World News

If France is anything like my native Portugal, people aren't having kids mainly because housing is so stupidly expensive - how exactly do you expect people to have the 2.something average number of kids needed to maintain population levels when they can't leave their parents home until their mid 30s and even just going from a 1-bedroom to a 2-bedroom to have a room for one child costs many years' worth of a couple's after-tax income?

Meawhile salaries in real terms have stagnated for a decade.

Even with the best of intentions, even in the middle class people are entering their 40s by the time they can afford to have a second child so most stick to 1 or even don't have any children.

What's required is not flashy bullshit letters like this one which very pointedly ignore the housing bubble and the politicians' blame in pumping it up, but instead measures to make housing affordable, such as building lots of public housing to increase the Supply side of the Market and limits on multiple house ownership and non-resident ownership to stop (local and foreign) investor speculation in Housing and thus weaken the Demand-side price pressure.

Of course, what the Neolibs in power have done instead is increase immigration claiming that "we have a lack manpower" (after decades of making it unaffordable for people to have children and give them a good life, what else was to be expected?!) and then the Neolibs' Fascist mates can use that to claim that it's really all the fault of immigrants (rather than fatcats and the corrupt politicians in their pockets) that life is getting worse.

Yeah just remove all the insane ppl in power around the world and we’ll hump like dogs

The world is on fire, genocide is being committed out in the open, living expenses are out of control, technology is becoming enshittified and increasingly invasive, wealth inequality is increasing.

No thanks, I'm good.

/I'm not French, but I think this sentiment is widely applicable

A lot of people are becoming more pessimistic and don't see any logic or reason to having babies. And it's not just in France, it's all around the world. I'm a millennial and I've been pessimistic since the 80s (😎) when the world wasn't as cooked as it is now. I can imagine how the newer generations are feeling these days. Future? Hopes? Dreams? They're going fast down the drain.

First fucking words of that trash article :
" ... France plans to send letter ... "

We spent 100 years engineering the world to decrease birth rates and punish people for having children "they cannot afford", then immiserate the majority of people, eliminate any kind of opportunity to enjoy life, community, family, or recreation without spending ungodly amounts of money to enjoy simple human pleasures that have been part of being human for hundreds of thousands of years, work them relentlessly 24/7/365 (or as close as we permit them) for the sake of business efficiency, destroy the environment so survival itself becomes dependent on the business cycle, and we wonder why no one wants to raise a child in this environment?

Honestly, we have spent a century ruthlessly punishing people for even thinking of making a marginally irrational decision and then wonder why they won't indulge in an objectively irrational activity for the emotional fulfillment.

The decline in birth rates is perfectly solveable by reducing wealth inequality, overwork, and long term pessimism about the direction the world is headed. They just don't want to do that. The hoarding class is defined only by two things: demanding that their own wealth doesn't just grow, but grows faster than it used to, and making sure responsibility and consequences are someone else's problem.

So the French government can do it but when I go out and tell people to get fucked, it's a problem.

Lol.

The ones who want to do it will do it regardless (look at the fertility rates of poor immigrants), those who don't want to won't be convinced by a letter from the government, IMO.

At last! The country demographic is saved!

All these people were desperately waiting for the government to ask, now they can finally get to it!

NO FUCK OFF

She emphasised that the role of politicians is “not to dictate whether or not to have children”, but to educate women further on fertility and remind them of the option to freeze eggs.

Is it even that, though?

Are they offering the $400 monthly payments per child until they turn 28 that Israel offers their citizens?

yup. that is about the right time to get em. so glad I went to to much school and changed careers because if I had a steady enough job at like 26 I might have made a big mistake.

Reasons not to have kids.

Ai taking jobs

Income not keeping up with cost of living

Healthcare costs(in some countries)