Based Camp - When Progressives Try to Solve Fertility Collapse their Answers Are Idiotic

00:00:00.000 And so here's what I suggest we do, okay?

00:00:04.100 I say, and I'm quoting here,

00:00:06.820 I say that I'd massively increase marginal tax rate

00:00:09.700 on the second worker in any household

00:00:12.160 to force them out of the labor market,

00:00:14.460 which would lower their opportunity costs

00:00:16.440 for having children.

00:00:17.360 He goes further.

00:00:18.340 Punitive marginal tax rates

00:00:19.740 on the second earner in a household

00:00:21.160 would knock many women and some men 0.96

00:00:23.180 out of the labor force

00:00:24.180 by lowering the opportunity cost of having children

00:00:26.660 because there'd be no career to give up.

00:00:29.480 You're serious?

00:00:30.320 You don't know. 0.58

00:00:33.000 Everybody knows you never go full retard. 0.98

00:00:36.120 Would you like to know more? 0.87

00:00:37.760 Wild.

00:00:38.760 And I remember, have you heard of Zilligan Wild?

00:00:41.840 I love Zilligan Wild, it's fantastic.

00:00:43.660 Made me remember the house on Batman Road,

00:00:45.560 which you like seriously thought about buying.

00:00:48.380 That like, it was a cult, but it had all these like...

00:00:52.040 It was a mansion.

00:00:53.680 It was a mansion.

00:00:54.640 It had a bunch of...

00:00:55.220 It was a super cheap mansion

00:00:56.400 because it looked insane.

00:00:58.460 And it was on a place called Batman Road.

00:01:00.780 Yeah.

00:01:01.900 And you were like, so ready to buy it.

00:01:03.500 You're like, it's a fixer upper.

00:01:04.880 And I'm like, this was clearly owned by a cult before.

00:01:09.160 Why do you want this house?

00:01:11.060 And I wonder, you know, like...

00:01:12.720 Like, if we bought that house, would it have shaped us?

00:01:18.020 Do the homes that people live in shape people?

00:01:22.340 I don't know.

00:01:23.640 Yeah.

00:01:24.100 I mean, I know that...

00:01:25.080 I love the house we got.

00:01:26.140 We definitely got ahead on this cottagecore trend here, right?

00:01:29.120 You know?

00:01:29.260 I know.

00:01:29.580 See, I don't think I would be wearing a medieval corset with, you know, a chemise.

00:01:35.760 You'd be wearing one like...

00:01:36.840 If we were in the house on Batman Road, I would probably have to be wearing a beige jumpsuit

00:01:41.240 because that was the vibe, you know?

00:01:44.200 That was the vibe.

00:01:45.040 I love it.

00:01:45.520 Hey, I don't know.

00:01:46.440 That could work for us as well.

00:01:48.020 So anyway, we got to get into our topic today.

00:01:50.800 Oh, yeah.

00:01:51.260 It's just an article by somebody being like, look, progressives are finally waking up to

00:01:55.580 fertility rates, you know?

00:01:58.520 And they are.

00:01:59.180 And I see this repeatedly in progressive pieces.

00:02:01.600 You know, the New York Times did a front page piece on this recently.

00:02:04.280 But the crazy thing is, is I thought as progressives woke up to this, right?

00:02:10.720 They would more and more, and I've always, you know, taken this position, that they'd use

00:02:16.020 it to try to give handouts.

00:02:17.380 And so, creatively, you know, I point out, and I'm going to put up on the screen, the

00:02:21.780 graph that shows that if you sort studies by how large their margin of error is, what

00:02:28.280 you will see is all of the studies that show this matter have a huge margin of error, and

00:02:32.160 all of the studies that show this doesn't help at all have a very small margin of error.

00:02:35.960 If you look at something like a program that was in Hungary, where they spent literally

00:02:40.340 5% of their GDP on this last year, so the year before last, because we just passed the

00:02:44.040 New Year's, they got their fertility rates up by like 1.6%.

00:02:47.220 Considering that, like, it's falling, like, 13% this year in Korea, like, you're getting

00:02:51.940 double digits declines in a lot of places, that's irrelevant.

00:02:54.780 It's not going to fix anything.

00:02:55.820 And so I was like, well, they're going to try to use it to support those programs, and 0.98

00:03:00.320 it's stupid, and it's not going to work, but, you know, at least, you know, they're part 0.98

00:03:04.460 of the conversation now. 1.00

00:03:05.500 Well, to my surprise, they were dumber than I could have even conceded what they actually 0.99

00:03:17.980 were. 1.00

00:03:18.760 It was worse than handouts, right? 0.99

00:03:20.900 I mean, the thing is, like, handouts, it's a nuanced form of dumb, right? 0.93

00:03:27.620 Like, money does make a difference, just not nearly enough of a difference.

00:03:31.420 You know, it's like saying, oh, I'll help fund your trip to Europe, I'm going to give

00:03:36.420 you $50, you know, like, oh, thanks, that's definitely going to get me across the Atlantic.

00:03:43.220 So, yeah, I mean, it's...

00:03:44.620 The article here was in Quillet, you know, that's like Atlantic's, I think, like, mainstream

00:03:48.580 publication or something, or like online publication.

00:03:51.020 You call it Quillet?

00:03:51.640 Like Millet?

00:03:53.040 Quillet.

00:03:54.520 And the article was called Misunderstanding the Fertility Crisis.

00:03:58.840 Of course, like an article where he misunderstands the fertility crisis.

00:04:03.100 But of course, he's implying that all of us are misunderstanding the fertility crisis, because

00:04:06.700 we think that culture has something to do with this.

00:04:09.400 But, hold on, so I will read to you.

00:04:12.620 So first, one thing I find really interesting is he talked about how he began to realize this

00:04:16.960 was a problem.

00:04:17.540 Is that he heard his conservative friends who, like, worked at Fox News saying that they

00:04:22.540 were working on the fertility rate crisis, and he's like, and I'd never heard of this

00:04:26.480 before.

00:04:27.240 And so I looked at the data, and I begrudgingly suppose that it is a real problem, and we

00:04:33.740 probably should do something.

00:04:35.160 And so here's what I suggest we do, okay?

00:04:39.220 I say, and I'm quoting here, I say that I'd massively increase marginal tax rate on the

00:04:45.600 second worker in any household to force them out of the labor market, which would lower 0.98

00:04:50.320 their opportunity costs for having children.

00:04:52.960 And then in another part of the article, he goes further.

00:04:55.420 Punitive marginal tax rates on the second earner in a household would knock many women 1.00

00:04:59.420 and some men out of the labor force by lowering the opportunity cost of having children, because

00:05:04.420 there'd be no career to give up.

00:05:08.100 So just disempower families.

00:05:11.060 It's fine.

00:05:13.800 About what?

00:05:15.600 Are you serious?

00:05:17.040 You don't know. 0.66

00:05:19.740 Everybody knows you never go full retard. 0.98

00:05:23.140 What do you mean? 0.97

00:05:26.880 You went full retard, man. 1.00

00:05:30.520 Never go full retard. 0.99

00:05:32.440 Hold on.

00:05:33.000 It gets better.

00:05:34.920 So then he goes on to say in another part of the article, two income households aren't

00:05:38.720 vastly more common than they used to be because of a brutal Malthusian competition for increasingly

00:05:43.880 scarce resources.

00:05:44.820 So basically, he's arguing against the idea that, you know, as women entered the labor

00:05:49.120 market, it decreased wages for everyone.

00:05:51.600 And now because of that, we need two income families to work. 1.00

00:05:55.300 So then he goes on to say, basically, instead, women work because their wages are so much 1.00

00:06:00.800 higher than they used to be.

00:06:02.380 There isn't a two income trap.

00:06:04.120 There's an expanded females economic opportunity trap. 1.00

00:06:06.840 And that opportunity cost is what is contributing to the might, mightily to the decrease in fertility.

00:06:13.380 So I, I'm like, our listeners, you're smart people. 0.96

00:06:20.160 Can you immediately see the, the idiocy of this idea that what he is suggesting that we 0.98

00:06:27.040 do? 0.98

00:06:27.340 So I will maybe break this down.

00:06:29.420 It wasn't obvious to you for what he is suggesting that we do.

00:06:34.720 He is saying that individuals now as married couples, both people have so much economic

00:06:42.040 opportunity that there is no reason to have kids.

00:06:46.040 Like the competing things against having kids now are just so much bigger.

00:06:49.720 Like all of the things you can do in the world, whether it's the internet or travel or everything

00:06:53.440 like that, and all the economic opportunity.

00:06:55.560 So what we need to do is remove economic opportunities from people.

00:07:00.280 Now, in a way he's right.

00:07:02.600 If you could enforce this policy fairly without the very obvious unintended side effect, which

00:07:07.960 I'm seeing of our viewers have already figured out.

00:07:10.400 But if you could implement this policy, right, it would just impoverish a lot of people, which

00:07:15.340 does increase fertility rates.

00:07:16.860 You know, if you remove people's economic potential, you increase their fertility rates.

00:07:20.760 But the downside is the obvious effect it's going to have, which is people just won't

00:07:28.200 get married before having kids.

00:07:30.240 Yeah.

00:07:31.140 Yeah.

00:07:31.420 That's what's going to happen.

00:07:32.380 That's what will really happen.

00:07:33.400 Yeah.

00:07:34.000 Well, I mean, so yeah, like basically if everyone followed the rules or like you couldn't escape

00:07:38.840 from it, like if, if common law marriage was also grandfathered into this.

00:07:43.200 What they can then do is it's not get common law marriage. 0.86

00:07:46.260 You just have more totally single mothers. 1.00

00:07:48.340 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:49.160 But let's, so I mean, what he's really arguing though, which I think is, is first ironic is

00:07:53.440 that this is roughly the same argument made by that conservative sub stack writer who wrote

00:07:59.240 the sub stack we discussed on baby booms, who was like, oh, we just need to economically

00:08:04.280 disempower women. 1.00

00:08:05.120 Because the problem is it like until men, excuse me, until men are given the opportunity to

00:08:11.380 be more prestigious and higher status and women, women won't have marriageable men, which 1.00

00:08:16.820 is, I mean, it's not untrue.

00:08:18.760 Then he's sort of arguing the same thing, but from a very different angle.

00:08:21.920 And they're both sort of arguing for effectively the same thing, which is economic disempowerment

00:08:27.000 of women, which is pretty messed up. 1.00

00:08:30.180 Interesting that I've seen this come from this ultra progressive perspective, but it

00:08:34.280 is functionally what he's arguing.

00:08:35.580 And keep in mind, you know, we're already in a certain situation in this country where

00:08:38.800 I think the last numbers I saw, and I want to do a full episode on this, where 50% of

00:08:42.280 children born in this country now are born to single mothers.

00:08:44.340 And so you're not actually helping you.

00:08:48.320 I mean, you're probably not helping that much because you, you are assuming, and I seem to

00:08:52.800 remember it was something like 10 years ago or something, or 20 years ago, it was something

00:08:55.420 like only 13% or 5%.

00:08:57.200 I don't know.

00:08:57.620 It was like a, I got to find this significantly.

00:09:00.420 Yeah.

00:09:01.120 Yeah.

00:09:01.320 It's just exploded because again, and a lot of people are operating under this assumption

00:09:05.660 that the way that our culture is changing and the way things like fertility rates are changing

00:09:09.500 and who's having kids is changing has been a linear change.

00:09:12.580 And it's just sort of like the stuff they saw in their own childhood, but more.

00:09:17.180 And that is not what we're seeing here.

00:09:19.180 We're seeing a complete sea change in who is having kids and these policies.

00:09:26.240 So I mean, I want to know, do you have any other thoughts on this policy, Simone?

00:09:29.400 Like.

00:09:31.620 It's, it's odd to me because one, this is someone who does have kids and who values kids.

00:09:38.900 Yeah.

00:09:39.420 And, but, but two, like he's choosing a policy that I also think would dissuade more people

00:09:47.140 from wanting to have kids.

00:09:48.480 So I was just watching a new segment on why dink couples, you know, exist and why they feel 1.00

00:09:55.620 so incentivized to not have kids.

00:09:59.060 And the big, big argument that is made is the financial penalty for choosing any lifestyle

00:10:06.860 arrangement that compromises their earning ability is, is meaningful enough for them to

00:10:12.360 significantly change their lives.

00:10:14.400 And this is no different basically saying, oh, well, you know, if you get married, we're

00:10:21.360 going to penalize the second earner, like even worse than it is.

00:10:25.700 It would destroy marriage.

00:10:26.380 Yeah.

00:10:26.620 And it's like.

00:10:27.840 Lomiting marriage rates already.

00:10:30.220 And, and, you know, that's a huge problem.

00:10:33.160 So when you say that he is somebody who has kids and likes kids, I want to go into some

00:10:36.860 of the stuff he says about his kids, because it's actually very elucidating.

00:10:39.700 If you look at this from the progressive perspective and the way that they see this stuff.

00:10:43.620 So he says, quote, I used to roll my eyes at people who said, quote, having kids is the

00:10:48.820 best thing I ever did.

00:10:50.160 And my kids are my life, end quote.

00:10:52.480 But then I realized how true it is.

00:10:54.800 The insights of evolution make it painfully obvious.

00:10:58.940 After I had my first child, I described to a philosophy PhD friend how my new feelings

00:11:05.000 revealed the poverty of the English language.

00:11:07.600 My deep feelings for my children deserve a word other than love, which we use to describe

00:11:13.320 the feelings we have for our spouse or an excellent movie.

00:11:17.100 And I never felt that before learning that my wife was pregnant and seeing my son for

00:11:21.500 the first time.

00:11:22.520 By the way, I didn't feel love for my kids the first time I saw them.

00:11:25.300 I'm so confused by guys who do that.

00:11:27.080 I think that might be a exclusively female phenomenon that has to do with that. 1.00

00:11:30.480 There's also country songs about like the moment they see the first ultrasound.

00:11:33.680 Yeah, I know I hear that, but I feel like it's something you're just supposed to say.

00:11:36.680 I don't know.

00:11:37.740 First time I see babies, I'm like, they look gross.

00:11:40.740 Yeah, you really like pass.

00:11:43.320 So then he goes on to say, my philosopher friend that it sounded like having children

00:11:49.440 was a, quote, consciousness expanding experience, end quote, which was a great way to put it.

00:11:54.920 So, you know, this guy, now that he has three kids and he has three kids now, you know, and

00:11:59.080 he's talking to the wife.

00:11:59.280 Which is notable.

00:12:00.360 Yeah, who has three kids anymore?

00:12:02.140 Yeah.

00:12:03.180 And she's like, well, it would limit how much I can travel.

00:12:06.500 And like, okay, yeah, denying a human a life, denying one of your kids.

00:12:13.620 Like, if you knew that kid, would you be like, yeah, I treated you for travel because I really

00:12:18.300 like going to Italy.

00:12:19.900 Like, what?

00:12:21.820 What?

00:12:22.320 Like, it's so insane that anybody would do that.

00:12:25.320 But I think this comes to culture, which is to say the way you culturally frame how you

00:12:31.120 think about human life, when a human life begins, what is given up by not having a kid,

00:12:35.340 you know, the way we do, where we say, you know, life begins before conception.

00:12:38.580 And that that means that when you decide not to have a kid or you do something that prevents

00:12:42.380 you from having a kid, you are denying that person existence.

00:12:45.340 And then you've got to think, like, what am I denying them existence over?

00:12:48.620 And it really reframes it for you, you know, having to explain to that kid in the future,

00:12:54.500 like, the things that you thought were more important than them.

00:12:57.980 But this is the way our society frames it.

00:12:59.720 So people don't have this huge push.

00:13:01.680 And this is another thing he kept going into.

00:13:03.240 So when he titles the article Misunderstanding the Falling Fertility Rate, what he thinks that

00:13:08.520 we and all the other conservatives who care about this are misunderstanding is that culture

00:13:14.120 has anything to do with this.

00:13:16.560 So I'm going to read some quotes here because I found them just absolutely bizarre.

00:13:24.720 The conversation has stuck with me because people who worry about low fertility rates focus

00:13:29.680 on vague cultural explanations and don't look at the simple ones staring them in the face.

00:13:34.860 Microeconomics.

00:13:36.000 Opportunity cost is what you must give up to buy what you want in terms of other goods and

00:13:40.400 services.

00:13:40.980 But the concept applies to every action you take.

00:13:43.400 People who are concerned, and this is a separate part of the article, people who are concerned

00:13:47.260 about the fertility crisis and want to reverse it should be the most interested in understanding

00:13:52.240 the causes of the decline in the first place.

00:13:54.600 This is why I find the vague cultural arguments that people raise for having children so frustrating.

00:14:01.060 Culture is a set of human actions that evolved. 0.98

00:14:03.780 Now, so that is all dumb. 1.00

00:14:05.220 Like, everything he has said so far is pretty dumb. 0.98

00:14:07.420 But then he gets to some right stuff here. 0.98

00:14:09.700 And there is some stuff that he's saying that is right.

00:14:12.060 So culture is the set of human actions that evolved to partially deal with the problems

00:14:16.380 of the past and to harness opportunities.

00:14:18.600 Yes, we agree with that.

00:14:19.760 Culture is not some magical force outside of economics, politics, and technology, but a

00:14:23.760 set of human actions affected by economics, politics, and technology.

00:14:28.060 Culture, in turn, affects economics, politics, and technology.

00:14:30.760 To argue for changing the culture without changing the rest is unserious.

00:14:36.760 Except he just made the point here, okay?

00:14:39.620 The point is, yes, culture is not some magical force outside of culture, economics, and technology,

00:14:45.240 and that it gets affected by those.

00:14:46.600 But it also affects those, right?

00:14:48.980 So economics, politics, and technology are things that any movement is going to have a

00:14:54.240 very difficult time changing.

00:14:55.960 You know, you can make specific economic changes, but we can study how those affect fertility rates

00:15:02.040 because we have innumerous examples of people who have tried this in other countries, and

00:15:06.660 it just doesn't work.

00:15:08.320 Like, we know this.

00:15:09.940 Culture is the stronger force here.

00:15:12.000 And if you make cultural changes, well, then that obviously then impacts the other systems

00:15:16.480 as well.

00:15:17.140 And I think that he is afraid that if culture is the explanation, then the answer is going

00:15:25.220 to be we have to go back to the way things were.

00:15:27.840 And so that's why he has this huge reason to sort of twist his brain to argue for something

00:15:35.800 that is obviously not true.

00:15:38.600 That's my read.

00:15:40.160 And it would destroy, effectively destroy the thing that I guess would be more traditional,

00:15:44.520 which is marriage.

00:15:46.860 But I just, yeah, I don't think he's really thought through it.

00:15:50.040 And I just, it bothers me again.

00:15:51.840 Like, this is why we're in this in the first place is it gets me so mad when so many people

00:15:59.240 look at falling fertility and they're like, well, time to take away reproductive rights, 1.00

00:16:06.640 time to take away women's empowerment. 1.00

00:16:09.620 Like, let's do that.

00:16:10.320 And like, to see even a progressive person effectively say that really makes my blood

00:16:15.260 boil because no, I mean, that's, that's just not, that's not how it works.

00:16:21.720 And I think when we look at the past and we think, oh, well, things worked back then because

00:16:27.040 women weren't empowered. 1.00

00:16:28.540 Not exactly.

00:16:29.960 Women had a lot of influence within the family. 1.00

00:16:32.560 They had a lot of economic power within the family too.

00:16:35.800 I mean, of course things vary.

00:16:36.900 And like legally women were pretty disempowered in many places, but I don't know. 0.93

00:16:41.320 It just really bothers me.

00:16:43.000 There is one truth that he's capturing was in this article that I think sometimes lost

00:16:47.260 to conservatives in the space is, is the, and progressives in the space as well is he's

00:16:54.280 pointing out fundamentally, which is something that we really agree with is that the problem

00:16:58.340 isn't not enough money.

00:17:00.180 The problem is too much money, which is something that he fundamentally gets.

00:17:04.500 You know, he's saying that women aren't leaving these positions because they don't have enough

00:17:08.900 money, that it's not that the economics of families are depressed.

00:17:12.680 It is that there is such a super abundance of opportunity that is competing with wanting

00:17:18.760 to have kids.

00:17:19.920 What I think is missing is, well, then how realistically do you get people to go and have kids without,

00:17:27.060 you know, making marriage seem like the worst, but let's, let's humor him on this.

00:17:30.960 Let's assume you're going to design an actual economic system that is going to motivate people

00:17:36.800 to have kids.

00:17:38.000 What does that look like, right?

00:17:40.240 In a healthy way, like, like, like, let's try to do what he's doing, but make this healthy.

00:17:44.900 So one.

00:17:45.920 I think people who are having kids are the people who should be getting tons and tons of

00:17:50.320 tax advantages, like effectively not paying any tax because they are providing the next generation 1.00

00:17:56.540 of taxpayers, period.

00:17:58.860 Like, yeah, I think tax, tax, taxes should be a huge thing here.

00:18:02.420 I think you need some sort of like incremental decreasing taxes.

00:18:05.480 The more kids you have should get very big.

00:18:07.940 Like if you go above three or four.

00:18:09.520 Well, I think the tax, the tax decreases you should get should also, this should only apply

00:18:15.460 to parents who are not utilizing low income based state services.

00:18:19.840 Like if you are utilizing those that we just finished with Pernatalist.org, putting together

00:18:24.960 both a guide to federal resources for parents and for state-based resources for parents.

00:18:30.140 And what was really sobering to me is that the vast majority of states have pretty much

00:18:35.620 nothing for families regardless of income.

00:18:38.220 And by that, I mean, like they don't have a few states do have things.

00:18:42.820 And some examples of services that states provide to all families in some cases are

00:18:48.020 like, oh, free transport, like free public transport for kids to go to school.

00:18:52.820 You know, you can use this metro system.

00:18:54.720 Yeah.

00:18:55.160 If you're a minor or like, here's this home visiting program or community support program.

00:19:00.980 Sorry, I was thinking about different countries, but yeah, good.

00:19:03.640 No, no, no.

00:19:04.000 This is United States states because that's where we started.

00:19:07.960 It was an easier place to start.

00:19:09.420 And you can find these, by the way, if you go to Pernatalist.org and then under services,

00:19:14.540 it links to a parent resources page.

00:19:16.620 But the vast, vast, vast majority of services are for low income families.

00:19:21.200 And that's fine.

00:19:22.080 And that's important.

00:19:23.060 You know, I totally, I can't bear the idea of children suffering and going without and

00:19:28.760 being hungry and not having the healthcare that they need.

00:19:31.960 So fine.

00:19:33.180 But you also then shouldn't be incentivized to have more kids if you like literally are not

00:19:37.360 financially stable enough to handle those things yourself.

00:19:40.040 But parents who are and are creating new tax, especially like, because if you're a family

00:19:45.240 that is able to pay for your own children, you are also more likely to produce children

00:19:50.800 who themselves will be high income generators and therefore high taxpayers.

00:19:55.280 So you should be given the biggest reward in terms of tax cuts for having kids.

00:19:59.900 And it's the easiest and simplest thing to do.

00:20:02.700 Yeah.

00:20:03.060 Well, I think there's other incremental things you could do that would work really well.

00:20:06.540 By the way, people are wondering what I keep looking at off screen.

00:20:10.000 One of our sons, he got a big bag full of rocks, little gemstones for Christmas because

00:20:16.180 he likes playing with rocks.

00:20:17.440 And now the other kid loves it, you know, but this was a much better gift, but a much

00:20:20.720 more messy gift than I had anticipated.

00:20:23.960 And now I'm playing with my little horde of gemstones on the table because they're so

00:20:29.180 fun.

00:20:29.780 They're so fun to collect and sort.

00:20:32.580 Except now that we've given Torsten, and of course his name is Thor Stone, but of course

00:20:38.060 he wants rocks for Christmas.

00:20:39.920 But like, now that we've given Torsten all these rocks, he now like is very, he's like,

00:20:46.380 well, I want a rock, my rock.

00:20:48.460 And he'll like freak out about not having, and they'll give him a rock.

00:20:51.180 And he's like, no, I need a little rock.

00:20:54.220 And then I need a house rock.

00:20:55.940 And then I need a, he's like all these, we have no idea what rock he's looking for.

00:20:59.380 It's always like one very specific rock out of like the hundreds of rocks he was given

00:21:04.180 and crystals for Christmas.

00:21:06.160 Oh my God.

00:21:07.160 But anyway, so back on topic.

00:21:09.060 So the question of like, what could you actually do?

00:21:12.080 I think you can, you can, is economically incentivize the steps leading up to having kids

00:21:17.900 as well.

00:21:18.540 Oh, so getting married.

00:21:19.400 I think there should be a level of economic incentivization for marriage, but then you need 0.93

00:21:23.940 some actual qualifications of marriage.

00:21:26.140 You know, what does it mean to be married?

00:21:28.060 So, but I guess you wouldn't have that many people doing it just for the economic incentives.

00:21:31.960 It'd be pretty hard and cumbersome to do that.

00:21:34.300 So you'd have a light level of economic.

00:21:36.100 I don't know.

00:21:36.160 Don't people get married like for immigration purposes?

00:21:39.140 I do think that, I don't know.

00:21:43.820 So a light level of economic incentive for marriage, a heavier economic incentive level,

00:21:47.960 and you would want this to scale logarithmically, like with the more kids you have.

00:21:52.640 Or the longer your marriage is.

00:21:54.060 Like if you've been married for five years, then it starts kicking in.

00:21:58.020 You could also make it something that could be really good.

00:22:00.520 Is the economic incentives kick in at higher levels the earlier you have your first kid?

00:22:06.140 So you get this larger tax break because you don't know how much money you're going to

00:22:11.400 earn or something like that.

00:22:12.420 So again, you know, you are less likely to like try to cheat the system if you're a very

00:22:16.240 wealthy person having a ton of kids.

00:22:17.580 Because like I'm a wealthy 50-year-old and I can just produce kids and that gets me out

00:22:21.560 of the tax bracket.

00:22:22.580 That's not a useful thing to have in the economy, right?

00:22:25.540 Like you wanted to have some marginal increase there, but not a big one.

00:22:28.840 What you would want is the huge advantage to come where if you start having kids,

00:22:32.820 you know, in your late 20s or mid 20s, and then you end up becoming wealthy after that,

00:22:38.680 I think that's where you should get the real advantage so that people sort of normalize

00:22:43.620 to having kids much earlier in life, which is what we need if we're realistically going

00:22:48.520 to get the fertility rate back up. 0.97

00:22:51.000 I think it was something like, God, what was it?

00:22:53.320 Something like in the 1970s, the average age of the first mother, first child in the US

00:22:59.540 was I think 21 or something or 22.

00:23:03.240 That's wild.

00:23:04.220 That's pretty young.

00:23:05.000 Like even by 1800 standards, it's not, it's interesting.

00:23:13.120 Yeah, it was 21.4 in the 1970s, in 1970.

00:23:17.100 That is wild.

00:23:18.640 So that means a lot of women were having kids, you know, in 18 and 17 and, you know. 0.99

00:23:23.600 But I mean, tax cuts aside, well, I mean, yeah, tax cuts aside, there's so many additional

00:23:27.300 things.

00:23:27.620 Like it is insane to me that parents pay for childcare and for tuition with post-tax dollars.

00:23:35.640 Oh, yeah.

00:23:36.620 It's also insane to me that most universities, like if they're giving you financial support

00:23:40.920 for kids, but this would be one of the first things that I would really target is they do

00:23:44.340 not calculate how many kids you have into that.

00:23:47.400 So if you have 10 kids, you are treated the same as somebody who has one kid in terms of

00:23:52.820 can you afford-

00:23:53.120 Oh, in terms of financial aid at a university?

00:23:55.660 Yeah.

00:23:55.920 So the only way that they will give you a break on this is if multiple kids are in the

00:24:01.140 university system at the same time.

00:24:03.440 Oh, interesting.

00:24:04.700 So if I have a few in the system at the same time, but the reality is that parents often

00:24:09.560 aren't paying for the university out of like their yearly income.

00:24:13.620 They're paying for it out of a huge amount that they saved up over decades to send their

00:24:18.280 kids to college.

00:24:19.060 So that is an insane system for how you're pricing this.

00:24:23.100 So very obviously, you know, if you want to be fair and deal with these systems, that

00:24:26.000 would be something to target.

00:24:27.580 Yeah.

00:24:28.060 Well, Simone, at least the world is waking up to this to some extent.

00:24:31.540 It's nice that they're thinking about it.

00:24:34.420 And maybe they'll start to think for more than five seconds about it.

00:24:38.100 We'll see.

00:24:38.660 You know, I don't know.

00:24:39.820 It's very hard to get people to take this issue as seriously as it needs to be taken.

00:24:44.760 But the world is waking up like I'm seeing this now.

00:24:47.840 They're begrudgingly like if you say a fertility rate crisis, they're no longer like, oh, you

00:24:53.000 must be saying that because you have a breeding fetish, which is like literally that used

00:24:56.680 to be something that we got told all the time.

00:24:58.640 Right.

00:24:58.780 Like, yeah, yeah.

00:24:59.680 Spring of last year, that was the one of the most common assumptions and conclusions.

00:25:06.020 Yeah.

00:25:06.200 And now people are like, yeah, obviously.

00:25:08.140 But like X is the obvious solution.

00:25:10.500 And yet they haven't thought about it at all.

00:25:13.140 X is not the obvious solution.

00:25:14.520 And I guarantee you.

00:25:16.160 So I love you to death, Simone.

00:25:19.200 I'm so glad that I have kids with you.

00:25:20.920 I do agree with what he says.

00:25:22.420 I love our kids more than I love you.

00:25:25.860 Yeah.

00:25:26.780 Which I was so afraid of.

00:25:28.360 Remember, I was like, what if you love our kids more than?

00:25:30.920 And then and now I'm like, no, this is great.

00:25:32.860 I want you to love our kids more than you love me.

00:25:35.640 So, you know, these people, you know, something that he talks about in the article is like you

00:25:40.100 cannot communicate someone who doesn't have kids what they're missing out on.

00:25:43.960 There is just no way.

00:25:45.340 It's a conscious.

00:25:45.780 You really can't.

00:25:46.680 And yet a lot of child free couples are like, you don't understand the love I feel for my

00:25:50.960 dog.

00:25:51.240 And I'm like, I'm sorry.

00:25:52.620 Like, that's.

00:25:54.860 No, that is so disgusting.

00:25:57.620 Well, this is a guy being like, well, you know, I, yeah, I don't want to get gross here. 0.86

00:26:03.740 But yeah, it's, it's disgusting.

00:26:05.600 Yeah.

00:26:06.640 You know what?

00:26:07.220 You're not disgusting.

00:26:08.560 Animals as a child substitute.

00:26:11.340 Yeah.

00:26:11.860 Well, I mean, that's what they're doing. 0.94

00:26:12.840 They're masturbating an emotional subset that a baby is supposed to fulfill with a pet. 0.91

00:26:17.380 And then they pour their parenting instinct, you know, instead of into a baby, into a pet, 0.98

00:26:23.540 you know, this is what somebody is doing when they're using pornography instead of sex or

00:26:26.740 something like that. 1.00

00:26:27.780 They are using their pet for masturbation and it's gross. 1.00

00:26:31.760 Pets as pornography. 1.00

00:26:33.840 Yeah. 0.78

00:26:34.120 But they're doing it like publicly and, and proudly.

00:26:37.880 And it's like, I, this does not come off the way that you think it comes off.

00:26:41.700 It does not.

00:26:42.060 I saw this one article that made me really sad.

00:26:44.920 There was a two sisters and the, one of the wives had written into this magazine about 0.98

00:26:49.580 how angry she was at her parent in the will.

00:26:53.360 Oh, this famous Miss Manners art. 0.97

00:26:55.440 Yes, yes, yes.

00:26:57.760 Yeah.

00:26:58.240 In the will, their mom had given additional money to her sister because her sister had

00:27:04.720 kids and she was like, my dog is my kid.

00:27:09.480 Like when her sister had kids, the kid sister had a kid. 0.73

00:27:11.820 Okay.

00:27:12.360 She's like, but my dog is my kid.

00:27:14.220 Does she know how hurtful this is to me that, that I don't have this additional money for

00:27:19.760 my dog?

00:27:20.580 Like that she had gotten into this level of psychosis where she actually thinks it costs

00:27:26.260 as much to raise a dog as a child.

00:27:29.560 And that like, have you seen how much that refrigerated pet food is?

00:27:32.960 I mean, well, no, and then her dog is like the equivalent of like a continuation of the

00:27:38.360 family line or something like that.

00:27:40.140 And that could have kids itself that would then continue the family, you know, the dog 0.54

00:27:45.060 in any way, like she's lucky she got a dime from her parent because this woman sounds like

00:27:51.980 a psychopath as everyone does whenever they, they clearly and loudly signal that they are using 1.00

00:27:58.180 their dogs to masturbate. 1.00

00:27:59.400 But anyway, I love you to death, Simone. 1.00

00:28:04.480 You are a perfect wife.

00:28:07.640 And my special sun pony.

00:28:09.600 You too.

Based Camp - January 30, 2024

When Progressives Try to Solve Fertility Collapse their Answers Are Idiotic

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