• 14 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
cake
Cake day: July 12th, 2024

help-circle



  • The most sophisticated liberal arguments interpret fertility decline as a symptom of more serious underlying problems—economic precarity and an “incomplete” gender revolution. Men and women alike struggle to provide for their families, but the participation of fathers at home has not caught up to the participation of mothers at work. A more generous welfare state, and a more equitable culture, should therefore produce more children. This does not seem to be the case. Finland famously provides all new parents with “baby boxes” full of useful, high-quality products, and Sweden has normalized extended parental leave, especially for fathers, and flexible work hours. The Nordic countries are wonderful places to be parents, but their fertility rates are lower than our own. These trends are not reducible to budgetary concerns. Child care is virtually free in Vienna and extremely expensive in Zurich, but the Austrians and the Swiss have the same fertility rate.

    So? It does not change the fact that to be a parent requires you to sacrifice and carry greater expenses than if you were child free. The sacrifice and expense may be smaller in the Nordics, but the equation remains fundamentally the same. Nor is it very practical to raise a family on a single income. I have yet to see anybody actually address this issue instead of simply brushing it off.

    The world’s most lavishly pro-natalist governments spend a fortune on incentives and services, and have increased the fertility rate by approximately a fifth of a baby per woman. Some observers believe that subsidies could succeed, but they would have to be on the order of three hundred thousand dollars per child.

    Sounds like a reasonable price, and a small fraction of the lifetime productivity of a person.













  • I’ve never been a big fan of political correctness for its own sake, but I’ve not the capacity to put it into words. The article does a pretty good job, especially when touching on the sheer futility of it all.

    What does this hypersensitivity mean for the actual playground bullies? It means that they win by default. As the advocates of politically correct language cede one word after another, refusing to allow for the possibility that these words can ever be delivered in a neutral or positive way through acceptable context or tone, the playground bullies succeed in capturing one word after another, imbu- ing them with offensive meanings without the slightest fight over them. Thus, we see the spectacle of an ever-increasing vocabulary of insults and purportedly offensive terms, along with a retreating and ever-changing list of socially accept- able terms. As surely as night follows day, the current politically correct terms differently abled and having special needs, if they catch on at all, will eventually become terms of insult and will be thrown onto the politically correct scrap heap. All that is required is for the terms to enter popular usage and start to be used by bullies in an insulting tone and context. We will then be presented with new terms, coupled with denunciations of those who continue to use the old language.