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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45445434
Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19.
On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates.
Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”
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So what’s the alternative? Everyone’s old and nobody produces anything? I kinda like having food and stuff and that’s not fully automated yet.
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Well running a household was also more than a full-time job.
If you’re even talking about stuff like medical insurance employees, you’re talking from one of the wealthiest countries in the world, where such bullshit jobs are more common and easier to justify economically. Everything you use comes from poorer countries which makes it seem like it doesn’t take much labor to produce the stuff you use.
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Are you implying that everyone globally needs to be unified under one government to dictate which jobs they all do? Because good luck getting that government to represent everyone’s needs.
There’s still a 1.53 replacement rate. That means if you just reallocate the people that idk, are currently making bombs to throw on other people (or other such things), to producing “food and stuff” instead, we’ll definitely have enough food.
Defense indudstry in most countries is under 5% of all employees I’m pretty sure. And we also kinda need weapons to defend ourselves. Maybe you don’t, but if Russia sends bombers here, it’d take a whole 5-10 minutes to reach my house from the moment they exit Russian airspace.
If anything, I think we should do away with the entertainment industry, liberal arts, etc. If anyone wants to produce art in their spare time that’s fine, but everyone under 75 should be forced to work a real job. We could also mostly get rid of the auto industry since old people shouldn’t be allowed to drive anyway so that’s a good thing, but then that doesn’t exist in most countries either so it’s not really a great place for cutbacks in most of them.
I also propose cutting back on doctors and nurses in fields that disproportionately affect older people. Great way to reduce the burden on society.
OR we can just start slashing the social safety nets now. I’m paying into the national pension of the current old people now, but there are going to be no young people to pay my generation’s. They’re already raising the retirement age, but they’ll have to start raising it faster.
NATO is pushing a commitment to a minimum of 5% of GDP on defense.
Which, admittedly even the USA does not do. But in the 60s it was north of 9%.
Most of the cost of things is the embedded cost of labor. Even minerals in a lot of cases. There are a lot of deposits of pretty much everything we could be mining but aren’t because of the cost.
One business may only have 25% labor costs, but the suppliers also have labor costs, and their suppliers, all the way down the line. And 25% is on the low side. Even rent has labor costs embedded.
The trouble with getting rid of all that is that other countries won’t. Until we have one world order, it’s not feasible to completely abolish defense.
NATO works. Russia has not dared to attack a single member. I’m writing this from a former soviet country that would’ve been conquered by now if we weren’t a member of NATO.
Economy or not, having one person who needs to take care of two elderly parents, themselves, and 0.75 kids isn’t great. That’s not the goal
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Of course not. That’s the point. We don’t want it to work that way