| We either have to embrace the new world and make it work for our species in terms of population, or we have to go back to the old ways on some level (after admitting they were that way for a reason). Here are some ideas, some wild, some controversial, some super obvious that we can try. But we never will because the backlash from the usual suspects will always be too great. 1. Pay people to have babies. Seriously, tax breaks and literally free money. E.g. for every baby a citizen makes and cares for, we'll give them enough to times their monthly salary by 1.06. You could do this tomorrow, and people would have babies. That relieves the burden placed on people for the wonderful gift they brought into the world. 2. Make daycare a universal human right. Quality care and free for all your citizens, no questions asked. 3. Give mothers 1/2/3/4/5 years worth of paid maternity leave. No, don't get the companies to pay it. Should be a government salary that matches the employer's salary with yearly growth. That way pregnant women aren't a drain on a company, but rather the burden we happily accept as a society. 4. Pay people to get married and stay married if they have kids. Maybe even make divorce a hard thing to motivate for and only for the right reasons such as abuse. We don't want divorces breaking up family homes and our baby-making factories prematurely. Some potentially wacky ones: 5. Ban dating apps and outlaw hookup culture. We want genuine relationships and marriages to form, as they're the backbone of a culture that values generational properties such as legacy and community. 6. Make promiscuity illegal. Track who hooks up with who and you can't do more than X per year. Seriously, sex needs to be hard to attain. Side note, ban sex work and porn. 7. Subsidized baby-assistance jobs. Pay to get a nanny or au-pair or teacher in every home. Bonus points you help with the unemployment question. 8. Baby making factories or make it a profession for women to do - however workable until we figure out artificial wombs. There are so many people out there that just will never be able to get the chance to be parents even though they'd make wonderful and loving parents, why not help them by letting them adopt. And yes I know there are many ways the above could go bad, or are riddled with "a ha gotcha" holes, but at least we'd be doing something as a society. Right now, our governments are doing nothing and just complaining "oh shame look at our poor birth rates, we wonder why. Let's just conveniently import more of them from the poorest and most incompatible countries, that outta fix it and not cause problems down the line.". We could fund most of the above by just getting rid of all the silly government expenditures such as military and who knows what other fat we have lurking in the government. |
I think at some point you need to tie inheritence tax and wealth transfer into the mix, i.e. large % wealth/property can only goto direct kids, that scale up with # of kids. If you have 1 kid, max they can inherit is 40%, no properties. 2 kids and 80%, 3 kids and 100%. No kids, and 80% wealth/savings goes back to state redirected towards those with kids. Property gets auctioned off for same purpose. Positive incentives alone not enough, it has to be cripplingly expensive NOT to have kids.