Comments on: China’s baby problem

By: T J

T J — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 03:52:38 +0000

Hungary uses tax incentives, lowering the burden for each child until the fourth — gaining full tax exemption. PM Victor Orban says that the TFR is still not at replacement rates, 2.1 children, but it is close at 1.9.

He rightly complains that the problem is with the youngest cohort. Like almost everywhere else that’s in the OECD.

By: Tom Grey

Tom Grey — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 23:16:58 +0000

I’ve long been talking about the coming Population Neutron Bomb — fewer kids, & people, but the stuff remains.

I’m fully expecting far more robot care for the elderly, starting in Japan. Certainly sub-optimal, individually, but likely better for society.

It might be easier to increase fertility by making those married women who have already had kids better, or far better, off, economically — especially in areas with low marriage rates.

By: shutpotch

shutpotch — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:25:57 +0000

It might be a reluctance to engage with the world at large. In my apartment building, about one-third of the residents are Chinese nationals on student or work visas who basically spend all day every day in their apartments and who only venture out (wearing pajamas, but masked and goggled of course) a few times each day to pick up their food (which can be as little as a cup of soda delivered from a nearby Wendy’s) or amazon deliveries at the front desk.

By: Richard+Porter

Richard+Porter — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 03:11:21 +0000

I was once on a large plane from HK to SF in the latter part of the 1990s. The plane was full of American parents & their new Chinese daughters. The sex distribution ended up being skewed against boys finding a mate. But much more recently I had a prospective co-author from the country side who had a large family so this 1 child /family didn’t hold uniformly.

By: huxley

huxley — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 22:55:23 +0000

My thumbnail understanding of Chinese history, since the Han Dynasty, is that it has always been a boom/bust cycle.

I admire the Chinese in many ways, but I am so grateful to be an American.

By: neo

neo — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 19:47:33 +0000

Abraxas:

Yes, I think part of the problem is that the Chinese have gotten whiplash or maybe the bends, on a societal level.

By: Abraxas

Abraxas — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 17:33:03 +0000

It’s fascinating how young people can be constantly connected and yet isolated, how they can be so unbookish, yet afflicted with the social ajustment problems that the bookish young have had through the generations.

I don’t know if these are the “Roaring Twenties” for Chinas’s economy, but the last two generations in China have been going through changes that took us a century to go through. So imagine your flapper grandmother coming of age not in the world of the 1920s, but in the world of the 2020s with all the technological and social developments of the 21st century world. She wants greater freedom and independence, but that means something different and has different consequences than it did a century ago.

By: sdferr

sdferr — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 16:03:40 +0000

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be ChiComs

By: IrishOtter49

IrishOtter49 — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 15:42:40 +0000

Some problems have no solutions — apart from the changes that come organically, with the passage of time.

Americans in particular have a hard time with this concept. I know I do. It is a laudable trait, I think. But not always efficacious.

Curiously, Marxists and other utopian-minded types have the same problem.

By: Richard+Aubrey

Richard+Aubrey — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 13:38:08 +0000

Maybe a bunch of television series of cheerful family themes as we had in the Fifties. When the State is paying, you don’t have to sell eyeballs to sponsors.