[Qem]

> Actually raising a child costs more than $1.2M - just $20K/year invested in S&P500 over the last 20 years would have grown to more than $1.2M.

The future markets of a shrinking world, with consumer and worker cohorts dwindling year after year, will be very different from the last 20. This is paradoxal reasoning. Your're counting on going childless, while the market remains the same, other people keep having children to grow the market. But if everybody else does the same it doesn't work. The mean investment probably will give negative returns, in a fast shrinking world.

[trhway]

alternatively, the things can go very opposite to what you're saying as robots/AI will make many jobs more productive requiring less people thus driving the economy even more profitable than the last 20 years. The society wouldn't need those very expensive children for the jobs where robots would do.