Social Security works with economic growth. It doesn't matter if you get 10 babies or 10 robots. Automation makes possible to keep proper living standards without exponential population growth.
Social Security, as other services like education, stops working because it is not shared.
Actually, with enough automation, it is easier to satisfy a smaller population.
There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. Self-driving trucks mean that you need 3.5 million fewer babies to carry out that task. Just 3 million if you actually need 500,000 people to maintain the software.
So, I agree with you that in the past Social Security was depending on population growth. That has been changing fast for the past 50 years. There is no economical reason to not have Social Security in the future.
This would be true except the SS tax ceiling is extremely low. SS does not scale on the rich past $128,400.
One man owning 10 robots will pay less SS than 10 workers.
This is the whole reason why the "crisis" of SS is vastly overstated and a political choice, given the obvious available solutions.
That can be changed. The difficulty is more related to corruption and lobbying than any economical constrain.
But, you are right. If nothing changes on how taxes are collected, or if it continues changing against social wellfare then it is a problem.
You could structure social security as a tax on capital, but that isn't how it currently works.
Yes. 100% true. I just mean that it can be changed. It is not an economic constraint, but it is the current situation.
It's absolutely tied to population.
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons
The new generation grew with aids, feel less influenced by the authority selling the one family lifestyle and use more contraception.
Now wait for Vasalgel to take off. When males will have total control of their involvment in pregnancy, you will see the numbers go down even more. And probably some serious changes in the man/woman dynamics.
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/05/23/birth-rate-drop
Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College:
"I think the most important and concerning thing about this is not the number of people who are voluntarily childless, but the tremendous gap between the number of children women said they wanted to have and the number that they will probably have. Early this year, the gap reached its highest level in 40 years. I think we need to think very seriously about what it is that pushes people into this kind of 'delaying.'"
You often need a man to make the baby.
Edit: I see we're talking past eachother. I was responding to your claim that "Also a lot of people don't want children." I'm pointing out that, while that's true, the real problem is people who report wanting children but not having any.
I wasn't responding to your comment about male birth control. Although if you want my opinion, I think it will be good for men to share the burden of family planning. But I doubt it will cause the birth rates to plummet much. Men want children too.
If you interrogate only women, it's completely off.
"In a nationally representative survey of single, childless people in 2011, more men than women said they wanted kids."
"A different poll from 2013 echoed those findings, with more than 80 percent of men saying they’d always wanted to be a father or at least thought they would be someday. Just 70 percent of women felt the same."
Granted, I don't have tons of studies, and some of this data is a few years old (but still after the 2008 recession,) but I think it's reasonable to conclude that the drop in birth rate can not be explained solely by a decline in the number of men or women who want kids. For sure, that is a big part of it. But the fact that couples who want kids are not having them, and that this gap grew after the recession, leads me to think there are structural issues with our economy at play.
This is true, but are enough people feeling liberated enough to not have kids to have this be a significant part of the lowered birth rate?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/post_9910_b_7988...
While the economy has grown about ~400% dependency ratios have gone up about 11% I think. Social security's affordability has always been about political choice - e.g. tax cuts for the wealthy or money for pensioners.
Here's my perspective. I'm thirty, I've been in a relationship since I was 17...the same relationship..we've talked about kids a lot...at this point...I really don't think even with both of us steadily working for several years now at decent jobs we can afford to raise a kid. We've agreed we don't feel like it's fair to raise a child without being able to provide a decent standard of life and our own standard of life ia not the best as it is, despite both of us working full time, with regular overtime, at skilled jobs.
As far as online presence goes...clearly as I'm shadowbanned on here I haven't quite grasped the...uh...I would say subtlties, I suppose, of having a reasonable online presence. I haven't gotten used to the idea of the internet being a place where one posts real personal information, despite having been on the internet since the early nineties....I still see it as a place where identities don't matter and people who post personal information online are fucking idiots.
In all honesty, i've never really participated much on online communities until recently but still go about it with that nineties mindset not really understanding people are fairly hypersensitive (a bunch of little bitches) to stuff online these days.. I keep a fairly strict separation between stuff I do on a computer online and everything else in my life. I realize it's a necessity to start mixing the two...but I find it hard to combine an online presence with my real life stuff.
It's one of these thing's i've beeen working on though because i've found that's what all my friends and people I know have done.
The solution to just simply arm yourself with all the knowledge you can, and then embark on the path to self-actualize. Between self-actualization and playing things close to your vest and smart, I think you can still make it work very well in America. Nowhere has the same purchasing power parity too for tech salaries (except maybe Switzerland).
I appreciate the advice for self actualization. That is what constantly working on. In my free time, I am finishing my B.S. in Comp Sci/EE, travel internationally, work on certs, hang with my bros, hone my craft, enjoy new hobbies, write creatively, and try to stay sane and physically fit. The problems is that the more I walk down this path, the less tolerance I have for those who deter me from achieving these goals and those who don't impact my life in any positive way. As a 5'll light skinned multi-racial young man, when I try to date online or approach the opposite sex for any sort of intimacy or potential relationship, I get rejected and told I am too short, ethnic looking and am not rich enough by women who earn less than me and made bad life choices. Sigh, I suppose that makes me the asshole for not wanting to deal with this, trying to understand these trends and looking for a way out.
One trick I use sometimes is to imagine that I'm abroad even though I'm in my normal city. It makes things more interesting and gives me more energy for interactions.
The short and ethnic thing I could understand being frustrating. I'm basically 6' and white and pretty good looking. But even so, it's not the end all. It just opens the door. I don't get with the "cool" types of girls because I don't follow pop culture and play those games. Those types of girls you don't even want. It's tough though. Best way to meet girls is meetup-type stuff like a local running group, local language meetup, etc. Actually care about the activity and befriend the guys, etc. Then the benefits with girls come in a few months (take it slow and don't be the creepy/loser guy just there for girls). ex. I started going to the language meetup, and going hard in the languages and being kind of silly and fun. Now 2 years in, all the regulars know me and I have cred there. If I ever take a girl there, she knows I'm cool. Or new girls there know that I'm cool from the social proof.
If I didn't have a great family that I want to see monthly, I would definitely consider the moving overseas thing.
Basically you just focus on YOUR PATH and believe in what you spend YOUR TIME on. I think people get magnetized towards people with a "purpose" who can spread life energy instead of trying to take energy(this girl should give me love, this guy should give me respect or validation, etc).
It’s a term used amongst red pill/incel and such communities.
incel = Involuntarily Celibate.
What's red pill?
Also, how does the 'Nu male' relates to, or is different from an incel dude?
It has since been picked up by many communities as a way of saying they are ‘woke’ to the truth. It is currently in widespread use amongst the community of the subreddit The Donald by people claiming to have woken up from the liberal agenda or something along those lines.
In this context it probably refers to an infamous subreddit called the_red_pill that was a cess pool of pick up artists essentially training each other on how to hurt abuse and/or use women. It was banned sometime ago, during the Ellen Pao era I think. I believe they used it in the context of being woken up from the ‘lies’ of treating women as normal human beings if you want to find a lover.
Never hear of Nu Male, sounds like 4chan to me.
PUA in a nutshell is lying to women, degrading them etc in a way to manipulate someone into a relationship. It is toxic to the core.
I'm no incel or whatever, I'm also not particularly focused on a relationship (or sex, although there is a non-committed person in my life I see with regularity for both the casual romp and coffee dates to just sit and enjoy company), in married to the degree but I'm curious what you think: is there a difference between enjoying the art of playful flirting/courting and PUA? I'm someone who enjoys flirting and playful banter but have learned to have tempered expectations.
Part of me thinks that at the core, it's ALL an act of mind games to convince another person why you're worth their time (or conversely showing them why you're worth theirs) and there's going to be some level of duplicity involved. Be it "oh yeah I love sushi" (when you're really just passive about it) or "I drive a fancy car I can give you all the things" (when you're really leasing a slightly less than luxury sedan).
Just curious what your thoughts are
I tried that for the longest time and it was exhausting and unfruitful. When I relented and simply focused on meeting as many women as I could - and having the patience for a natural attraction to occur - it made a big difference. It sounds a bit Zen but when I stopped trying to "score" it seemed much easier to meet plenty of interesting women.
I am able to flirt with a woman without making them feel less so I don't know how to answer your question beyond that.
is there a difference between enjoying the art of playful flirting/courting and PUA?
Not asking if it's merely possible to court/flirt without being toxic (because of course there is, absolutely, I agree). I pose the question the way I have because I have yet to be wholly convinced that PUA is inherently toxic, and we aren't allowing the manifestation of bad actors to paint a view of enjoying the transactional nature of flirting to the point of finding ways to make it more engaging than simply engaging in small-talk/banter/exchanging statements back and forth at each other about life, the universe and etcetera-and subsequently-wanting to find ways of improving how you go about courting relationships.
tl;dr - "hate the player, not the game", etc.
> (...) recent cringe Vox interview with Jordan Peterson that kept trying put words in his mouth
> (...) I see no future for myself outside of being someone's mortgage hound or alimony sugar daddy.
That escalated quickly!
How do you intend to deal with illness, career changes & family raising?
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/marrying-down-why-men-are-the...
This thread is ridiculous. Come back to earth, get out and meet real people.
I don't mean to be offensive but don't you think she considered your earning potential while choosing you as her husband?
There is nothing wrong with doing it, ppl have beeen doing it forever. Nothing immoral about it. It does go into the equation.
If the first phrase is true, then the second must also be.
Of course we're conflating income with wealth (or 'economical value'), which may be fraught.
> Perhaps when this is finally noticed, men will only marry their equals.
I think asking all men to think the way you think is going to be disappointing.
I also think that proposing the evaluation of people based on income and/or economic potential is breathtakingly depressing.
It feels like you've got strong opinions (that's perfectly okay!) and think your view of the world is shared by many / most other people (this, not so much).
I trust that you'll take my comments in good faith.
Smart people often tend to assume extremes of the people they're talking to - either that they're very smart, like themselves, or very dumb. Naturally, there's a spectrum.
Having strong opinions, as you note, can sometimes put people off -- but you say that when you try to discuss them you feel attacked. I felt from your comments in this thread that you weren't here to discuss [your opinions]. I may be misinterpreting, of course, and it'd be up to you to decide if this, and other exchanges are going as you'd expected.
I appreciate the appeal of like-minded individuals -- though I've yet to find any : ) -- and I'm cheered to see that you're wary of the echo chamber risk. If it's a genuine concern, rather than hyperbole, that it may (have) led to some extreme anti-social / violent incidents, then I'd strongly and seriously encourage you to talk to people more experienced than randos on HN.
Aim higher.
I used to hate modern art. I thought it was only for obnoxious people. Then I decided to take a college course on it and it's my favorite period of art because I learned to understand it. For the same reasons, I decided to take a course on the black power movement. My parents were racist so I was probably racist so I wanted to learn more. I learned about the Civil rights movement and discovered many personal heroes. I used to dislike John McCain and politics even though I knew very little about either, until I saw a documentary about McCain and learned he was literally a hero. I used to think finance, statistics, and programming were for smart people unlike me, until I learned more and developed a love for it.
I used to think the red pill was complete trash until someone forced me to watch the red pill documentary. It led to a painful breakup where we both weren't able to empathize with each other's traumas. I could not empathize with his pain of feeling inferior (because that's my status quo) and he could not empathize with the systemic oppression and violence against women (physical, sexual, and emotional). I feel he felt that his father may have been taken advantage of, abused and used financially and feared that for himself. While I watched my father abuse my mother, emotionally and financially, and feared that for myself. It was strange how we both felt strongly about both sides, the same problem, except we were passionately divided simply because of gender. I learned a lot and probably will always be learning from that experience.
Every time I've challenged my views, I've been rewarded.
Two books I've enjoyed or am enjoying that are about chaos:
Evicted by Mathew Desmond covers American poverty from a housing perspective.
The Big Short covers the 2008 financial crisis and it's much more informative than the film.
There is definitely some truth here. Can you find a partner and/or community of people who share your understanding of the traditional social expectations?
PUA is a community of sorts, but also has core beliefs so inimical to the opposite sex that it doesn't seem very sustainable.
You don't deserve to be part of this discussion throwing around these phrases. This is why you are being downvoted.
You contribute no value. You make the conversation worse through your participation.
Do not fall into the incel trap. Do not start hating women.
Hate society if you want, understand that due to your perspective as a guy, you will fixate on what is wrong with women but what is wrong with women is what is wrong with society at large, the bias of your perspective aside.
Focus on yourself, toughen up and learn to accept rejection and just meet as many women as you can. That is the only path to success. Do you think those bitter incels are celebrating their misogyny? Sure, but only through their tears.
That life is not worth it. It is harder to build yourself up than tear other people down but more worthwhile.
Shame they show so much interest when you're engaged to another cute, fun, actualized lady, eh?? Sorry, to use the jargon you might understand....cute, fun, actualized female.
Some good points were made however.
Social Security in its original Ponzi-Schemesque form will end up even worse for wear with declining birthrates. (Not saying Social Security is bad in concept, but it only works in times of sharp population growth, and even then, banking on the youth to carry you just because seems squicky to many ).
The observation of millenials being reluctant to have children is also spot on. Many that I have spoken to in the demographic are very much a "lost generation". They've seen parent's and elder's life savings disappear.
They have a harder and harder time adjusting to a world that seems specifically tuned to resist and feed off of them. See financial product/debt product proliferation.
It's harder to find opportunity when one has an additional complication of digital footprint to manage with a dearth of interest in anyone older than them willing or interested in making sure the past engraved on the net doesn't mark them for life.
The hamfisted "feminist" overtones aside, the article makes a chilling point. Long cycle economic predation and the social pressures to avoid debt first and foremost are an effective suicide switch at the population scale. An entire generation has been shaped by these pressures, and with no relief in sight, a drastic shift in values may be needed to avoid a grievous societal destabilization.
Interesting times indeed.