[TheFreim]

> We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.

I'm hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds/payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the other to focus on raising the children.

[hayst4ck]

Housing policy is dead simple (not easy): build more homes.

The problem is, when you build more homes, the price of homes go down.

Great for people that want homes and people who are just joining the workforce. Not great for grandma and her retirement planning.

If you frame your housing policy around anything but building more, then housing is fundamentally zero sum. If it is zero sum, that means those couples with a children are being subsidized at the cost of that 20 year old new grad or people who earn minimum wage without a family. Those people look at their finances or their mental health and make decisions about their future. So if people new to the work force are subsidizing those with children you could be harming their mental health to the point where they don't want children.

Why would any sane person bring children into a world that is almost guaranteed to be worse for their children than it is for them? I wouldn't.

So from a systems thinking point of view, the only cogent housing policy is to build more homes.

[TheFreim]

> Great for people that want homes and people who are just joining the workforce. Not great for grandma and her retirement planning.

I think policies that encourage families from passing their property down to their children rather than being used as an investment vehicle should definitely be considered. The strategy of buying a home young and dumping it later seems to cause bad behaviors that result in families spreading out which prevents a healthy familial support network to form.

[reducesuffering]

> providing financial support so families can buy homes

You mean building more homes. If there's X homes, and Y families get 10% subsidy, they're all still buying the same X homes for 10% more. (roughly)

[TheFreim]

Not mutually exclusive. More homes + making it easier for families specifically to get a home.

[shortrounddev2]

We should subsidize supply, not demand

[shortrounddev2]

I see people always talking about the economics of starting a family, but they're missing the real reason for low birth rates: opportunity cost borne by women.

Women who choose to have a child put their careers back several years at the age when they are making the most important advancements in their careers. They choose not to have children because doing so doesn't just mean they have to pay a bunch of money in childcare costs, it means they will likely never achieve the dreams and goals they set for themselves. It will become much harder for them to travel, climb the corporate ladder, create things, and be someone. Many women want to achieve all these things and then have children later in life, but it becomes biologically infeasible for them to do so.

This is harder to solve. We can force maternity policies with hiring mandates, but that would be VERY expensive for smaller businesses (having to pay 2 salaries to get the work of 1 for a year or more).

I'm just not sure what other policies exist to solve the opportunity cost issue. You can give people as much cash as you want but government can't give away free self-actualization

[xerxesaa]

I lived in Singapore for a little while and this was one thing I noticed they did there. For example, by giving preference in subsidized housing to people who were married and further preference to those who had kids.

In the U.S. (and broadly, the western world) we seem to have a really hard time using economic incentives to encourage certain behaviors. I think it's partially because we don't want to implicitly judge a given lifestyle choice as better than another.

However, I think there is much we can learn from a place like Singapore. Singapore simply does not stick to any single political dogma - they choose a mishmash of policies based on the outcome they want to achieve.

[carlosjobim]

That is a down-right evil idea, in my opinion. It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower. They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families.

Remove taxation on young and productive people instead if you want to help them create families.

[TheFreim]

> It means those who cannot find partners to make families are further punished, making their chances to create families even lower.

Incentivization of family formation would push people to get married, it would not make family formation less likely. The entire point of incentivizing a behavior through providing benefits is to make it easier for people who partake in that behavior, therefore drawing people to it.

> They're turned to a literal slave caste to provide for other people's families.

I'm single, and due to various factors it's unlikely I'll be getting married in the immediate future. I'm one of the people who would be "punished" by my "down-right evil idea" but I still think it's good. Economic pressure would definitely make me more invested, not less, in getting married sooner. Calling this a creation of a "literal slave caste" is an extreme emotional exaggeration since I'm definitely not calling for myself to be enslaved by any meaningful usage of the term.

[carlosjobim]

The end result is that a class of people live and die to provide for others. That's against nature, unless we reduce ourselves to the existence of ants.

Down-right evil is what the consequences would be, but I retract that comment regarding the idea itself, because I don't think any malice is intended.

Economic incentivizing by the government often have awful side effects. Let me make a comparison: Business is good for the economy and nation. Therefore the government should incentivize people to have businesses. Let's therefore give a million dollars to every successful business owner. We take the money by taxing those who don't have businesses.

I think most do not like that idea, but it's basically the same thing.

Let's not pit young people against each other furthermore.

[thfuran]

Houses are against nature. That doesn't mean they're bad.

[TheFreim]

I don't agree with the person your replying to but its clear that they aren't using "nature" to mean "things happening outside" or "things happening to non-humans". When people say "against nature" almost always they are saying that something runs contrary to the nature of man in such a way as to inhibit an ordering towards flourishing. Against nature means something not conducive to the proper ordering of the human person, so a house is not in principle "against nature" since it acts in accord with human nature and furthers human flourishing rather than frustrating our natural faculties.