24 April 2025

The Baby Boom In A Nutshell


The Baby Boom was driven by: 
(1) a low cost of living, 
(2) low unemployment, 
(3) high union wages for many people, 
(4) people who had been postponing having children during the uncertainty and hardship of the Great Depression and World War II, 
(5) high poverty rates which makes people think that they'll need more kids to have enough of them live to support them in old age, and 
(6) limited educational and job opportunities for women.

Crashing the economy with tariffs and chaos and union busting, and low taxes on the rich that prevents us from investing in public infrastructure undermines the first three. We shouldn't want to replicate the last three of these factors.

The Baby Boom wasn't due to pro-natalist government policies, which have never worked anywhere for any sustained period of time.

The invisible hand of the economy, in every developed country on the planet, is gently telling us to shrink the population of the high consumption developed world to make it more sustainable, in response to modern conditions. We should come to terms with that reality instead of fighting it.

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