No, the takeaway is that Quebec's universal child care provision correlates with life issues, but there's no information about the causes of those correlations - which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality, or some socioeconomic issues specific to Quebec, or for some other reason.
>which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality
This has "true communism has never been tried" vibes. When enacting a policy, you can't guarantee it will come out optimally, so it makes sense to factor in any potential negative effects, even you think you're not going to make them. After all, I doubt the people campaigning for childcare in quebec were expecting the results to be negative.
I've not read the article, and I expect it goes into this kind of thing, but...
Perhaps it's something like: families that earn enough to have one parent stay at home don't use child care. Therefore children in child care are more likely to be from less affluent families than those who are not in child care. So it's not the child care that causes the difference in outcomes, but just general income scale.
Speaking from my own Western Europe bubble, its the reverse. High-income individuals tend to partner with high-income individuals, both heavily invested in their career, and using more child care to facilitate 2 full time jobs. Parents using less child care tend to be less career focused part timers. Having one parent stay at home is a rare sight that I associate with a low household income.
>Perhaps it's something like: families that earn enough to have one parent stay at home don't use child care. Therefore children in child care are more likely to be from less affluent families than those who are not in child care. So it's not the child care that causes the difference in outcomes, but just general income scale.
No, the OP speculated a variety of reasons, which includes what you've suggested, but I'm specifically focusing on the "which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality", which is why I quoted that part specifically.
Affordability has little to do with it. The reality is neither parent actually wants to stay at home and watch and raise their own children. So they ship their babies off to full time daycare centers for someone else to do it. Then they both get to go to work instead!
Of course it has positive GDP on the parents: if two women each care for each others children rather than their own, GDP goes up even though the impact on both families is negative (due to lost travel time, as the mothers swap roles).
The more likely case is one person (most often women, but men do childcare as well) is taking care of the kids of at least 3 couples (6 people), and could be up over 10 couples (which happens though often isn't legal or a good idea). That is per year, the kids grow out of daycare in 12-15 years, but a person typically works for 40 years.
I walked home from school and calmly did homework util my parents arrived from work since age 8. This was the norm in Russia. Y'all's kids need daycare till 15?
Each culture is a little different. What are you going to do with your kids when the parents are working is a problem? At what time do you trust them to stay home by themself?
In Soviet Union times in eighties in Belarus it was considered ok that a child could stay alone at home from age of 7 when they started a school. Some parents opted for after-school programs and some relied on grandmothers like it was for me but some of my schoolmates stayed at home alone for few hours until their mothers would be back from work (fathers typically worked longer and further away from home).
And from the age of 9 there was no after-school options at least in my school.
That was my experience and is my opinion, and I do try not to judge others, but 15 year olds are past the point where they can have jobs and are doing the babysitting. If my friend was treating their teenager this way—assuming their kid wasn't significantly mentally or physically handicapped—I'd ask them why they insist on maintaining such an absurd level of control as to infantilize said teenager on their way into secondary school. I wouldn't insult or suggest overall bad parenting—that's rude and not my place—but if they couldn't grapple with that, I'd probably question my relationship with them in much the same way I'd question my relationship with a parent who refused to let their kid learn about sex or evolution.
Based on their level of maturity and actual evident danger in the immediate surrounding area, 8 on the low end, 12 or maaybe 13 on the high end, anything higher and I'd say something's gone wrong, perhaps at the societal level.
Elder millennial here, though my sister was young GenX. I was born in '82, she was born in '79.
I'm pretty sure my parents stopped hiring baby sitters once my sister turned 12.
But even aside from that, I was allowed to play outside unsupervised at 7 years old. Though we did live on a Navy base at the time, so I wonder if that played a factor.
Where I live they are dismissed on their own as young as 8, and so long as they have a safe way home then a couple hours alone isn't going to hurt. There are enough electronic distractions at home now that they won't turn to delinquency.
15 is bonkers. There should be no need to keep your teenager on-leash for that long.
That's extreme and unusual prosecutorial overreach to the point that it's making national news.
It's also unlikely that she will be convicted since VA passed a law in 2023 that makes it explicit that parents are allowed to let their children go places alone.
It is a rather surprising state of affairs that this is something that is not apparent to you. Why do you think I have to say the following; giving your child over to an absolute stranger to spend more waking/disposable time with that you, the parent, is NOT a good thing... neither in daycare or even school.
Yes, it's easy for me to say and the system is very much set up to facilitate extraction of profit from the neo-slave professional class while fostering their procreation to rear the next generation of neo-slave professionals; but we really need to break free of this spell that government (i.e., the ruling class' apparatchiks) do not have your child or even your won best interest in mind.
Ironically, if we do get "investment in mothers" and "universal childcare", it will be for the profit and benefit of the ruling class that will want to make sure your child is indoctrinated in the regime's propaganda as early and deeply as possible and the youngest age possible, especially since the telescreen, aka, TV has fragmented so much and kids are seeing things like genocide being committed and by whom and they aren't hardened adults yet that can look the other way in order to keep their neo-slave "job" that gets them shiny stuff.
All of human history, children grew up spending lots of time under the supervision of older siblings, cousins, and other elders in the “village”.
Mothers (and fathers) had to be out getting water, foraging, hunting, doing laundry, farming, blah blah.
Obviously there is a middle ground between parents leaving kids for 10 hours straight and only seeing them 2 hours per day, but spending all day with parents and no one else is also another extreme (I would have gone nuts watching over them all day).
All these government actions don’t have an answer to the loss of the “village” that are inherent to economic mobility, having fewer children per family, and neighborhoods optimized for cars.
> Ironically, if we do get "investment in mothers" and "universal childcare", it will be for the profit and benefit of the ruling class that will want to make sure your child is indoctrinated in the regime's propaganda as early and deeply as possible
This feels over the top/paranoid to me. But I also acknowledge that East Germany’s universal child care was dismantled after German unification for being exactly what you describe.
That's not why East Germany's universal child care was dismantled at all. East Germany's universal child care was dismantled after unification because West Germany didn't want to pay for it, and former East Germany couldn't. It was one of the most popular programs East Germany had, and was a source of quite a bit of consternation when it was taken away.
I was in Germany in those days and I sure remember the CDU and other more-right wingers using this argument, and convincingly. I’m sure there’s some long and worthy essay on the topic in the archives of die Zeit. Of course it was long ago now.
I am a father. I am an extremely involved parent and spend a ton of time with my son.
I also would go absolutely insane if we didn't have any childcare for him. It is better for my ability to function as a good parent that I can hand him off to somebody else for a period of time. It is not the case that every couple has a member who is built to be a stay-at-home-parent.
I kinda somewhat reluctantly agree with you, and I think other commenters are missing the point that breaking up Google may allow non-US competitors to rise up and take Google's place on the world stage. Thus, breaking them up is not in the national interest of the US.
If Alphabet allows a non-US competitor to replace them, isn't it their fault for failing to compete? The threat of replacement is supposed to be what motivates Alphabet to innovate.
It could also be argued that allowing Alphabet to sustain anticompetitive damages is exactly what creates the opportunity for them to be replaced. Alternatives to AdSense and YouTube can only succeed in America if Alphabet rests on their laurels and is artificially defended from natural price competition.
As long as there are many competitors, that's better than a monopoly, even if some of the competitors are foreign. Powerful monopolists restricting our freedoms is not in the interest of Americans long-term.
Same way you prevent monopolies based in your own country from forming. Anti-trust regulation. Your country's government controls how companies operate inside it
For now they're just waiting, separately, each living with relatives. There is zero guidance. The US consulate did not provide a reason for rejecting it other than the freeze, so there's nothing to even appeal.
Moving his wife and kid to his birth country isn't really an option. He doesn't plan to stay there. He has no job, no house, and no social network there. He barely speaks the language. His wife (US born) has a job and family here, and his kid only speaks English. Asking them to pull their kid out of school and move to another country until the US consulate decides to start processing paperwork again doesn't really seem like a reasonable solution, though with every passing week and month, it may end up being the only way they can be together again.
I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
You're correct. I spoke a little too loosely, there are many different kinds of visas, but something like 95% of all work visas issued each year fall into the category of non-immigrant.
I'll concede that this statistic is cold comfort if you fall into that 5% category, but the point is that work visa almost always means non-immigrant.
Doubtful. Most consular green card applications are for family based immigration. This pause is also for final interviews for visas that are basically approved already. Labor market test already happened a while ago if relevant.
Employment based green cards are mostly granted inside the U.S. via adjustment of status without state dept involvement.
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
> Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
This understates the situation. All of us who are not naturalized citizens are citizens only because of the birthright clause in the Constitution. The US does not have any other way for a person born here to become a citizen.
If the birthright clause of the Constitution stops being enforced, Congress (or more likely in our current iteration, the President) will have to create a brand-new set of rules determining which of us natural-born citizens get to retain our citizenship and which do not. There is no existing law to guide them, so they can make it up out of whole cloth.
More plainly: if we choose to eliminate birthright citizenship, whoever is running the country at that time gets to determine whether you are still a citizen.
Serious question - would your ancestors from the 1700s agree that you should support the immigrants you are supporting? Or have you been taught that your ancestors were wrong and evil and that you should honor them by doing the opposite of what they believed?
Not the person you're answering to but the way I interpret their statement is
"my ancestors came here as immigrants in search of a better life 300 years ago. I honor that by helping those doing the same today."
Being American, especially back in 1776 (250 years ago!), was not about ethnicity, but about an ideal - a group of men on the North American continent decided that " that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." [0], and then literally put their lives on the line to protect that ideal.
America is, and has always been, a nation of immigrants. What unites it are the common values - in theory, the idea that everyone there has the right to live free and pursue their happiness, as opposed to the idea that everyone should serve the king because that is the will of God, which was the dominant idea in Europe in the 1700s.
With that view, I can see that supporting people who come to the US so they can be free as continuing what the original poster's ancestors started 300 years ago.
Do you think you are telling me something I haven’t heard before? I don’t mean that with attitude, I’m actually asking. Because you are just telling me the standard mass schooling version of the story. I used to believe this version myself, until reality presented me with enough contradictory observations that I felt the need to justify it for myself, and not simply take it as received wisdom.
Have you gone through and read the quotes from the well known figures that contradict the story? There are a lot.
The standard explanation is that they had some weepy romantic morality deep at heart which they tragically were unable to live in their flawed time.
Sure, that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that they did not anticipate people in the future so drastically taking what they said out of context, and so they weren’t sufficiently precise as to represent themselves in a way that made it through to today’s context with its meaning intact.
To me, the latter just seems like it probably happens all the time in history and so why not here?
And, to be clear, in this case what they would have meant in modern context is - all men are created equal does not refer to literally all humans on earth, it means that the born aristocrats are no better than anyone else and they shouldn’t get special privileges for it. That’s it. The duke’s son is no more deserving of government enforced privilege than the commoner’s son, because the commoner’s son may be more capable. That’s it. Not that all the races of the earth are the same. They just didn’t think that, men in the 1700s did not think that way. People in 1910 didn’t even think that way! The founders didn’t think they had to qualify “men”, they were just referring to the “men” of their group, one “man” of their group is not born higher than another “man” of their group, and this aligns with what we now know about population genetics, which is why it actually works better in some ways (I.e. if take a high performer, his sons are more likely to be high performers than the population, but you can only extend that so far, it doesn’t reliably persist past a couple generations and in some cases you get unlucky right away in the first generation).
And I haven’t seen this framing refuted, despite it being so, so much less of a just so story than the mainstream framing, and being successfully non-contradictory with the other extremely racist by today’s standards views and actions of the founders and their contemporaries, unlike the mainstream framing.
One big example of contradictory views that is not from the founding fathers era but is a good starting point. Did you know that Lincoln wanted to send them back? He didn’t want to free them and have them later integrate into our society. He wanted them gone, relocated, good luck see you later. He didn’t think that Africans and Europeans could live together, he didn’t think it could possibly work because they are too different by nature. But oddly that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the school curriculum. Lincoln is a hero, the man who freed the slaves. Well of course he was flawed, etc, but he had a good heart and he worked towards the good. Except what is good is defined by the current moral regime, which was entirely different from the one at that time. Lincoln would probably be shocked and appalled at how he is portrayed today. If he could only see what has become of New York City or Philadelphia, we could power the nation with his grave-spinning, which would surely be hypersonic in its rotational velocity.
You're allowed to pick and choose, and indeed should. We can honor and propagate their noble ideas about immigration in general, while rejecting their ideas about race and slavery and all that.
Well sure you can have whatever opinions you want generally and you can reject what your ancestors thought, certainly, you just don’t get to reject meaningful parts of what they thought while simultaneously acting like you are honoring them, that’s bullshit.
They didn’t think their racist views were ignoble. You can’t decide that they were wrong and then feel like you are honoring them by supporting immigration to which they would have been viscerally opposed. You can certainly support that immigration, no problem, but your ancestors would be ashamed of you. If you are okay with that (as am I in many respects), then great, but we can’t pretend you are honoring them by your action in that area. You could be honoring them in other ways in other areas separately, of course.
So if my ancestor was really into feeding the poor, I wouldn’t be honoring them if I fed a poor black person today because they were also racist and wouldn’t have thought that counted?
If your ancestor was against feeding poor black people because they were racist, then yes, absolutely, you wouldn't be honoring them by feeding poor black people.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't feed poor black people, you just can't pat yourself on the back for honoring your ancestor at the same time.
I don't really understand the disagreement. If you are performing an act which, if your ancestor were somehow magically in the room with you, they would respond to with horror and disgust, then you aren't honoring them. Performing your own present morality does not necessarily honor your ancestors, if they had a different morality.
The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals.
If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly.
These arguments only ever look at one side of the ledger, as if the immigrants only ever take jobs and tax money and houses. But immigrants also buy things and create demand, pay taxes and build houses. Looking at only one side is just pure nonsense and looking at both sides basically disproves your claim.
I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons.
Note that this is an expansive estimate from an anti-immigration think tank that attempts to count all births to non-citizen mothers who were no longer in the US at some vague point in time afterwards. It does not distinguish between birth tourists attempting to get citizenship for their baby, non-resident mothers who just happened to be here when they gave birth but had no specific intent to get citizenship for their baby, and residents who moved away. And that is an estimate of the total number of birth tourists, so the number who end up claiming more welfare than they pay into the system is going to be some fraction of that.
How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes?
I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.
What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.
One of my ideas was a way to fraudulently get most of the benefits of home ownership while hiding it; why wouldn't a rich dishonest Real American do that? Pride? So you think all children of wealthy birth tourists have no pride?
It appears your argument is that foreigners are greedy, lazy, fraudulent, exploitative, and shameless, but Real Americans never stoop that low. Again, do you have statistics on this, or is just kind of a feeling?
It's just not viable if you have a mortgage and insurance. There's also FinCEN reporting though temporarily suspended. I get the feeling you dont have any experience dealing with these bureaucracies. Otherwise you wouldn't be so flippant.
This conversation is reminding me of arguments about non-citizens voting, or assaults committed by trans fakers in bathrooms. Both have probably happened, as some weird wealthy dual citizen has probably decided to live on food stamps at least once. But I'd bet all of them are so rare they round to zero compared to the general rates of election tampering, sexual assaults, and welfare fraud, which are perpetrated by any other group than the minority being accused in each case.
>The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance.
Many immigrants come to America to work and start businesses. That creates jobs. Even the day-laborers buy food, clothing, tools. If we cracked down on businesses that used illegally immigrated workers, that would be a much more targeted way to fight wage suppression.
How could inflation come from illegal immigration? Are the immigrants bringing in crazy amounts of money? Does the existence of more workers competing for an open position drive up the going wage?
If we want to reduce the price of housing, we need to build more houses. That's the key. The trouble is how to tackle the financial and regulatory hurdles that discourage building houses. Clamping down on immigration from poorer countries hurts the construction industry, which employs a lot of immigrants.
>Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
If we cared about people with foreign allegiances participating in our politics, we'd ban dual citizenship. If we cared enough about welfare costs to do unpopular things, we'd ban smoking and high-sugar foods. That would save a lot more in welfare costs, and our citizens would be healthier. On my list of priorities for reducing welfare costs, taking money from poor people who don't actually qualify ranks low. It's a mistake or crime that feeds people and gets money circulating in local economies. Not efficient, but not world-ending and probably not common. If you really want to find people receiving benefits despite not actually qualifying, look for senior citizens hiding their wealth as cash in their house.
>I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Trump stated immigrants poison the blood of our nation. I'm going to accept that as his actual belief and reasoning.
I don't get this argument. We skip over fixing the birthrate and instead rely on immigration. There's a whole bunch of reasons people give for why we can't fix it like costs, jobs, housing, etc. Ok, so then first wouldn't immigrants also have the same problem once they get here or do they have a way of bypassing our low birthrate somehow but then we were told we can't bypass it, it exists because of the costs, jobs. etc.
So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan.
You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them?
Make abortion and contraception illegal, and strongly enforce those laws.
It worked with Romania in the 1960s and 1970s. Mind you, it caused a bunch of other problems to crop up, but Romania did solve their low birth rate problem.
It worked: The birth rate exceeded the rate of deaths until Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989. There was some level of circumvention in the 1970s and 1980s, but birth rates continued to outpace death rates up until the day Ceausescu was overthrown and Decree 770 was made null and void. (If you have a different definition of “work” than “it increased fertility”, please let me know what that definition is)
Mind you, as I said before, there were a lot of undesirable, shall we say, side effects because of this decree, but it did solve the fertility problem.
{Snark tag: Obviously, I do not endorse doing something as Orwellian as having a government like the Romania of the 1960s and 1970s, and the unwanted kids caused a huge amount of intergenerational trauma. To get back to the issue of fertility collapse, fertility collapse is an issue which will last only one generation: The people who have kids will have worldviews which encourage having more children}
No, very clearly in the graph in that link it only bumped the rate of births for about 3 years before it very clearly returned to it's previous trajectory.
It did not change the overall trend because radical anti-abortion measures like that do not change people's desire to have kids.
As one can see, births were at or above pre-decree levels after Decree 770 was passed, and only went below pre-decree levels when the decree was dismantled in 1989. The 1970s downward slope is much less steep than the 1960s pre-decree downward slope. In the 1980s, there was no downward slope whatsoever. Fertility stayed at roughly pre-decree levels before plummeting once the decree was ended. At no point while Decree 770 was in effect did we have a birthrate that “very clearly returned to it's [sic] previous trajectory”.
Now, let’s go back to what I was replying to when I brought up Decree 770. “Our birthrate has been below replacement” said one poster, and in a reply “You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed"”. Decree 770 fixed the issue I was replying to: Birthrate being below replacement. Pre-decree, Romania’s birthrate was on a downward path, and would had been below death rates by the early 1970s. Because of the decree, the birth rate stayed above replacement rates until it was repealed in 1989.
Decree 770 increased fertility. It kept fertility above death rates. I have already posted elsewhere why Decree 770 was a very bad idea.
This will be my final reply to @mrguyorama. They do not come off as someone willing to admit when they are wrong about something.
I mention fertility rates remained constant in the 1980s. Now I know why fertility rates didn’t go down back in that era.
In the year 1984, Romania took a page from Orwell’s 1984: All medical units were put under surveillance to minimize the number of illegal abortions. There was now a secret “Thought Police” in 1984 monitoring all doctors and nurses to make sure no abortions slipped through the cracks. The number of abortion related convictions in 1986 doubled compared to 1985. Just like 1984, not only did a hidden thought police find these people doing illegal abortions, but people would report on their neighbors.
Romania was able to stop the 1970s fertility decline (which, again, was a good deal less steep than the fertility decline when abortions were legal) in the 1980s by going full Orwell and clamping down the screws.
It’s probably a bad prediction of the future, but having an exaggerated dystopian view of the future is a classic trick used in golden age science fiction (e.g. Decision at Doona from 1969 had a grossly overpopulated Earth) so one I was able to accept while reading the story.
It definitely has a bias; it doesn’t mention the stories of women regretting abortions at all, except (minor spoiler) mentioning that Asenath Smith didn’t want an abortion. As someone who has had multiple women confide their abortion stories to me, it’s quite common for women to deeply regret having them. I understand why a story as political as this one doesn’t want to get in to the nuance of the trauma abortion can cause, because it’s written in the same year Roe vs. Wade was overturn, so it’s a story of how much women need access to pregnancy tests and to abortion. [1]
[1] I personally believe in the right to an abortion, for the simple reason that, when a woman has a miscarriage or a baby which just isn’t viable, the medical treatment she gets should be a decision doctors make, not a decision people with guns and cages make.
The “proposed solutions” are very misogynistic. They include repealing the 19th amendment (not letting women vote), repealing sex discrimination laws, and enforcing “patriarchy”. See, for example https://archive.ph/20260624060135/https://nitter.net/Schtal2... for the kind of nonsense these kinds of people are proposing, based on lies and fabrications.
I know what some X users say about that, and I know that some people here have these same ideas. I was just wondering if that is the supposed solution that the person suggested
You’ll have to ask @account42, but I will bet you it’s the same answer I came up with: Take away people’s freedoms and have a hard, strongly enforced (i.e. Orwellian levels of enforcement) ban on contraception and abortions.
Both @account42 and myself agree this isn’t a particularly good solution, and I’m not worried about the fertility collapse myself: It is an issue which will last for only one generation.
I'm not sure if they agree with you that is not a good solution, though. I don't even consider it a solution the same way that I don't consider slavery a solution for lack of workers.
Here is what they said: “You can definitely fix it. You might not like what it takes but others don't like their culture being replaced either.”
I think he’s implying he has some pretty, shall we say, interesting views on the matter. As someone who has been in an interracial marriage and multiple interracial relationships, I probably don’t agree with those particular views.
It would be nice to know what he’s advocating for, but he’s gotten pretty mum after I pointed out it could be done, but only with Orwellian levels of suppression.
Teenage pregnancy, limited rights for unmarried women, heavily surveilled birth-control usage, all that good stuff. So long as the culture is preserved! There are 14 words that basically sum it all up
Yes, the only way to preserve USAs culture of freedom of the individual is to dissuade/force women from making choices that dont benefit the group. Else we will fall to communism!!
It is very much possible to use government force to solve the birthrate problem. Romania did it in the 1960s. Mind you, this would cause a lot of misery and suffering but it has been done.
Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one.
Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
I don't care about US immigration, but remember that people don't want to have more children. There's nothing related with costs or whatever. Norway have a lot of incentives and people still prefer to have less kids than USA. If these "livable conditions" were a true argument, rich countries would not need to incentivize people, because they would have more children willingly. Life is way more livable in a rich country than a poor country
straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross.
very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths
mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly
i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
Even taking you at your word, immigrants also create far more jobs. The economy is not some zero sum thing, with some fixed amount of jobs and fixed amount of work and fixed amount of wealth to be split.
Every economic analysis I have ever seen shows that there's economic surplus from immigrants entering a local economy; more jobs and more wealth is created, per person, than if those people had not come. In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
>In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
That was study about Cuban immigrants into Miami, a city with large Cuban population and thus existing infrastructure to absorb. I wouldn't draw that study into anything broader.
As someone in Local Politics, the issue generally is, immigration, esp of unskilled kind decimates local budgets since they are generally directly tied to number of people. Here is CBO report on it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
Now, type of immigration that mostly impacts this study is not type of immigration that is impacted by visa application processing halting but acting like "Yea, this current system is working GREAT!" is false. This is what so annoying about this issue, it's in clear need of change but Congress refuses to do it and Trump doesn't have leadership to get it done.
They say it out loud. The people writing these policies are vocally proud of being white nationalists. Defending them with "well maybe they have a good reason!" is evidence that you're either on board with their actual agenda (i.e., evil) or incomprehensibly naive (i.e., stupid).
Its only racism when you then go and invite white south africans in. And make statements like "Why cant we have more people come in from countries like Norway"
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
This is rather weird framing since usually an additional citizenship (especially one in a country like the US) is considered a valuable thing to have for your child. Usually people claiming birthright citizenship are weird are doing it because they also see it as valuable. It’s also woven into the traditions of New World countries.
Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
I’m just trying to evaluate whether born-within-the-borders citizenship makes sense by imagining myself in that situation. I don’t really see citizenship in another country as a positive, because I only hold loyalty to one nation. Even if I wanted my kid to be a citizen of some other country… like… if I want to play 3rd base for the New York Yankees, I would expect that any team worth joining would have to let me join. I would never imagine that there’d be loophole that allow me buy a ticket and then sneak into the dugout and take the field. If folks are collecting citizenships like Pokémon cards for specific benefits related to each one, I’d be concerned that they don’t really hold loyalty to any one of them… and thus shouldn’t have citizenship in the US. After all, you’d never be allowed to play on the Yankees and the Red Socks at the same time.
US citizenship is a liability, because it comes with being taxed in every country. About half the financial institutions in the world will refuse to do business with you if you're a US citizen, because they don't want to file taxes with the US for their customers. It also provides a good excuse for the US to extradite you for anything you do that's illegal in the US, such as installing software on your computing device.
I agree that you can "just renounce" although notice that this won't necessarily work (it will for the US assuming you follow the procedure properly)
However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.
You also get treated differently if things go wrong. Foreigners are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.
None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
> You also get treated differently if things go wrong.
Not treated differently. Treated the same.
You are required by law to enter your country of citizenship using that country's passport (this is true for every country). Not doing so can result in fines or jail time. This is precisely to stop idiots from playing the "foreigner" card to try to, for example get out of paying a speeding ticket or parking fines.
You are spreading false information. I routinely enter my other country with a combination of US passport and national ID card. I haven't renewed my passport for that country in almost 20 years, more than half of which I was living there for.
If your child acquires US citizenship by accident, then they won't come into student debt if they don't intend to utilize the citizenship (in which case they wouldn't renounce it just because they got it accidentally anyways). The $2500 is stupid, but bringing up student debt is silly. Few other countries are so strict with renouncing, except for a select few that don't let it be renounced at all (like Argentina).
you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid
you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits
cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
Don't forget Nazism! (AKA, anyone who isn't left-wing.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with pausing immigration visas. These commenters act like anything less than fully open borders and unlimited immigration quotas makes you Satan reincarnate.
They intentionally over-dramatize everything he does to spread fear and alarmism cause that's all they can do. It's so tiring and nonsensical.
I'm using hyperbole to showcase a point. Most of the alarmists here on HN genuinely believe that democracy is ending and Trump is the next Hitler. I'm not dramatizing, that's what they actually believe.
In a vacuum the immigration pause might be innocuous. But put into context the other actions and statements from this administration and it tells a deeper story.
Just think of it as the return of the 19th-century Know Nothings or the 1920s nativists if the Nazi comparison makes you squeamish.
Sounds like your wife needs to be more accommodating or understanding. My spouse understands decompression time and enables it, despite me working remotely.
Hell you mean a decade ago? I still see businesses running losses left right and center saying that they're gonna monetize user data, any day now.
Related "monetizing user data" seems to just mean ads. Ads on everything, forever, until the userbase gets fed up and moves to a new service that definitely won't do that, and the cycle repeats about every 3 years.
We have thumb drives that can store petabytes of data?
Or did you mean the "big data" crowd which thought 500GB was noteworthy? I don't think anyone took those serious, neither in 2010s nor now. That was always "small" data
Most companies using term "big data" had datasets in TB region. One company I had a gig at had full Hadoop cluster setup and their whole dataset was 40GB. Their marketing had all the big data adjacent keywords over the brochures for clients.
To some degree IMO big data is still a mindset when it might take a day to process your data in a normal SQL query. Some tech doesn't scale to the data size for all use cases, and you need different solutions.
tl;dr: teach people how to regenerate soil health, even in the Sahara (or other inhospitable places); teach people how to grow food while regenerating soil to help fight food insecurity which helps prevent violence
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