Categories
ranting

Buying Babies

The Trump administration is apparently looking to introduce a “baby bonus” —a cash payment to people who have babies— in an attempt to reverse the decline in the US fertility rate. The total fertility rate in the US is very low, 1.62 children per woman in 2023. And it’s been falling most of this century:

Replacement is 2.1, I thought the religious people in the US were breeding?

Higher than a lot of developed countries but well below the replacement rate for about 2.1 children per woman. I always thought the religious people in the US were breeding enough to make up for the others? Harvey Danger lied to me [youtube.com].

This sort of paying for babies has been tried a few times. Wikipedia has a page on baby bonuses that lists, some 11 counties. Most are piddling amounts but let’s look at two places where a similar sort of bonus as the US is discussion were introduced: Australia and Singapore.

Australia

Introduced a baby bonus in early 2000’s. $3,000 in 2004, raising to as much as $5437 in 2012. Slashed to around $2,000 in 2014. Did it affect the fertility rate?

Maybe? The fertility rate rose, a bit, from 1.76 in 2002 to 2.02 in 2008. But then it fell steadily from 2008 and was sitting at 1.64 in 2023. 

Singapore

Singapore has a more complex system including cash gift, matching savings, tax credits and so on. The initial scheme was introduced in 2001, I don’t know the amounts at introduction but it has risen. In 2008 and 2012, when my kids were born, it was around a $6,000 cash gift, for first and second child (it goes up after that). Today the cash gift is $11,000 for first and second child. Has there been any change in fertility rate?

Hahaha! Singapore’s fertility rate in 2000 was 1.34. Today it’s .94. In a few generations there will be no Singaporeans.

China

As a bonus let’s look at China, because this week the Economist has an article on China’s attempts to pay for babies. Some local in China has offered up to $38,000 all-in (including things other than cash, like paid leave.) But, it’s unclear if it is helping any. One province saw a 17% increase in births in 2024 but a lot of that can be attributed to 2024 coinciding with the Chinese Zodiac’s year of the dragon, traditionally the most auspicious year to have a kid. 

The best quote in the article is this one talking about our a particular local, Hothot’s, offering:

Wang Feng of the University of California, Irvine, thinks Hohhot’s policy will not “make a dent” in the city’s population decline. “Babies cannot be bought,” he says. “The cost is lifelong and it’s not just monetary.”

The Economist, China’s $38,000 baby formula [economist.com]

China, Singapore and Japan are bad, but Korea is leading the race to the bottom:

Australia not doing so bad, at least by comparison…

This is from GapMinder, you can play with it here [gapminder.org].

So, yea. This is a problem for a lot of counties. But how fucked is everyone? Seriously fucked. In fact, South Korea is so bad, it’s doomed, past the point of now return. At least according to this Kurzgesagt video:

So, this is an existential crisis, if you want your culture and/or country to live on, you need to find ways of encouraging people to have more babies. A lot more. Quickly. But really, most of the “first world” is doomed at this point.

One last thing, a lot of discussion around this the Trump Administration’s discussion of a Baby Bonus includes an unhealthy dose of modern dysfunctional politics. It’s sad that we have to talk about racism and the return of Nazi ideology, but here we are. The nasty, racist, christo-fascist streak in MAGA must be worried sick about the end of (white) America because empowered, woke, women aren’t having enough babies! Er mah gawd.

The Hill quotes Art Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine:

“If you’re really interested in babies, there are plenty of immigrants here whose kids are being deported,” Caplan said. “If you’re interested in babies, there are plenty of people who would come here and become citizens and bring their babies.”

Caplan argued that what the Trump administration wants is the “right kind of babies.” He called the notion “morally offensive.”

Jeff Arnold, Would $5K ‘baby bonus’ be enough to boost US birth rate? [thehill.com] published by The Hill

At least bribing people to have babies is better than the Handmaiden-esque alternative.

Categories
ranting

At least we will remember how depressed we are…

For years people have warned that mobile phones are marking every teenager depressed… but new research suggests older people who use smartphones experience less cognitive decline [theguardian.com].

Well, at least future old people will all be aware of how depressed they are and remember why they are so angry…

Categories
quotes

Ask the Newts

I ask the newts and the nesting chickadees what they think about the current government shenanigans. They possess a wisdom beyond my own, and I take a page from their indifference. However destructive and threatening to all Life, modernity is a brief flash, perhaps best ignored by those who intend to stay for the long haul.

Tom Murphy, posted in Hall of Mirrors [dothemath.ucsd.com] on Do the Math

Categories
photography travel

New York City, New York, USA, May 2024

I covered the details of my trip trip the US in my 2024 Recap [confusion.cc] post. So I won’t rehash that, but I wanted to post some of the photos I took in New York. I’ll get to Minnesota in another post.

I didn’t take a ton of photos, I was only in the city for a few days. I did take a walk from my hotel, south of Penn Station and Times Square, up through Central Park and spend a few hours at the Guggenheim Museum. And I made my way to MoMA for an afternoon.

At the Guggenheim there was an exhibit in the rotunda by Jenny Holzer titled “Light Lines”. It was interesting, the LED displays spiraling up the ramp showing various quotes was interesting to watch. And I enjoyed some of the political pieces – redacted documents related to the “war on terror” and Trump tweets make for interesting material for sculpture. You have to see it.

IMG_8594

My favorite piece of Jenny Holzer work that was on display was a small, easy to miss, plaque near the very top of the spiral. A simple plaque you might see in any building with some label or name on it. But this one said “Laugh hard at the absurdity of evil”. Given the current state of the world, that just too close to home.

IMG_8587

Meanwhile, over at MoMA there is a giant blob of rainbow colored stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling with smaller “moons” of stuffed animals, each moon a different color…

IMG_8706

Also, van Gogh’s Starry Night [flickr.com], and Picasso’s Ladies of Avignon [flickr.com]. And much more, MoMA is big. I spent like 5 hours. It’s not Louvre big but it’s much bigger than the Guggenheim. But between the Guggenheim and MoMA I saw a lot of “modern” art in a few days.

Anyway, I only had a few days in NYC, so modern art was most of what I did. Other than that I caught up with A█████, aka F█████, as I mentioned in my 2024 Recap post. And, I enjoyed some proper New York pizza and bagels.

I also swung through NYC on the way out but was just there for one evening. I stayed in the TWA Hotel [twahotel.com] at JFK. There I met M███ in the most random fashion, as covered in the Recap post. But I also had time to explore the TWA Hotel itself and admire —and photograph— the 1960 architecture and decor. Including the “Rainbow Room” or “Hidden Alcove” where the Beatles hid before, or after, their famous press conference in 1964 when they first landed in America.

IMG_9009

Anyway, that’s enough for this post. Just remember:

Laugh hard at the absurdity of evil

Jenny Holzer

You can view the whole New Your City, New York, USA, May 2024 [flickr.com] photo set on Flickr.

Categories
ranting

Posts not found

Late last year as I was rushing to get my 2023 Italy photos posted, I ran unto a problem. I was looking include a link to something I wrote a few months before, but for the life I me I could not find it using the editors built in search. The editor’s insert link tool allows you to enter a link or to search for links, usually used to find existing posts or pages on your site. But when I entered the actual name of the post it did not show up. I tried several different combinations, checked spelling, and finally gave up and opened the site in a browser to grab the link.

But the post was not there.

After much scratching of the head and reloading the list of posts that are published, in draft, and even trying the recently deleted I could not find the post and another one too.

I know I posted them as I linked to them via social media posts. But those links now 404.

I think I know what happened. The editor app —Jetpack— has an annoying habit of showing posts having “local changes” when I draft posts and edit them at some point in both the Jetpack app and in the WordPress admin interface. The thing is the app is convenient but not full featured. There are things I cannot do in the app that I do in posts. So I often start the post in the app and finish it in via the webpage. I also move between devices a lot. And the post showing up in the drafts section with “local changes” in the Jetpack app is annoying. So I deleted them. I’ve done it before but —as far as I know— I’ve never lost a post, but this time I lost two.

I have automated backups of the DB but they are 10 day rolling and this appears to have happened longer ago than 10 days. I don’t remember when I did it, other than it was a while ago…

I checked the Wayback Machine, but it did not seem to have the posts either. It has several site craws between when I published when the missing posts were uploaded and when I searched but the ones that load didn’t show the posts and several didn’t load. The Internet Archive was a bit rocky at the time due to the hack they suffered. So after a few days I checked again and the missing posts were there. So, after a temporary bout of amnesia, once again, the internet never forgot. [confusion.cc]… Though there is so much uncrawlable material on “social media” that I really should revisit that statement… the open internet never forgets, capitalism does strange things to that memory.

In any case, the missing posts were restored from the Wayback Machine’s crawl. And I doubt anyone noticed they were ever gone, such is my readership ;-).

This seems like a good time to remind everyone that the mission of the Internet Archive is valuable. Not so I can restore a few missing posts, but for long term historical preservation and promoting open access to information. So much of what is hosted on Archive.org would otherwise be lost or hidden just because it was hard to find.