I am only arguing with "The point is that having children is simply too expensive, partly due to cost disease in healthcare." Typically, the main cost of having children involves preschool childcare and good colleges.
> What is the financial risk of having a child who needs insulin?
How many children need insulin? Again, I only contend with the broad generalization that having children is expensive due to healthcare costs.
Insurance profit margins are pretty tiny. We (or our employers) pay a ton for insurance because healthcare costs are beyond ridiculous in our country.
All the retirement savings won't make a difference if there is no one to spend them on. If the population is expected to decline, then you better hope your retirement investments are going into technology that can yield sufficient future productivity gains.
It's apparent if you just think about the farm labor required to produce food, which can't be stored as easily and long term as money. (On that note, maybe the best retirement strategy is a whole bunch of kerosene and shelf stable foods...)
Edit: As said elsewhere in the thread, I fully agree that the problem is due to children being too expensive, not that people just expect the government to take care of them.
Social Security caps are indexed to inflation (they went up 9% from 2022 to 2023): https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/maxtax.html
These systems are very sustainable, and the solution to the funding issues would be best served by indexing the cutoff for contributions to inflation.
As to birth rates, how do you expect people earning less than their parents to absorb the exponentially higher costs? My son was born over a decade ago. Thanks to a moderate, common complication, his birth cost $85k. His childcare at age 3 cost as much as our mortgage.