Ah yes numbers!! I have heard of those.
I believe that 81 Mn. is more than 77 Mn. and represent a majority by a clear margin?
Or does that only apply when your idol win?
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So do I. That’s maths.
That’s what I said. Note the critical word ‘legal’. A very important distinction.
Have you got any proof that there were illegal votes counted in 2020?
Or any proof that there were none behind Trump’s win in 2024?
Can you even vote in US elections?
No I can NOT, nor should I be as a non-US citizen.
Does that mean I can not ask questions to another non-US citizen that is voicing an opinion about US elections?
Or do you mean that foreigners cannot have opinions about anything American?
If so, does that apply to Americans who voice opinions about anything foreign?
We live in a modern world, with free flow of news, opinions and argumentation.
Or at least most of us do. Don’t let anybody take that right away from you.
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Are you arguing that the cost to raise a child isn’t impacting birth rates in the US? I never said it was the sole reason. I said it is a part of the reason. We were talking about the future ability to supply a workforce. I thought a reference to the dismal economic future of Generation whatever, would support my previous points.
Possibly one of the leading factors in the US for responsible, married, gainfully employed adults to not have children, is that it costs too much.
I agree to stipulate that the Saudis and India are less fertile, I would even defer to your significantly more knowledgeable than I, claims about the Amish but you’ve gotta give me a win.
It’s too expensive to have kids and as responsible custodians of our children’s and their children’s futures, we should probably do something about it.
(Edited, Pre-2024) Why are you people so content with the direction this country is headed?
Honestly? Things that impact you? Yes. I guess you should have a non-voting seat at the table.
Regarding our elections. No. You should probably stay the ef out of it to be honest. But there’s a part of me that thinks you won’t.
I can guarantee that your opinion of freedom and mine differ immensely.
Mmmm
That’s an interesting take on things
Yes. You have internet (forget Google). Search it out.
No. But, again, you have internet and can search it out.
If only Trumps DOJ had investigated these claims, if only these claims and all the evidence to support them could have been brought to court, if only they could have been hand counted to check in a bunch of states- a shame these claims never got the attention they deserved by the Trump White House
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It will not change until someone invents the artificial womb or cheap surrogate womb and affordable home help. The Mormons and Amish are patriarchal societies and are not representative of the society that most of us experience.
As a child of the 40’s the society I grew up in the majority of women worked in the home, many occupations made them cease employment if they married.
Women didn’t wear slacks.
Very few had a drivers license. If they did the car went with the man to work. My father had cut the back half off a 1926 Willys car and made it into a pickup truck for his construction business. You couldn’t buy a new vehicle.
It was safe to ride a bike to school there was no traffic.
I was the eldest of 6 boys and 1 girl , most families had 4 children.
There was no washing machine, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner and most domestics involved firewood.
My mother shopped for food everyday as well preserving produce. All meals were prepared from scratch and the standard of living in NZ was the third highest in the world.
It was a low bar at the time but the quality of the basic food we had was superb.
Women didn’t have time to complain of their lot
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There is some sort of hidden set of assumptions in your question that I can’t speak to.
As to the future in general:
I am a student of history. All 5,000 recorded years of it. My takeaway: each generation has to figure their shit out.
My grandparents had the deal with starvation, world war, pandemic, and worldwide depression. My parent’s generation got more of the same, with stagflation, the Cold War, and the omnipresent threat of thermonuclear annihilation thrown in.
My generation has to deal with some of that and now in old age we have to deal with the rapid deterioration of democracy in general and the possible dissolution of the USA itself.
My children are worried about the same thing, as well as climate change AI, and shit we don’t even know about yet but will surface eventually.
They also have a unique take on events that no other generation in human history has had to deal with. To whit:
Until their generation, in every other age once the prior generation reached the age of 60 that generation lost their power at the ballot box. Their children, more numerous than their parents, would be a bigger block of voters than the prior generations. So, the new generation took over the reins of the country until they too reached old age. They made their own future. Young people (25-50 years old) made the crucial decisions for their own future.
But as we’ve talked about before, there are two things new to human history: the majority of adults living to their 8th decade, and the sharp decline in the size of the succeeding population.
The net result is that the succeeding generation has less voting power than ever before. And in the eyes of many young people the soon-to-be dead are making key decisions for people who will outlast them by 50 years. Dead people making the decisions for the living.
I had never thought of it that way.
I did note that young people are notorious for not voting. To which they reply ‘Your generation was the same, so don’t point at us’.
But big picture: every generation has their crises to work through. Tomorrow is no better or worse than today. The future has and always be a battle, so no whining.
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My point in mentioning them is that large families are a choice of lifestyle, not a strictly economic decision.
I tell my young ABs if you want to raise a big family live in Kansas and work in Seattle/Alaska. Buy the 20-year old F150. Vacation in Minnesota.
They tell me they’d rather live where the hunting and skiing are best. That means expensive Western Washington. And they get a new F250 and vacation in Thailand. They generally have few children.
It’s a lifestyle choice.
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At this point I am going to say that you and I live in completely different places. I live in a boom city in a boom state with more jobs than workers. Construction workers, electricians, crane operators, and tech workers especially, are in great demand.
I’m guessing where you live that is not the case. But 13,000 new homes went up in my city last year. We’ll need another 100,000 in the next 20 years is the projection. People from all over the USA moving here because of jobs. And my city is not unique in its prosperity.
The U.S. unemployment rate is about 4.1%. I can tell you from studying the unemployment rate for 30 years as a professional who hires people, at 4.1% all the good applicants are all employed, or just looking for a higher paying job.
There is no big reservoir of unhired talent out there. In fact, as soon as you drop below 4.1% the reservoir begins to be dominated by undesirables of all sorts. (The Pandemic years are a special case. Unusual times make for unusual stats).
So, I’m sorry, where I live and from my professional perspective of the stats, I’m seeing a shortage of workers right now. You might see something else where you live.
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We have nothing to argue over this statement. I think we are both agreed that finances are always a consideration with planning a family.
The question is, How much is it impacting birth rates? And my study of the worldwide decline of birth rates among poor nations and rich alike argues more than just American economics is at play here.
It seems we both agree on this. Good for us. 
I mean, a hand full of people in American swing states triggered a domino effect leading to Europe to dump money into defense spending because they are effectively defenseless without the US coming to their aid, I’d say you get to have an opinion. I believe Norway is increasing defense spending to 3% of GDP, while your neighbors are digging a new Maginot Line. That’s probably the biggest impact the folks in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada have ever had on the world.
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I understand half of the thread is you saying the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker can’t find an apprentice to save their lives, but I’ve been thinking about this. Amazon and Walmart are managing to continue to attract folks to work there. Sure there is turnover and a push for automation, these are jobs that people are still working, not quite akin to putting spring #10 in Hole #3, but still not that much different. I think the automation that is coming is in an effort to reduce overhead, not because they can’t find enough people to put my “Large Under Bed Shoes Storage Organizer Set of 2 (12+12 Pairs), Heavy Duty Closet Foldable Fabric Shoe Container Box with Clear Window, 29.3x23.6x5.9 inches, Linen-like Grey, ZMXDUBSB2P” into a cardboard box. There are jobs that couldn’t be outsourced, like last mile delivery and distribution at the scale of Amazon, and it isn’t entirely cost prohibitive. That’s why I think some people think we can bring back manufacturing. I’m still not saying it’s a good idea, and in reality our quality of life is probably just going to go down, but I think “There just aren’t enough people do do these jobs anymore” isn’t the reason this is a bad idea.
I think increasing manufacturing in the USA is a good idea. I just don’t think you can get to an industry of manufacturing physical things representing 30% of the American economy as it did in the 1960s.
We are arguably at 17% now. 20% is doable IMO. But the economy is more diverse than it was in the 1960s. Millions of people are manufacturing digital constructs and they aren’t interested in factory jobs, which pay less.
The best way to increase manufacturing in the USA is trade agreements requiring foreign countries who export to the USA to manufacture a certain amount of units in the US, exactly as was done in Japan in the 1980s , when trade talks were conducted between rational leaders, behind closed doors. Hard nosed, table pounding negotiations in private, smiles in public.
Each side got something. Financial markets weren’t roiled. Every one kept face. Alliances were maintained. U.S. manufacturing was preserved.
The same principle can be repeated throughout the economy on everything from computer chips to power tools.
The sole defect of trade talks is that they require a leader who doesn’t act like a sociopathic two-year old with meth in his milk, and a public more concerned about maintaining their addiction to outrage than actually getting results.
Another way of increasing manufacturing in key industries is to go to foreign countries and recruit experts in those trades to come to the U.S. to set up shop.
Go to Taiwan and tell the computer chip manufacturers/ labor force to open factories in the USA also, and promise the workers that if Taiwan falls to the RPC those workers can emigrate to the USA and continue their jobs.
Do what we need to do to jump start that industry in a big way.
The tech industry in the USA is forever poaching skilled talent from each other and from overseas. Do the same thing with skilled manufacturing. Historically this has red in huge advantages to the adopting nation.
What does CJ do instead? He accuses those countries of plundering and raping the USA. His words, not mine. Then he places a tariff on them. Antagonizing the people he should be recruiting. Completely moronic.
The USA could be manufacturing new ships by building the modules in other countries and assembling them here, as is done with autos and airplane. But that would take negotiation and coordination between private companies, political parties, and leaders of other countries by a leader that is respected by all of them. Thinking on trade on a completely new level, but maintaining the same norms of human behavior proven to work with business negotiations since Christ was a corporal.
All MAGA can think of is going back to an unobtainable past, led by an astoundingly bad negotiator.
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I think it’s interesting that whatever my feelings about the Biden administration, I never resorted to calling them juvenile names, implying they were homosexuals, or other regular occurrences among the liberals of this forum.
The inability to engage in reasonable discourse is telling. The fanatic way the above poster defended Bidens obvious mental decline until it was completely unable to be hidden then they pretended it never happened seems like something they would accuse ‘Cheeto Jesus’ of doing.
You get louder and louder and lose harder and harder, and those of us in this country still accomplishing things are paying less and less attention. Soon no one will hear you at all.
Liberalism is mainly about looking side to side and seeing who permits your speech. There’s safety in group approval. But it’s hollow approval, because it isn’t based on personal conviction but on fear based consensus. That’s why liberals often say horrible things when intoxicated, a little liquid courage causes the mask to slip.