Why would I want to bring another human being into this world? The planet is melting, greed is at insane levels, the future looks bleak. I don't want my children to suffer and get thrown through the machine.
My wife and I work a total of 4 main jobs. I think we had 10+ total forms of income for 2023.I try to get money on the side too. I can't afford a kid. Even if I could, what time would I have to be a parent?
My in laws want us to pop out kids. We live in a 1br place. And we are just barely keeping our heads above water. They will say stuff like "well if you wait for a perfect time there will never be one," or saying it's our duty to let them have grandkids.
Linux is great.
Linux is great .... get your in-laws a puppy whether they want one or not.
Especially if they don't want one
We have a very very sweet cat that my mother-in-law loves. It's not the same. Although that cat is ridiculously friendly.
My FOSS ass immediately skipped the first two paragraphs to read the last line like a monkey neuron activation meme
Got 'em.
I'm very curious what sorts of jobs?
We both are medical caregivers for the same disabled couple. Our main full time jobs are a data center analyst and college cafeteria work. We also both collected from unemployment. I have some stocks and CDs that have helped a bunch to keep afloat. I do some work on the side here as well.
Not to invalidate the hard work, but aren't data center analysts pretty well compensated? I would think that would cover a 1b place pretty effectively and then the other sources of income would be gravy. Maybe I'm over-estimating the salary for the field. I am ignorant, I must admit.
It also depends on where they live and if they have student loans. For example the comfortable living salary in Boston has passed 80k. Low level analysts even here can still be making 80-90. Enough for an apartment, but not to add kids to the picture. Things get even weirder if you are mostly equity compensated at a startup or something like that (so your total comp is not actually spendable and you have a higher tax burden) which is pretty common in tech roles around here. This couple may be the textbook example of HENRYs, the modern DINK. High Earners, But Not Rich Yet. If they dont have kids they might retire upper middle class or wealthy. If they do they’ll stay in their current wealth class or become poorer.
A new report from SmartAsset says a single person in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro area has to pull in a salary of almost $80,000 a year to "live comfortably." The study is based on a theoretical budget where a person spends half their income on needs, 30% on "wants" and the rest on savings or repaying debt.
"A single person needs to earn $78,752 after taxes in order to cover basic living expenses ($39,376) and still devote half of their earnings to wants and saving/debt," the report for Boston states. "Following the 50/30/20 budget, a person living comfortably would allocate $23,626 for discretionary spending and $15,750 to savings or debt payments."
Our HR has absolutely no clue what we do and for years thought we were a branch of their help desk. So, currently management is trying to fix that. I started at this place a year ago. Great people, just underpaid. We hopefully should get that worked out here in the next few weeks.
It think they drew the wrong conclusions.
It's not the high income-countries that are spearheading this decrease. It's the high cost of living-countries.
It's been observed for something like 70 years, across all sorts of other economic trends. I've heard before that the peak human population is expected to be about 11 billion and change, in a century or so, and then it will likely just hang there.
Apparently all the shit big corps are putting in the food it's working..
Anyone else got some handmaid's tale cold sweat vibes reading the headline?
I don't think this is good or bad. If it's voluntary, fine. We're not in some Children of Men style crisis just because people are having fewer kids, the human race will survive for a long time at 1.7 kids per woman or whatever, and rates will not be the same in 500 years for all sorts of reasons.
The concern is that it's something like microplastics or birth control washing into waterways causing lesser fertility, but if it's something like that we can focus on fixing that specifically and rates will go back up.
One of the things that drives economic growth - which is required under capitalism - is the growth of families. Lots of things anticipate having more people alive in the future to drive demand and provide labor. If that's not going to be the case, what will happen to companies that demand constant growth?
Even if it's just infant and child care that level off, that's a huge part of our economy not growing. And our economy requires growth.
Damn I guess treating people like dogshit all the time doesn't pay off after all
Well keep on squeezing people on rent and real estate, this is what happens.
Such a great movie, the long shot at the end was just incredible when they stopped fighting for a moment and then went right back at it.
My favorite part was Strawberry Cough
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