this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
647 points (97.4% liked)

News

36160 readers
3099 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Paywall removed https://archive.is/x98FV

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 17 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (3 children)

Federal minimum wage was to keep a family of four out of poverty, this is a 1938 labor law; this law was in effect during our 'golden years' 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s.

Today? They just ignore it as we have since the 80s; these are the results of steadily declining wages for 50 years.

BUT MUSK IS A TRILLIONAIRE HAHA STOCK MARKET 50K

They don't want babies. They want robots.

Since corporations are people, logic dictates that robots are also people. Robots are a construct run by humans, just like companies.

Oh, and money is free speech! Tee-hee we don't know what's happening this was all a coinkidink beep boop

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago

They don’t want babies. They want robots.

Well, they want slaves. And they're still figuring out which direction to go

[–] ShergalFarkey@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago

The fortunes of a few matter more than the lives of rest of us, and we'll just watch from the sidelines I guess whilst dying of starvation.. They say social cohesion starts to fall apart when people can't feed their kids, but if they have no kids to feed, I guess it's a win win for the ultra wealthy. They get planet earth to themselves, whilst the rest of us just wither away and die, no societal uprising, no revolution, just distractions, everywhere, all by design, it's kinda genius to be fair.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 10 points 17 hours ago

🤣🤣🤣🤣

My wife and I make 120k a year and we can barely afford rent a car payment and daycare.

All we do is basically work. We have no life.

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

And despite the horrors of reality, some people are still fighting and even dying to get into the US.

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 8 points 20 hours ago

My household makes 120k and I have free childcare with family. I have no idea what I would do if I had to pay for childcare.

[–] betanumerus@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago

No employer ever wanted us to have a family.

[–] Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah back in the 'golden years' of the 90s the were saying you needed to earn twice as much as our family did to afford kids. Somehow we raised 2, through university and all without going bankrupt.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

You were still relatively close to the gold standard at that point, so housing was still affordable.

Look at median income to 3+ bedroom home values now.

[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 36 points 1 day ago (5 children)

* in the US

We currently pay something in the range of 250€ a month for after school care of our 2 kids, including lunch; full kindergarten care for both was around 500€ before in Germany.
Funny thing though: birthrates here are dropping even worse than in the US...

[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

Birth rate is, as inconvenient a truth that it is, inversely proportional to education and the liberty of women. You'd be hard pressed to give any developed nation that has a high birth rate.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 39 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Are you serious?

This shithole country I live in. We have funds to create a gestopo and ice camps here in the US and there's no real support for new parents.

[–] P1k1e@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Comical that Republicans constantly bitch about people not getting married or having kids, then make sure there's no way they can support said kids. Fucking dimwits

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

What are housing prices in Germany?

I find housing is the thing that really drives down birth rates, coupled with rapid inflation that the CPI doesn't capture.

[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Housing prices in the last few years have exploded in Germany, but the reduced birthrate preceded that rather recent effect.
When looking at the statistics, main reason is less that parents decide completely against children, but more that they have less children. So the average nowadays is just 1.35 children per woman compared to 2.5 children in the 60s.
Main driving factor here seems to be more self determination of women and a more rational approach to family planning overall, tied to increased levels of education.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Why is the rental rate so high, and median income so low relative to the average income in Germany?

I'd also be curious how many bedrooms the average house has relative to the US. I'd assume the number of bedrooms is far lower, and that they prioritized cheap small housing to attempt to boost affordability, which lead to renting being more desirable.

This then would cap family sizes as the median income can't afford more rooms, and actual ownership of a family bearing home is prohibitive.

[–] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

God, that would be amazing. I pay $1200 CAD for my child care.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

$1500usd/mth for 1 kid here. Thats considered low in the US. I know people paying more than $3k.

[–] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Yea, I have a friend that recently moved to the states, and their rates jumped too.

They were on a local, government subsidised, $10/day program too!

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The US isn't fully industrialized and we do kind of have some protected "pre-industrial lite" style religious communities like the Amish that distort population rates and previously used high immigration rates to sustain the economy until like sept 11th 2001.

Like the real problem is time and diversions. More diversions = less boredom = less fucking. More hours and jobs = less fucking. I'm pretty sure you can directly correlate advertising revenue with lower birth rates.

[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 hours ago

I'm not convinced the fucking has declined. :-)
I guess it is more that by now it is decoupled from family planning, which combined with more rational considerations (tied to higher education levels) lead to reduced family sizes.

load more comments
view more: next ›