I've done genealogy lately, and I've found out something that surprised me (but in retrospect, shouldn't have):<p>It works the other way too. It's not just wealthier people having less kids, it's families staying wealthier <i>because</i> they have few kids. Most of my ancestors were fairly poor, but it made a big difference whether they shared their inheritance with one sibling or with eight. It seems to have had a snowball effect too: it wasn't just that they inherited money, it was that they could use that money to get more money - and not necessarily even by working. There was plenty of rent-extraction in the 19th century which you didn't need to be a factory owner to do.<p>And maybe there we are at the heart of the fertility issue: when owning stuff makes a larger difference to your kids' wealth than their own ability to work, you are effectively hurting the kids you already have when you decide to have one more kid. And it starts long before they get an inheritance.
> as taxes to pay for health care and pensions for all those seniors eat into her salary<p>Of course "her" taxes will have to be high, because OBVIOUSLY Elon needs another trillion$!!<p>This argument is an analogue of the argument that: "it's not the 3 people that own as much as 1/2 of the US population, its THOSE people living 6 people in a van that are stealing your middle class prosperity"<p>If you're really worried about being "replaced", maybe you should worry about the wealth of 50M people being replaced by 1 person...
In the prosperity-eats-birth-rate scenario, the society is prosperous but individuals aren't having babies. Maybe fewer births aren't due to prosperity itself but the complexities it brings - including for those who aren't prosperous.<p>In the US, poor people are also having fewer babies. Like success, poverty consumes much time but it does so with far less hope. With that combo, the most fundamental resources of future-building (ex: consideration, dreaming) become scarce.
We don't need more people in the world, there's enough.<p>People like Elon that are raising some fake concerns about fertility always have something in common: are hysterical.<p>We need to bring rationality in this debate. Why the hell do we need humans in every corner in the earth, and possibly universe?<p>Procreation isn't a real need like food and water, nobody dies if they don't fuck.<p>Humans need to stop this need of controlling the fate of the universe, it's really sickening.<p>Mind your life and your own business, stop thinking that you need to save humanity.<p>I bet this "heroism" behaviour will be diagnosed as a disease in a few decades and are deeply rooted in child development issues or just genetics.
It is not “racist” to observe that if the inbound population is high and the native population isn’t reproducing that it is a replacement.<p>People need to stop allowing themselves to get shamed into not stating facts, personal observations, math and logic.<p>This author is non credible.
> I will state my thesis baldly at the beginning: there is a large overlap between the things that underpin long-standing worldwide birth-rate declines and the things that underpin our prosperity.<p>Yes... well, that won't work forever, will it?