Delete comment from: Captain Capitalism
Lots of screw ups all around from this administration but this one is not on Obama. Its just a natural consequence of the wealth concentration that started post 1970's
during this period the US worker grew measurably poorer (wages are down by about half since 1973) and as US is a representative government, albeit a weak one with a weakly social democratic party and has widespread immigration, its a certainty that demand for stuff like this would go up.
If people didn't want it they would have had to maintain border controls (as in basically near zero immigration) eschewed foreign goods even if they were cheaper and have made a real effort to actually hire people at a good wage.
That would have prevented it from happening.
There were many reasons it didn't, a mistaken belief in economic liberalism, a hunger for cheap labor and status and domestic race issues but thats how it would have been done.
Now a very responsible population with tight borders could get by without this sort of aid. IIRC we in fact hit this in the late 60's/early 70's with European (1.6 or so) birth rates.
Nations do take this course, Japan, Singapore and good chunks of Europe (even with redistribution) . Its not pleasant however, a Singapore style birth rate of say .7 (that is less than 1) is about 1/3 of whats needed for replacement. That is fine for a little while, even good but once population aging hits. look out. Having a shrinking population is more poison to capitalism than the State and as its voluntary response to market conditions, harder to fix.
You see population will probably never increase and may never even reach homeostasis again.
Yes I mean never.
Odds are unemployment and more crucially underemployment will continue to increase (right now its about 50% amount the early fertile 18-24 in Spain for example) as will peoples expectations and the actual costs of child rearing.
This means the natural tendency of cities to reduce births will continue its historical course an population will continue to fall
Thats good and fine till you have to sell something to someone and I suspect just as we see with subsidies we'll see the people and corporation alike becoming a bit more socialist
The only way to stop that is to get ages up and for employers to realize that your workers are your market. The less you pa, the less they can buy.
Dec 14, 2012, 4:42:35 AM
Posted to 53% of All Infants on WIC