. Not everyone is financially stable to raise a child, even as a full grown adult. And not everyone is mentally stable, to raise a child.

But we’re wondering why the kids aren’t having kids.