Thank you for watching, you can see more of our work at: ifs.org.uk/ Timecodes: 00:00 - Shrinking countries 0:25 - Introduction 2:28 - What’s happening with birthrates? 7:50 - Inward migration 9:18 - Policy responses 12:58 - Public finance implications 15:58 - Is immigration sustainable? 20:40 - Why are birthrates falling? 25:28 - Costs of an ageing population 32:12 - Working age immigration 37:40 - Bringing people into labour force 39:37 - Retirement age 42:50 - Choice vs constraints 46:38 - Conclusion
We have to focus on Antiaging therapies, consider Aging as a disease for the first time. There are already many gene targets for it, but will likely need a second geenration crispr system in a gene circuit setting to target all known factors of aging. we already know the consequitive factors in aging cells to express the needed components, and have targets in view. We need the theraputic, DNA based of course, to be non integrative, and able to spread body wide from a single administration. These are of course like virsus but almost purely synthetic. The same goes fro cancers and other issues, its possible. The other thing is to invest in technology that can export the process of child bearing from fertilization to term away from the mother and make said technology cheep anough to buy at a department store. This would render her able to work while having large families, and yes home daycare will boom too. Currently said technology is in development and in mice quite fasinating, but current people are considering it only for saving pre-term's and not for a full replacment of the reproductive system. Also a third thing is to invest in invitro gametogensis so we can make the needed material from any cell possible. If we have all three then barring any energy and material shortage then we should be okay.
So little time spent on birth rates falling? The biggest is housing costs, the second biggest is cultural changes. Both issues not just ignored by governments as too hard, maybe ignored by economists too as too hard. The UK also needs to remove inheritance loop holes (like trusts) that prevent redistribution of wealth. By far the biggest route to wealth these days is the lottery that is having the right parents.
Maybe add more women to the government, boards, management and other meaningless places - they will import more people from abroad. In millions. Merkel syndrome.
@carkawalakhatulistiwa Decree 770 was an abysmal FAILURE, and the dictator that implemented it was EXECUTED! The orphanages were filled with abandoned, damaged babies. Pathetic suggestion! 😂😂😂
Any economy based in financing is doomed to fail. We need a resource based economy. Printing money out of thin air always leads to inflation and the decline of lifestyle. Also the education system is not up to the challenges we face. The education system is often disconnected from the needs of top enterprises, especially in the fast evolving high tech. Universities have a vested interest to sell you degrees that have little value to businesses. Most of the goods produced are designed to keep you spending. We have lost touch with our fundamental needs. We have a population that believes that they need to have the latest gadgets and we have government regulations that do design to force you to consume in a certain way. From the need to ban IC cars and move to electric cars while the battery life and charging station that are limited. Even though we have nuclear weapons for defense we still build more killing machines and more bioweapons. We live in a society where we are not taught the mechanics of money and currency. Few of us know about the impact of our consumption on the environment. Few people know the level of pollution that goes on when extracting minerals and manufacturing goods. Some people believe that electric cars are environmentally friendly, ignoring the pollution generated to produce the electricity and the material required to build those cars. From wars to child labor in some poor country, a lot of misery is generated in order to produce the latest goods that advertisers pay to make us consume. The past civilizations were more advanced than we are. They left a world with less pollution for us to enjoy . Our current civilization is doomed to collapse just like the ones before us , but it is up to us to make it last and to leave a good impression on the one to come. Our ego we get us destroyed through nuclear wars because of commerce, money and power. If only we were Intelligent enough to build a better world with the average person well informed and knowledgeable enough to not need wars.
Parents in 80s /90s, 3 kids, 1 public sector good wage, 1 public sector basic wage. 2 cars, 2-3 holidays a year. Retired in their 50s. No fecking way is that possible today with the same jobs paying their 2024 wage.
What fantasy have you been reading? You are describing my cohort. Most of them had well-paying private sector jobs. We're now in our sixties and the only person I know who has retired is single and childless. The 80s was a depression. The 90s was a depression. 2008 so an economic collapse.
@@davidmorgan6896what percentage of your wage was going into housing till say the 2005? Housing prices on their own have destroyed many people. It is not an opinion but an established fact. And many people born in the 60 have made more money with their housing than with their wages. Not good to resort to personal cases as they do not do statistics, but since you have done it, my brother is approaching 60, bought early 2000, his home made three times. By price to income ratio, he would have had a completely different life buying 15 years later
@@joim3480 They haven't made any money at all. Maybe their homes are worth more, but so is every house they might want to buy. They just have assets tied up with no way to realise them. They can't downsize, because often their children refuse to move out or move back in. They can't move because they are still working. Even when they retire, their whole social network is tied to a place and so they cannot move somewhere cheaper.
@@davidmorgan6896 First, older generations often gained substantial wealth by investing in property and renting it out. Many landlords charged rents that consumed up to 50% of tenants’ net income. This allowed them to grow their assets significantly while making housing less affordable for others. Second, when older homeowners downsize, they benefit from "multiplicative factor." This refers to selling high-value properties purchased decades ago at a lower cost. Long-term homeowners reaped massive profits by selling and moving into smaller, more affordable homes. A friend’s remark "My home earns more than I do" captures this reality perfectly. As far as I am concerned I was caught in between, before the rise I could not buy yet, later it became too expensive. For about 5 years difference I would have been able to buy, given what I was looking at and what it rents for now, I could stop working, says it all. Lastly, their monthly mortgage payments are comparatively low. Many older buyers secured homes when interest rates and home prices were much lower. Historically, mortgage payments were around 15-20% of income, compared to today’s average of 30% or more in many areas, and often higher for first-time buyers. Coupled with shorter loan durations in the past, these reduced costs mean older generations spend far less on housing as a proportion of their income. Meanwhile, today’s buyers are burdened with longer terms and higher housing costs relative to incomes. If you still don’t see the difference, consider this: younger generations are locked into higher financial obligations for basic housing, making wealth accumulation through property ownership significantly harder than it was for older generations. These are not opinions but easily available statistics.
Exactly this! I'm so glad that women are protected by law to have the same employment opportunities as men. But this ought to have been accompanied by shorter working weeks. Obviously it's more complicated than this (because of economic growth) but in really basic terms if you double the number of workers you halve the value of their labour (again, not quite true because demand increases - but not at the same rate that the supply of labour has). Rory Sutherland has summarised this well that generally speaking, the average family over two generations has traded in 35 hours of leisure time, not for increased quality of life but for higher housing costs, with land owners hoovering up most of the economic gains from two income families becoming the norm. If working weeks had shortened to carefully balance the supply and demand for labour we could all be working 3 day weeks by now and the only people worse off would be the landlords! Stagger those 3 days over Monday-Friday and there's only one day of childcare needed for most families.
It's really not that difficult! What was the situation when today's old people were young? 1. One income could support a whole family. 2. Housing was readily available for young adults in their 20s. 3. Pensioners were poorer and less numerous than today. 4. When people got old, they died and were allowed to die. 5. Young adults and children were the priority of government. Sorry if it's confusing. In sufficiently large numbers, the old crowd out the young.
@@BAmalakas but they were breeding. And now we modern world don't, we are dying letting our culture to disappear. Modern women has got nothing to offer now. Not a single man is impressed by women salary or position. And yeah birth control. Fuck like rabbits with no responsibilities or killing unwanted child... What a valuable women we have nowadays xD
@@bartz4439 women didn't work in Medevil times. A large proportion of women in Africa don't work. A lot of this comes down to the cost, availability and possibility of childcare. Don't forget lots of people work shifts, weekends, bank holidays - for a couple doing this it can be impossible to have childcare as nursery's are only open mon-fri and not bank holidays from 7.30am til around 6pm. Even those times don't work for some parents. If you are able to put children into childcare it'll cost you £600-900 a month for 5 days a week with low limits on free hours and tax relief. Having a second child is financially unviable for a lot of parents. It was for us. We decided to wait 5 years between our children, purely for money reasons - we'd have loved them closer together. We'd have loved more. Couldn't afford it - and both of us in work.
He is bang on, reason people had more children in past times and developing countries is they were largely subsistence farming. Children in subsistence farming families are an economic win because it’s more labour. Now it’s an economic loss. We need to deal with this drastically, revoke the state pension use the money to build housing and infrastructure. If you are against this you want UK enter terminal decline so you can claim free money from the state. Greed doesn’t cover it.
Irent wise it actually goes to hmrc first as (double) tax on rent, then expenses, then mortgage interest that had 2-3x, then what little is left goes on maintenance. As a landlord the rent is added to my income and it pushes me up to the stealth 62% rate and I see none of the benefit. Landlords with a mortgage are the worker bees for the government and banks now. Labour's tinkering will only increase rents.
You forgot the banks and corporations making mega profit by working their workers extremely long hours and refusing to pay a salary that affords them the basics of life.
Wealth redistribution is needed. Turns out decades of juicing all resources into the 1%’s pockets doesn’t lead to a healthy happy society ?! Who could have thunk it
Wealth redistribution doesn't work. This has been proven so many times throughout history that saying otherwise is willful ignorance. What we need is less government so that there are less barriers to economic growth.
That's a socialist argument. The UK has been a socialist state since the 1990's. How's about...no tax! All the money you earn- yours!!!! Business would explode, people would spend like crazy bringing interest rates down, houses built, utter capitalism runaway! No issue paying 35k a year for a bag packer or a burger maker then. And the country has nothing but a lucrative ladder to climb of money money money. Oh...yeah. sorry. We don't like money wealth and success. We like...government to have all the money. 😂😂
Tired of listening to these people beat around the bush. The core issue at the heart of all of this is wealth distribution. Native Brits are not having children because in their prime reproductive years they cannot afford food and shelter. This is because over the past 50 years the wealth of the nation has been confiscated and concentrated into the hands of the few. Instead of addressing this problem and redistributing it, successive governments have simply chosen to stave off the issue for 1 generation by importing immigrants. They do this because they are controlled by the rich who see people as economic units and countries as economic areas rather than places whose people have a history and heritage. These immigrants will then have the exact same social mobility issues because they themselves will be subject tonthe harsh economic environment they were brought in to prop up. The single best thing people can do is to hasten the necessary wealth redistribution by not working and allowing the whole sham to collapse in on itself. They rely on you working to manage the spending potential of the government via its bond issuance scam. Taxation is for show - they use it to convince bond holders not to sell. If you remove taxation, the bonds will sell off and the economy will collapse because they cannot shake the magic money tree. To solve the problem, simply do not go to work.
I think it would take lots of people to not go to work. But I agree with your assessment of the problem. They will always be able to sell housing to single mothers though: homelessness for single mothers is really an application process that results in a parental furlough scheme. They get a lifetime tenancy and get to use there ex partner as a passive income stream if they take the kids off him. It's brutal for children and fathers. They should call it Public Sector Parenting...
@stevenmackay3342 completely, it is a feature of a 'leech economy' where a safety net is not administered properly, resulting in, well, leeches. The gross earnings they would have to make to pay for the handouts is something we should all stop to consider when evaluating the entire point of working.
Wealth is concentrated among those who own things, and disproportionately that is elderly people. For the first (and likely last) time in human history people who don’t work have more resources than people who can work. Think about the reversal this is from the agricultural society we came from. Japan is our likely future. Even stocks and bonds are losing their value and within a few decades labor will be worth more than assets once more. But it will be strange getting there.
I agree 90 percent but if I don't go to work I'll end up on the streets, so sorry I'm not about to do that. Organised labour going on strike is a better option
@@richardcook1987 Not any more and for those that did manage final salary pensions had to put up with lower pay and poor promotion opportunities to pay for them.
How is it so complicated to understand. By the time you have a deposit for a house to put it in you are to old to have one. Cant have kids in house shares and vans . Upper middle class and above still have them. The under class still have them. Upper working class and lower middle class dont. We are too rich for government assistance and too poor for help from mumy and daddy . Some deliberately drop themselves into the under class to have a child .
I’m curious if you see my comment…..I take part in debates like this but my comments appear hidden from the others…..yes agree it’s simple…….made economically impossible for rational people to start families….and I suspect it’s a deliberate thing to reduce number of people.
Houses cost a gazillion pounds while wages are essentially at adult pocket money levels. If you start saving now you could maybe have a child when you’re 130. 😂
Have you guys experienced schooling system? Childcare? Hospital care? Access to medications and basic doctor's appointments? Care for women's health 35+? Seriously, birth rates will fall further. And women are in their right based on reality.
Why on earth do we still have a 2 child benefit cap when women are not having enough babies and the population is aging? We should be paying women to have more and make housing and childcare a lot cheaper.
@@SGIQ7 We need those in stable relationships, who are emotionally and financially stable, with skills and qualifications having children not the long term unemployed having children by multiple partners.
Did you not listen to the lady? She said Hungary offers lots of financial incentives for having multiple children, it doesn't work. We also don't want financially unstable parents on benefits, having more children. Children growing up in that environment are likely to be reliant on the state even as adults.
fewer job opportunities and growth over time, and illegal immigration sucks up all the low level jobs. The Labour party and most of government have negative growth policies and No Families, No Farmers, No Food, and No Future. This all being driven by huge BOE debts and deficits. This modern western economy going the way of the old USSR when a whole under the table economy flourished and eventually rotted out their society.
@@old_toucs6283 It was perfectly fine to live your children alone at home and back in the days. Children use to come from school, to change from uniform and went to play outside with their friends. They returned for supper.
If you always totally discount all work that isn't remunerated then this is where you end up. You've optimised for "monetised" GDP.. and ignored and unvalued unpaid work. Like parents caring for children, caring for elderly parents etc. If you want to sort this out, you need to begin including the value of unpaid caring into GDP, otherwise the laser focus on "growth" will render having children to the dustbin of history. Right now government values child rearing at best as £25/week.. for a 24/7 activity that's less than 15pence per hour. You get what you pay for and our Governments simply don't value children.
Indeed. GDP figures impute rent on owner occupier houses but not on unpaid labour. If I fix my neighbours leaking tap and charge him £50 for labour and if my neighbour fixes my leaking and charges me £50 for labour those financial transactions count towards GDP. If I fix my own tap and my neighbour fixes his tap then there is no labour charge and no increase in GDP but exactly the same amount of labour has been expended and the net result in terms of fixed taps is the same. Exactly the same nonsense goes on with paid child minding being deemed economically beneficial while unpaid child minding is not. In reality even the government tacitly admits that looking after infants is real work by granting NIC credits to those who do it.
Who can afford 2 parents in full time (travelling) jobs? Who will cook, clean, nurture, take kids to medical appointments and activities? Homework, plumber visits? Car/bicycle repairs? Sick days or week? Spouse in hospital or after surgery? Which part of (largely) women do lots of unpaid 24/7 work for family do men not understand?
Done on purpose. Make houses unaffordable for young adults and they cannot start proper adulthood and consider having their own children. Inward migration is one of the main causes of house price growth.
I'm 68, when l was a kid women had few life choices, were not expected to go to university, didnt get equal pay, and were sacked on marriage or pregnancy! No if any contraception available, and were indoctrinated to be wives and mothers. I had catholic aquaintances who actually had the priest coming and pressuring them for more kids, even when doctors said it would be dangerous. Women now have alternative options and are living the way they want, not as they are told they should want!
Pro natalist policies increasing the birth rate by 0.2 or 0.3 children per woman could make all the difference to the financial viability of a society. Dismissing spending 5% of gdp on this as unaffordable seems stunningly short-sighted and complacent.
What a joke that you think the cost of childcare is the root cause. The root cause is that you have to pay people to look after your own children because otherwise you cant afford to live. A single salary for an average person should be able to afford a reasonable life (family).
Ignoring the costs involved for a moment, we are on the cusp of four things - A world war, irreversible climate change, a societal collapse, and a second Great depression. There's also much more regional focused ones as well, like America looking like it's about to make the Handmaid's Tale a reality. I'm not sure I'd want to bring a child onto a world facing all of that.
@@kevoreilly6557 UK productivity is second lowest in G8. Reasons are obvious - we spend hundreds of billions on Victorian technology, like HS2, while we have the 56th slowest roll-out of 5G and 26th worst internet speeds.
Where I live now in semi rural Thailand most kids grow up and live at home until they get married. Then when they marry the majority of them live with his or her parents. The parents then look after any children up to starting school. They also do the household chores including cooking and shopping. The married couple pay all the bills. The house becomes theirs when the parents pass on. Great system. Plus all future generations will be mortgage/rent free. Nobody goes into a care home. The family deal with it between them.
These deaths of despair are linked to our neo liberal/selfish capitalist financial system for the most part. It is the economic system that needs to change with fairer wealth distribution, higher wages, secure permanent jobs for all etc. This is the answer I believe.
Yes definately, I think the essentials of life have been made too expensive, and along with economic insecurity, this has created a situation where it is too risky and/or undesirable for people to have children. Even animals in the zoo won't procreate if they're held captive, as many people are nowadays by the way the economy is setup.
❤ it, another ill in our society is our media’s veneration of billionaires who seem to judge respect on how much money someone has made, now go and watch veritasium and everyone will see life’s success is largely based on luck, irrespective of family wealth or education level.
100%. No need for endless hour long podcasts on demographic collapse. It's simple. MONEY. The majority don't have enough. The minority have too much. I wouldn't bring new life into this BS.
1) Urbanisation (smaller housing, particularly apartments compared with suburban and rural homes) 2) High housing costs (lack of social housing, need for both parents to earn) 3) Massive increase in the number of people going to college / university (cost of education, time taken to gain education, time taken to establish a career, especially the huge increase in the number of women going to college, many jobs now require college / university when they were previously learned on the job). 4) Increased life expectancy (less need to have as many children, live longer after retirement) 5) On line dating and social media (whereas in the past for the vast majority of people you married someone you met locally online dating gives people a near unlimited choice and makes it difficult to choose, paradoxically people also have fewer "real" friends) 1) and 4) are reasons for selecting smaller family size. 2) and 3) result in starting families much latter. 5) results in people not meeting real people South Korea, Japan and I would argue countries such as Italy and Greece remain strongly patriarchal at the level of who runs business and the country and women are voting with their feet and refusing to get married.
Immigration does not work to solve the issue of an ageing population. Canada has had a mindbogoling level of immigration over the past 5 years yet the population has still continued to age to an all time average age age of 41.6 years. Far from solving the issue of ageing, canadas immigration policy has likley exacerbaited it, as it is plausible that this massive boost in immigration has contributed to the further decline of canadas total fertility rate (which is now at an all time low of 1.26!!!) due to its pressure on the housing market and general infrastructure, along with the fact that immigrants who move to canada do not have replacement level birth rates. Besides its direct affect on ageing Canada's immigration policy has had massive social, political and economic ramifications such as the afformentioned steep increase in housing price, lower nation wide average productivity due to libralizing immigration visas to low productivity workers, suppresion of lower skilled wages, and incredibly fast change of the character of many neihgborhoods, towns, and cities against its' inhabitants wills. Western governments NEED to realise that immigration is NOT the solution to ageing populations. If anything, substantial increases in immigration exacerbaites the ageing problem in the long run due to housing and infrastrucutre pressures, creates second order nation wide economic problems, and above anything else is a deeply undemocratic way to address the problem as it is near unniveraly vastly unpopular. the ageging population of western societies will be a critical issue of the next half century, especially hear in the UK; maximizing effort into increasing the birth rate, and adapting our economies to the new reality of older populations is the only way we can have a prosperous future.
Yes agreed HOWEVER, immigration is needed to support the current social welfare model for the ageing population. Longer term would need adjustment for ageing persons to contribute more for their retirement aswell as for healthcare costs.
@@Pirake123 the degree to which immigration helps our current welfare model HEAVILY depends on what kind of immigration we are getting. If we are getting low productivity workers than I would argue that it is a net negative. Low productivity workers in non-essential higher demand sectors are very likely net-negatives for the health of our current social welfare system as they contribute less then they take. (the reason I say most likely is because this conclusion comes from data out of Denmark which analyzed net contribution to public finances. The data showed that workers from low productivity countries (on average) were total net extractors to the state's finances throughout the entirety of their lives. The UK does not have published data on worker produvitiy/place however I believe it is very probable (although not certain) that the same trend would appear.) This only type of low productivity workers that could be positive for the social welfare model are low productivity workers who work in essential sectors with lots of vacancies. However, this is still a net total drain on the state throughout an (average low productivity) workers lifetime because they are still net extractors. This is an immigration strategy the UK has relied on, and I think it has contributed to the worsening of our welfare model as successive governments have continuously had to rely on higher and higher levels of low productivity workers in essential fields resulting in worse national average productivity and thus a worse revenue/spending ratio. If anything, this strategy is a death spiral as the size of the state/social welfare system expands (which it has continually done and is expected to do so) because it will contribute to lower average productivity AND ageing, the true worst of worst doom loop! The Only type of immigration that is positive for our social welfare model is high productivity immigrants, as they will be net positive contributors in their working years. Incidentally, we (sort of had) much more positive immigration outcomes before Brexit as a much higher proportion of immigrants came from higher productivity countries; since we left this cohort of immigrants has been replaced and expanded upon by immigrants from low-prod countries. Therefore, as I expect British immigration patterns to continually come from low-prod countries I argue that our current immigration policy is a net negative on our current social welfare model.
The real concern is that those who should be having children, such as academics, aren't able to do so because they simply can't afford it or can't get ahead in life. Meanwhile, there are individuals at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum who, while not academics, understand the dynamics of economies of scale.
None of you mentioned net migration and the fact that over 500, 000 people left the UK in 2023. They took their skills & experience with them and presumably lessened the burden on public finances from a health and pensions point of view. Why do they leave? What could be done to change their minds about leaving? Wouldn't this reduce the blind reliance on immigration to fill a gap? You also barely acknowledged the adverse cultural impacts on immigration from societies that don't wish to assimilate with our culture. Australia, Canada & NZ seemed to have this figured in previous years by targeting precisely the cultures they knew would assimilate without friction and quickly become net contributors to their economies ......
There's more single mother households than married. I am a single mom of 2 and my big advice to my age mates out there keep your legs closed. Don't get pregnant out of wedlock or you'll suffer because you can't rely on government to help you as they didn't get you pregnant. Save save and save your money! Stop buying things you don't need and invest in yourself and travel. Bringing a baby into this selfish world won't guarantee you peace because everything changes once a baby comes in example your finances will shift, your job will be affected, no childcare, nanny is expensive and lack of support from grandparents , lack of housing, food inflation is real and as the kids grow so does their diet. My son has sickle cell disease you can imagine what his diet is like food wise, school uniform is expensive every year I spend alot on school shoes alone because my kids go to school and kick stones instead of football
I'm a single Mom of 3 and I regret bringing them into this hellscape. I agree with what you say. We need to close our wombs and protect ourselves. No one is coming to save us.❤❤❤
your experience is not going to be every women experience when finding somebody. there are pookies and ray rays to avoid and good guys to be with you obviously chose the wrong man to be with its not us good men fault its clearly yours
oh I'm sorry that I didn't stop and rescue these people from becoming single mothers from being with the wrong man on time. even when I don,t know where they at? and when this is happening! if only i had known things and predicted it before it happened then maybe things would be different sorry next time lol
Please could you do an episode discussion Land Value Tax? Every time I hear an economist talk about it they seem to go all moon eyed, wax lyrical about how amazing that would be and what a shame it will never happen, and then move on to something else. Is it really that great and, if so, why haven’t we got one?
It does have a lot of benefits but it definitely would be politically difficult to sell. Not only is home ownership sold as the way for middle class people to escape poverty (when that's at the cost of other people as land is a fixed supply) it's also culturally seen as something you can't mess with. Then there's the richest people who have large property portfolios and land banks who have a lot of political power. I think a good start would be to replace council tax, stamp duty, and business rates with an LVT - it would need to be somewhere around 1% to raise the equivalent amount - Dan Niedle who has featured in some IFS stuff has some good stuff on LVT on his Tax Policy Associates site.
@ thanks, I’ll check that out! I imagine you would actually probably need it higher than 1% since you’d almost certainly want to have exceptions for things like farming and charities like the National Trust. But I would still enjoy a proper discussion on IFS Zooms In :)
@@phueal yeah there's interesting things you could do with exceptions and differing rates, perhaps a higher rate on unused land etc. And if you did it right, you could actually capture the LVT by the increase of neighbouring land values, for example, central park in New York is a big untaxed protected area but it hugely increases the values of the properties around it. Those are all extra details though, the real pure economics of the LVT is just to incentivise efficient land use overall. If you find yourself going down the Georgism rabbit hole fully then Lars Doucet is another person with some good accessible writings on the issue.
It's a human rights issue. We don't have the right to not get hurt, to not suffer, to not do things we don't want to do, to not go to school and work all our lives. We don't have a right to be born into a world that is safe, a safe family, a safe environment, a healthy, sexy (dont act like you dont care liar!) body, we dont have a right to mental health, to have good ppl in our lives, to possess the physical and psychological characteristics we wish for. We are denied so many basic fucking rights but just being born! Ppl deserve better than the lives we endure. Just to have food, health, a home, a strong friendship circle and relationship is almost a dream for most ppl. Do we not deserve better than to be born into a world that demands adherence to toil, confusion, deprivation? It's about human rights.
We don't have right to choose not being born, right to choose our family, right to choose good genes, rights to live life on our terms, right not to work.
Shrinking countries is a good thing, not bad. It wasn’t long ago they were ringing alarm bells over over-population. Fewer people means less strain on the planet. Stop panicking.
@@grimmlinn you do not get it, right? It isn't only about the pension. The whole infrastructure would be untenable. it is the working people's taxes that funds the function of the country. You mayvend up not having access to Healthcare and social care because the facilities may get closed due to the lack of funding. And you may not have the staff to work there as well.
@@puclopuclik4108 Healthcare is privately funded in America. Only the low income get free healthcare, which again, don’t rely on socialism to save you. Plan to take care of yourself, not living off others. If you can pay for private health insurance, it will never go “unfunded”. The only people who would go unfunded, is those relying on government socialism and failed to take care of themselves.
It’s harder work looking after children than going to work. This has not been recognised . Whilst you pay presenters exorbitant amount of money and others struggle with time and money why would you have children-it’s an impossible situation
Why is Africa having kids then? Seems like the women are okay with raising children on low income. It's lifestyle choices. People want to live a HIGH quality life to Keep Up With The Jones. South Africa is starting to reflect that with people having fewer kids to maintain a high end lifestyle. 8 kids won't do it, they want 2 or 3 and 2 big houses, 5 cars, and a dog
If not for using North Sea oil in the 70's which replaced coal, it is doubtful the UK economy would have made it this far. With everything changing all the time it is difficult to plan and manage companies and families.
@suzygirl1843 Many African women would love to not be married off as children, finish their education to university level and have control of their reproductive choices but they can't due to poverty, war, sexual violence and religious coercion. Please do the research on gender equality and human rights for women and girls in African countries.
@@evif9377 Don't act like you care about their choices. You won't even elect a woman president in USA. Seems like we doing African women a favour not selling them Feminism and lies about being equal to men
When people get told you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford it, don't be surprised if they don't have kids. Plus guys are moving from the dating market as a result of delusional high standards.
I've just come back from 7 1/2 months in Nigeria. This was my 9th trip there for work and I've spent more than 2 years there in the past 5 years. I don't think people in the UK (or other developed countries) really understand just how bad things are in places like Nigeria. No one alive in the UK was around when people were being kicked off farms and went and lived in slums hoping to get a job in the nascent factories. There was somewhere between 2 and 3 generations from the late 18th to the middle of the 19th centuries where many people went hungry and we were "lucky" that so many children died or there would have been even more adults without jobs. Added to that the UK and much of Europe was involved in wars every decade or so. China alone has more manufacturing capacity than the world needs so countries such as Nigeria cannot hope to compete. This means that people leaving farms (often with very low levels of education) have little chance of finding meaningful work. And Nigeria cannot feed itself with a very inefficient agricultural sector (essentially you would need to modernise the agricultural sector by mechanisation and vast reductions in inefficient labour). Every wealthy country has largely mechanised agriculture which allows people to do more productive things - except there aren't more productive things to do. If women have 6 children then that is 4 more mouths to feed and educate with the same money as having 2 children. On a positive note in the country with the worst child mortality in the world (which is in sub-Saharan Africa) the rate is about the same as the England in the early 1920's. This means that far more children become adults. The median age in Nigeria is 18, in Niger it is 14. There are no jobs. Essentially, much of sub-Saharan Africa is on a fast track to collapse. And that collapse will result in 10s of millions of refugees heading to Europe.The future is bleak.
we seriously need to force those people to use birth control then. I'm sorry, but stop having children if you don't have food to feed them! No one on another continent is going to shoulder YOUR responsibility.
The rising cost of living is making it too expensive for individuals or couples to live, the extortionate costs of rent, gas, electricity, transportation, council taxes, people can't afford to bring another life into the world, the previous government and the present government were hoping to kill off the British people by allowing so many migrants into the country, now where it's so expensive to live here, the working class migrants are going to Germany where the cost of renting is around a third or less than here in the UK, so I'm told, overall the cost of living is cheaper in general, Poland is an up and coming country, many people are going there, just speaking for the UK, there's no incentive to come here unless you have turned up illegally because our government will welcome you respect you The government here in the UK don't want working class people having children, it's a privilege for the wealthy, as far as the elderly, the government have taken away their heating allowance, so they're hoping for a freezing winter to kill off the older generations, if not, I'm sure another pandemic can be thought up, a miracle cure quickly discovered and the medication will end older lives, here in the UK, birth is for the wealthy not the working class people The government whether Tories or Labour have always said that a pension is a privilege, with the increasing debt here in the UK, I can see, probably not in my lifetime because I'm approaching pension age, but even those of us who have contributed to a personal pension, we will be told to work longer and eventually the pension/retirement, unless you're a politician or someone extremely well paid, the working class won't be able to afford to retire and, I think that it probably will be Labour who will say that the pension money that we have saved will be sucked up elsewhere and the law will change as such that people won't have a personal pension either, the video discussed the health service, the Tories stopped investing in the NHS, I wouldn't be surprised if Labour scrapped the NHS and we go Americanised and we have to pay for our treatment at the time, if you can't afford treatment (which many working class people won't be able to), you have to suffer, if you save, the government will tax savings so high it won't be worth it
The planets over populated. Politicians want growth in total GDP to excuse borrowing past and future. But its real GDP per person that matters to the population. Less crowded roads, less crowded countryside, reduced demand for services, less need for power and water, less pollution, less need for imports, the benefits of a reduced population are endless. Humans are not exactly on tbe endangered species list.
Less people means less demand which ultimately means negative growth, which means permanent recession. Look at Japan, countryside empty, people moving to cities for work, house prices in cities go up, birth rate declines more. When japan was growing and reached 100 million people there work 8 workers for each retired person, when their population drops back to 100 million there will be 1 worker for each retired person. Is this our future.
That's not how it works. People are flocking the big cities because of better education and job opportunities, so rent and house prices is rising even in countries like Japan, Italy and South Korea that are in a massive demographic winter, meanwhile the countryside is disappearing and old people are dying alone. Also, the economy isn't a cake of set dimension that is divided between the population, but it can grow bigger or smaller. Having an old population means a shrinking economy because elders consume less, and elders also don't produce because they can't work and need welfare, paid by young working age people. Good luck trying to keep your country going and not having a massive decline in quality of life meanwhile your population become older.
Is it possible that the economic argument is not the right reason behind the decline, what role does cultural norm play in this? Scandinavian countries, e.g. Denmark, have great support for new parents and their birth rate is still shrinking. How does economic argument explain higher birth rate among low income earners both in the developed and developing countries?
The problem is: to be employable and make a living, you need to learn and be trained. Women prime fertility years: 16-30. Most women these days are educated, and teen pregnancies are down. Educated women postpone family until they feel secure. In this economy, if you are lucky, you have to elbow your way until your mid-30s to feel somewhat secure, and even then, if you stop working for 2 years to have kids.. its a big problem. Households can't survive on 1 income, and resuming a career is difficult. Capitalism just does not mesh well with human nature.
😂😂 I have 2 daughters and 1 son. 26, 24, 18. All of them say they are not having children. Reasons. 1: Net Zero. The cost. The socialism. 2: a proxy ban on affordable means to drive one's own personal vehicle - Restricting work options and therefore salary level. 3: taxation. High income tax. Taxes added to all utility bills, VAT - too much tax making life too hard to enjoy with a dependant for upstanding people that do not want to wallow on state benefits.
The Hungry Income polices are weird. Let’s be real - if a Women has 4 children - it is unlikely that she is career minded and will pay any meaningful amount of income tax. That’s a minimum of 6 years in her prime career building years at home with children. Even past the initial phase pregnancy and maternity leave, juggling 4 children and career is unlikely. It sounds more like a cynical policy to try coax mothers back into the workforce. If hungry was serious about improving fertility they would extend the income tax break the farther.
My daughter has four kids and works full time. The short time she spent out of workplace she concentrated on further study so she could earn more when she returned to work. When I was a child, a man with a stay at home wife could claim her as a tax deduction. I wonder why they changed it.
Everybody is talking about money and housing. How about just women not willing to go through it physically? There is no amount of "love" I'd go through that shit. No epidural right from the beginning, no one's going to pay for your pension.
Yep. I don't get it either. I'm not maternal and never wanted kids. It's as simple as that. And I add more reasons to my "why I don't want to have kids" on a daily basis. There are so many uncertainties such as child health and own economic situation etc. - why would I want to go through that?
The economic argument is meaningless because birth rates are falling / have fallen below reproduction rate even in poor countries. The only area in the world where this hasn't yet happened is sub-Saharan Africa. Nepal, South America, North Africa, ... are all falling, so it must have to do with the global Zeitgeist. I would also argue that social media is a big reason because it enables people from poorer countries to see what people elsewhere in the world do and how they live, and that surely has an influence on decision-making, maybe even more than one's own cultural environment and practices.
Roughly 15% of women choose not to have children and don't regret not having them. Roughly 5% of women choose not to have children and do regret not having them. An increasing number of women want children but don't get around to it. This group is growing fast. This group is driving the issue. The remaining women want children, have them, and don't regret it.
Housing costs, rotten schools, poor work prospects. novel medical practices, decline in religious practice. Taxed to death. Optimum population for UK is about 30 million.
In the long run falling fertility rates are a good thing … the world’s major problem is too many people. The transition will be hugely painful (economically, socially etc.) but perhaps we should all embrace it as a good thing for humanity in th long run. Whatever the causes (better education, cost of housing, cost of raising children etc. etc.) we should work out how to make things work with fewer people and a falling population than trying to incentivise a higher fertility rate. I’m no ecomentalist, just someone old enough to see how we are ruining the world around us and can’t think of any solution that doesn’t require far fewer people.
Is it really any surprise given how difficult having a family has been made in most developed countries. Edit ps no im not happy to keep working a second longer than I have to.
Having children for many in the UK (and other parts of the world I'm sure) is unaffordable given housing costs, whether renting or buying, and the cost of living in general. Given the desperate state of the UK in 2024, I'm sure there are many who don't feel inclined to have children even if they can afford to.
This topic is actually very simple and we don’t need experts to analyze and discuss it ad infinitum. Humans beings want to own a home and travel and children don’t allow that so they don’t have them. It’s really that simple.
My Dad told me a long time ago, if everybody waited till it was economically feasible to have children, nobody would have them. I can remember being young and thinking about raising a family, for every positive point I could make, I could also make two negative ones. So sometimes it's just about doing it. Sure you'll struggle but I suppose you'll learn to adapt. Honestly we're more resilient than people know.
It's not so much about waiting for economic feasibility as the real impact of women finally have control of their own contraception. We now get to really choose and resist pressure. And women don't want to be milch cows.
@@harrydamien6346 and yet buying a house used to be 3 years your yearly salary and now it's 8 or more and if you cant live with ur parents ur extorted in rent
@@user-im8bv8po2wBecause people are flocking the big cities in search of better education and job opportunities. It's a world "problem". But if you like an house in the countryside, it's very cheap. In Italy we "sell" houses in beautiful middle age villages for 1€.
I am from Russia originally where in general you can have 10-12 hours of free childcare(in some big cities maybe you pay while waiting for a free place) Currently I am living in Berlin while having a second kid and we have 7 hours for free since daughter was 1 year old. In between we were living in London (moved when our daughter was about 2 years old). 3 hours of childcare since she turned 3 and it was like in strict boundaries like from 12 to 15, bo minute yearlier of later. All the time I was there I was thinking about HOW people handle kinds here? Like HOW they decide to have kids at all😂 So happy not to stuck there with my second kid! I think we could not come through it in that country PS maybe we were on work visas and did not have access to something
Sorry but I don’t think a lot of us will want to look after our elderly parents after years of their pure selfishness. They are indulging themselves in their good years when they’re relatively healthy, wanting little to do with us and their grandchildren. They are too busy travelling, golfing, taking constant yoga and whatever else classes, going out for meals with friends etc. They told us bluntly, if we want to book a holiday, we need to sort out a childcare first. So we’ve only went away once on a three day holiday 12 years ago and also haven’t been on a date night out since. They couldn’t help out with looking after the older children while I was going to hospital to have another baby. With our last baby is was booked for a c-section, we asked them if they could look after the little ones at home for about 3 hours so my husband could go in with me but they said sorry but no. They couldn’t because they were recovering from a holiday jet lag. I ended up going in alone and it was a scary experience. Unfortunately a lot of people in my generation will relate. I do not feel any sense of duty to look after any of them in their old age. Sorry.
I wonder what are the extreme ideas to fix this issue? Are old people getting too much support? My aunt gets atleast £3000 a month from the state because her husband is in a care home (both pensioners). One 89 year old woman shouldn't be getting and above average income, at what point do we start calling these things out?
@@darranwilliams2031 I can't because it's not my place to ask about her finances but that is the amount she receives, it will include housing benefit and disability.
Why is it made out that when it comes to sex the lack of fertility only has a male cause? Why not quote studies regarding childless women as well since fertility rates are based upon number of births per women? Also, what about the cultural question: is Modern society & modern feminism (3rd & 4th wave feminism) ultimately anti-child?
The economic argument is meaningless because birth rates are falling / have fallen below reproduction rate even in poor countries. The only area in the world where this hasn't yet happened is sub-Saharan Africa. Nepal, South America, North Africa, ... are all falling, so it must have to do with the global Zeitgeist. I would also argue that social media is a big reason because it enables people from poorer countries to see what people elsewhere in the world do and how they live, and that surely has an influence on decision-making, maybe even more than one's own cultural environment and practices.
250k excess deaths compared to other European nations due to austerity. We just lived through 15 years of zero real interest rates without fixing the roof. Well done IFS egg heads, you've done a great job, the young are really looking forward to what's coming next.
Whereas the young in the 1970s put up with 18% interest rates and sky-high income tax, with power-cuts and three-day weeks, an economy impoverished by war debt and rising oul prices. There was an awful lot less existential moaning though. Times have been hard since 1929.
@@davidmorgan6896 Honestly economically things were way better in the 70s than now. It wasn't paradise, but there was a level of economic stability for working people thanks to strong unions and functioning social democracy, with major room for improvement which is fine. No time period is ever perfect but we have to be honest and confront how much living standards have collapsed in England since Thatcherism
Have to factor in the potential of having your child in your home for 30+ years now. Plus how the low wages compare to home cost bringing in a child that’s set to struggle doesn’t make sense. Ten years ago we decided to have our child. But with how things have changed in today’s world I wouldn’t
One factor is too often overlooked to explain the fall in birthrates: the role of airlines and train companies (SNCF in my country). Allowing them to travel among the other passengers, rather than containing them in specific spaces designed for families, has done tremendous damage to the reputation of children.
This is why I find the conservative hostile approach to immigration amusing. They'll demand that the numbers come down as we are apparently full, but when it comes to struggling existing families who are unable to feed/support their children. Those same conservatives view those families as irresponsible. "Don't have kids if you can't afford them", "too many avocado lattes". How do they expect the population of this country to maintain/grow if we don't do either of the above? They'll then say the apathetic thing of 'There's too many people on this planet'. That's great Cliff, but when you want to receive your care as your health slowly declines, or if you need to go into a care home. You'll be looking for a generation of taxpayers to fund you that do not exist. They do not care about this country, or their community. They only care that their own wealth is preserved.
Correct. No one willing to stand by the reality that wealthy boomers need to pay back into the system that thrive off, instead dancing around the issue. The system needs radical action to give actual wealth distribution. Wages have just not kept up with real inflation, and kids are now unaffordable. The reality is the super wealthy don't mind at all, less mouths to feed, less people to corral and more desperation means easier to manipulate.
Good discussion, thank you. The question at the end 'How do people feel about this?' wasn't really answered very well, maybe because time was short. It focused on men's health and fitness to parent, which has become the polite way of deflecting criticism from women's choices but is clearly not the whole picture. Women consistently say they want more children than they end up having and women's self reported happiness has declined along with the fertility rate.
And does anyone really think that the working people,of the UK will actually meet the state obligations inherent in public sector pensions? No. The productive people and wealthy people will gravitate to those wise nations that do not have such a burden
The wealthy might abandon the country they grew up in, speak the language of and their children are at school in, but the term "productive people" covers an awful lot of income brackets. Also what do you expect the other people will do, who will need public sector pensions later on, but who are presently doing all the grotty little jobs that the wealthy depend on them to do?
They touched on most of the biggest issues but one big one that they missed was how women who try to find a suitable man to make a family with later in life have often become jaded from hookup culture and the men that they want simply dont want them in return. Men who want families arent looking for emotionally damaged women whos biological clock has almost run out. Fair play though, they managed to mention most of the other reasons. 1. Women in the workforce, not wanting babies until they are older. 2. Cost of living and house/rental prices. 3. Wages not keeping up with inflation. I would also add contraception and abortion. There are probably a lot less unwanted babies now than there were 50 years ago. Also religion and social stigmas. All my aunties and uncles and their friends were all married by the time the were in their mid twenties. Compared to my social circle where hardly any are married and only 1 couple i know got married in their 20s. Divorce rates being sky high is probably another thing that deters men. Not wanting to have children with someone who is highly likely going to leave them in the future. Social media is another reason, highlighting and encouraging the worst side of human nature, promoting hypergamy and mgtow, although this is more prevalent in the US i believe.
Likewise, women who want families aren't looking for old men who are jaded by hook-up culture and failed relationships. My dad was a very capable man in all areas of life. He didn't look sideways at other women. Likewise, my mum. A man can't expect to f around all his 20s then expect to give off hubby vibes in his 30s to the women he desires. Men who have had a 'past' do not give off the good, stable and loving vibes that attract women.
Thank you for looking at the health profile of those who don’t have children! I watch a lot of demographic related videos, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard this angle covered. I would be curious to know if there is a similar profile among the women who choose not to have children. Many of the people that I would assume who describe themselves as “childless by choice” likely have some illnesses they are interested in not passing on to another generation. Would just be curious to see what you guys find! Thank you so much for covering it.
Choice vs Constraints - I imagine it's super difficult to find evidence that not/having children 'makes you happier'- a lot of confirmation bias in any data- hell I can't even get a straight answer out of my mates!
Not true. The main killers include heart disease and cancer. All those older relatives aren't taking those prescriptions for fun. In so many ways people are kept living longer. Hip operations are a modern thing because people are living long enough to need them.
@@stephengreen8986 When was the last time you looked on the government websites about this subject. Go and look. The reduction in life expectancy has been discussed in the House of Lords and in Parliament. Google reduction in life expectancy in the UK. You will get lots of results. You could have done that before you replied.
Hey paul, hey IFS, its not a mystery if you think about the economic benefit of having children. In the good old days, no state or even private pensions, no welfare, you would be mad to not have children. These days where children are a dead loss, why would you want them? Explain to an alien what the economic benefit is of having a child in the 21st century - to the parents themselves who bear the costs. The costs of housing etc issues all assume that everyone "just wants children" but they don't.
So your answer is to keep people in abject poverty just so they breed out of desperation? Parents have always had to support and pay for children. Those who had no means to support children were culturally discouraged from breeding.
Dont put it all on cost, you dont truely know the cost of kids until you have them. No one looks at how much nursery care is until you give birth 😅 There is also the life styles of current generations who see kids havint a major impact on their quality of life. There is also the idea that we aren't settling down to form nuclear families/relationshops now. Just dating and repeating.
It is a whole load of issues. Cost is a factor , but also women having the ability through contraception not to have children. Children are a major commitment if you are to do it well .
Move all new public sector workers to standard Workplace Pensions. Then the high cost workers will phase out as the population grows less. Financially will sort itself out.
No our population is not living longer due to austerity/low paid work leading to ill health. Pension age should not be raised in my opinion. Men and women could both retire at age 65 with different choices. A move to taxing wealth rather than work e.g. more tax on those with wealth/assets over £10 million would solve the problems. As mentioned our state pension is much less generous than most of Europe - criminal in my opinion.
When the liberals introduced the state pension in 1908 you had to be 70 yo to claim but people lived much shorter lives coupled with families having more children back then. Things won’t change here. Be happy with what you’ve got or leave. Simple as that.
They want everyone to work longer although we are having technical revolutions like machines, AI and other robots. It just doesn't make any sense at all. It's ridiculous.
Nothing stopping most people planning ahead to depart early without involving the cold demonic hand of state bureaucracy as a legal actor in ending the lives of it's increasingly expensive elderly citizens - many societies had honour systems that weighed on the old to not overly burden their children & grandchildren; nonesuch appears to exist at all in our own society.
And we all know they will want those who can't afford the increasingly expense healthcare to choose premature death. The poor will economically be forced to choose the 'needle'. That is not a civilised society. I would not vote to give the state the power to legally kill me. No way. I see the terrible danger with this. People who want to die can commit suicide. Abortions started out only for exceptional cases and this has evolved into getting rid of the baby just because it's inconvenient for the parents. It shows absolutely no respect for human life. If a person wants to live, it's a poor show, when they can't in the richest nations on earth.
No we don't. I'm not voting to give any state the right to put me down just because it suits their economic purposes. If you develop a chronic medical condition, would you like your doctor looking at you and wondered how he can end your life prematurely when they should be helping you live a dignified life even if you have needs. All done under the guise of compassion. Nobody should be shamed for being alive. There's loads of money, it's mainly just hoarded by the Western and International oligarchs.
You have to make marriage safer for men. Men rightly fear divorce and so less pair bonding and reproduction is occurring. Plus putting money in man's hands make men more likely to pursue women. Putting money in women's hands makes them less likely to pursue men.
True, marriage really only makes sense if you are marrying your childhood or school/college girlfriend and they are ultra traditional about relationships. After that the logic disappears. But it is heresy to point that out.
again, I have to correct this panel. Lack of marriage among men due conclude in a higher risks of deaths of despair among men. Dr. Brad Wilcox has demonstrated the cauzation vetween these two.
Thank you for watching, you can see more of our work at: ifs.org.uk/
Timecodes:
00:00 - Shrinking countries
0:25 - Introduction
2:28 - What’s happening with birthrates?
7:50 - Inward migration
9:18 - Policy responses
12:58 - Public finance implications
15:58 - Is immigration sustainable?
20:40 - Why are birthrates falling?
25:28 - Costs of an ageing population
32:12 - Working age immigration
37:40 - Bringing people into labour force
39:37 - Retirement age
42:50 - Choice vs constraints
46:38 - Conclusion
We have to focus on Antiaging therapies, consider Aging as a disease for the first time. There are already many gene targets for it, but will likely need a second geenration crispr system in a gene circuit setting to target all known factors of aging. we already know the consequitive factors in aging cells to express the needed components, and have targets in view. We need the theraputic, DNA based of course, to be non integrative, and able to spread body wide from a single administration. These are of course like virsus but almost purely synthetic. The same goes fro cancers and other issues, its possible. The other thing is to invest in technology that can export the process of child bearing from fertilization to term away from the mother and make said technology cheep anough to buy at a department store. This would render her able to work while having large families, and yes home daycare will boom too. Currently said technology is in development and in mice quite fasinating, but current people are considering it only for saving pre-term's and not for a full replacment of the reproductive system. Also a third thing is to invest in invitro gametogensis so we can make the needed material from any cell possible. If we have all three then barring any energy and material shortage then we should be okay.
So little time spent on birth rates falling? The biggest is housing costs, the second biggest is cultural changes. Both issues not just ignored by governments as too hard, maybe ignored by economists too as too hard.
The UK also needs to remove inheritance loop holes (like trusts) that prevent redistribution of wealth. By far the biggest route to wealth these days is the lottery that is having the right parents.
Maybe add more women to the government, boards, management and other meaningless places - they will import more people from abroad. In millions. Merkel syndrome.
Bring back Decree 770 baby
@carkawalakhatulistiwa Decree 770 was an abysmal FAILURE, and the dictator that implemented it was EXECUTED! The orphanages were filled with abandoned, damaged babies. Pathetic suggestion! 😂😂😂
Boomer advice - "Don't spend money on things you can't afford"
Younger generations "Ok understood"
Economist "Why aren't people having children??"
Boomers spent money on things they couldn't afford during the Thatcher years.
Ha ha .... laughter hiding real pain
Ah… good old ageism … the new racism
@@kevoreilly6557more about lack of money than age
@@Alexander-yb1zc child is not a thing
The simple answer is that we don't live in countries, we live in economic zones.
the truth in this statement 😪😪
Brilliant comment. Such a powerful statement! Would be a great book title! Well done!
Any economy based in financing is doomed to fail.
We need a resource based economy. Printing money out of thin air always leads to inflation and the decline of lifestyle.
Also the education system is not up to the challenges we face. The education system is often disconnected from the needs of top enterprises, especially in the fast evolving high tech.
Universities have a vested interest to sell you degrees that have little value to businesses.
Most of the goods produced are designed to keep you spending. We have lost touch with our fundamental needs. We have a population that believes that they need to have the latest gadgets and we have government regulations that do design to force you to consume in a certain way. From the need to ban IC cars and move to electric cars while the battery life and charging station that are limited.
Even though we have nuclear weapons for defense we still build more killing machines and more bioweapons.
We live in a society where we are not taught the mechanics of money and currency. Few of us know about the impact of our consumption on the environment. Few people know the level of pollution that goes on when extracting minerals and manufacturing goods. Some people believe that electric cars are environmentally friendly, ignoring the pollution generated to produce the electricity and the material required to build those cars. From wars to child labor in some poor country, a lot of misery is generated in order to produce the latest goods that advertisers pay to make us consume. The past civilizations were more advanced than we are. They left a world with less pollution for us to enjoy .
Our current civilization is doomed to collapse just like the ones before us , but it is up to us to make it last and to leave a good impression on the one to come. Our ego we get us destroyed through nuclear wars because of commerce, money and power.
If only we were Intelligent enough to build a better world with the average person well informed and knowledgeable enough to not need wars.
Tax franchise areas.
We're all forced to participate in the cult of money.
Why would you want to bring children into this world? Britain has changed beyond recognition.
The wolves are crying because the sheep are not breeding
Nope. The demographic collapse of our country affects all of us. Stop making excuses for being a virgin.
They don´t want them to breed because robots are coming.
The sad thing is AI and automation may mean the wolves will need fewer sheep
Exactly
No-one has been sucking off most men, nothing getting most up in the morning 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I hope that comment triggers some people.
Parents in 80s /90s, 3 kids, 1 public sector good wage, 1 public sector basic wage. 2 cars, 2-3 holidays a year. Retired in their 50s. No fecking way is that possible today with the same jobs paying their 2024 wage.
What fantasy have you been reading? You are describing my cohort. Most of them had well-paying private sector jobs. We're now in our sixties and the only person I know who has retired is single and childless. The 80s was a depression. The 90s was a depression. 2008 so an economic collapse.
@@davidmorgan6896what percentage of your wage was going into housing till say the 2005?
Housing prices on their own have destroyed many people. It is not an opinion but an established fact. And many people born in the 60 have made more money with their housing than with their wages.
Not good to resort to personal cases as they do not do statistics, but since you have done it, my brother is approaching 60, bought early 2000, his home made three times. By price to income ratio, he would have had a completely different life buying 15 years later
@@joim3480 They haven't made any money at all. Maybe their homes are worth more, but so is every house they might want to buy. They just have assets tied up with no way to realise them. They can't downsize, because often their children refuse to move out or move back in. They can't move because they are still working. Even when they retire, their whole social network is tied to a place and so they cannot move somewhere cheaper.
@@davidmorgan6896 First, older generations often gained substantial wealth by investing in property and renting it out. Many landlords charged rents that consumed up to 50% of tenants’ net income. This allowed them to grow their assets significantly while making housing less affordable for others.
Second, when older homeowners downsize, they benefit from "multiplicative factor." This refers to selling high-value properties purchased decades ago at a lower cost. Long-term homeowners reaped massive profits by selling and moving into smaller, more affordable homes. A friend’s remark "My home earns more than I do" captures this reality perfectly.
As far as I am concerned I was caught in between, before the rise I could not buy yet, later it became too expensive. For about 5 years difference I would have been able to buy, given what I was looking at and what it rents for now, I could stop working, says it all.
Lastly, their monthly mortgage payments are comparatively low. Many older buyers secured homes when interest rates and home prices were much lower. Historically, mortgage payments were around 15-20% of income, compared to today’s average of 30% or more in many areas, and often higher for first-time buyers. Coupled with shorter loan durations in the past, these reduced costs mean older generations spend far less on housing as a proportion of their income. Meanwhile, today’s buyers are burdened with longer terms and higher housing costs relative to incomes.
If you still don’t see the difference, consider this: younger generations are locked into higher financial obligations for basic housing, making wealth accumulation through property ownership significantly harder than it was for older generations. These are not opinions but easily available statistics.
@@davidmorgan6896should've bought a home, it's not like you needed a (good) job to get one or sth
Its simple really when you require both the man and woman to work dont be surprised that thes not time / room for children
Yes we are slaves, 8hr/day + commute. Once people reach home, they are exhausted. Many singles, non stop at work with 0 opportunity to meet partner.
Exactly this! I'm so glad that women are protected by law to have the same employment opportunities as men. But this ought to have been accompanied by shorter working weeks.
Obviously it's more complicated than this (because of economic growth) but in really basic terms if you double the number of workers you halve the value of their labour (again, not quite true because demand increases - but not at the same rate that the supply of labour has). Rory Sutherland has summarised this well that generally speaking, the average family over two generations has traded in 35 hours of leisure time, not for increased quality of life but for higher housing costs, with land owners hoovering up most of the economic gains from two income families becoming the norm.
If working weeks had shortened to carefully balance the supply and demand for labour we could all be working 3 day weeks by now and the only people worse off would be the landlords! Stagger those 3 days over Monday-Friday and there's only one day of childcare needed for most families.
+mobility +grandparents still work too
The unbelievable rise in housing costs has a lot to do with low child birth or many other challanges in society and yet no one wants to adress it.
It's really not that difficult! What was the situation when today's old people were young? 1. One income could support a whole family. 2. Housing was readily available for young adults in their 20s. 3. Pensioners were poorer and less numerous than today. 4. When people got old, they died and were allowed to die. 5. Young adults and children were the priority of government. Sorry if it's confusing. In sufficiently large numbers, the old crowd out the young.
Nonsense. If that was true we would never reach medieval times. If that was true Nigeria and most of Africa had not a single child
@@bartz4439 birth control, women's rights were not a thing in medieval times and are largely ignored in Africa - so think before you speak
@@BAmalakas but they were breeding. And now we modern world don't, we are dying letting our culture to disappear.
Modern women has got nothing to offer now. Not a single man is impressed by women salary or position.
And yeah birth control. Fuck like rabbits with no responsibilities or killing unwanted child... What a valuable women we have nowadays xD
@@bartz4439 women didn't work in Medevil times. A large proportion of women in Africa don't work. A lot of this comes down to the cost, availability and possibility of childcare. Don't forget lots of people work shifts, weekends, bank holidays - for a couple doing this it can be impossible to have childcare as nursery's are only open mon-fri and not bank holidays from 7.30am til around 6pm. Even those times don't work for some parents. If you are able to put children into childcare it'll cost you £600-900 a month for 5 days a week with low limits on free hours and tax relief. Having a second child is financially unviable for a lot of parents. It was for us. We decided to wait 5 years between our children, purely for money reasons - we'd have loved them closer together. We'd have loved more. Couldn't afford it - and both of us in work.
He is bang on, reason people had more children in past times and developing countries is they were largely subsistence farming. Children in subsistence farming families are an economic win because it’s more labour. Now it’s an economic loss. We need to deal with this drastically, revoke the state pension use the money to build housing and infrastructure. If you are against this you want UK enter terminal decline so you can claim free money from the state. Greed doesn’t cover it.
Housing housing housing...simple...no one has money..all of it is going to landlords and tax
Irent wise it actually goes to hmrc first as (double) tax on rent, then expenses, then mortgage interest that had 2-3x, then what little is left goes on maintenance.
As a landlord the rent is added to my income and it pushes me up to the stealth 62% rate and I see none of the benefit.
Landlords with a mortgage are the worker bees for the government and banks now.
Labour's tinkering will only increase rents.
You forgot the banks and corporations making mega profit by working their workers extremely long hours and refusing to pay a salary that affords them the basics of life.
Wealth redistribution is needed. Turns out decades of juicing all resources into the 1%’s pockets doesn’t lead to a healthy happy society ?! Who could have thunk it
Wealth redistribution doesn't work. This has been proven so many times throughout history that saying otherwise is willful ignorance. What we need is less government so that there are less barriers to economic growth.
That's a socialist argument. The UK has been a socialist state since the 1990's. How's about...no tax! All the money you earn- yours!!!! Business would explode, people would spend like crazy bringing interest rates down, houses built, utter capitalism runaway!
No issue paying 35k a year for a bag packer or a burger maker then. And the country has nothing but a lucrative ladder to climb of money money money.
Oh...yeah. sorry. We don't like money wealth and success. We like...government to have all the money.
😂😂
Tired of listening to these people beat around the bush. The core issue at the heart of all of this is wealth distribution. Native Brits are not having children because in their prime reproductive years they cannot afford food and shelter. This is because over the past 50 years the wealth of the nation has been confiscated and concentrated into the hands of the few. Instead of addressing this problem and redistributing it, successive governments have simply chosen to stave off the issue for 1 generation by importing immigrants. They do this because they are controlled by the rich who see people as economic units and countries as economic areas rather than places whose people have a history and heritage. These immigrants will then have the exact same social mobility issues because they themselves will be subject tonthe harsh economic environment they were brought in to prop up. The single best thing people can do is to hasten the necessary wealth redistribution by not working and allowing the whole sham to collapse in on itself. They rely on you working to manage the spending potential of the government via its bond issuance scam. Taxation is for show - they use it to convince bond holders not to sell. If you remove taxation, the bonds will sell off and the economy will collapse because they cannot shake the magic money tree. To solve the problem, simply do not go to work.
I think it would take lots of people to not go to work. But I agree with your assessment of the problem.
They will always be able to sell housing to single mothers though: homelessness for single mothers is really an application process that results in a parental furlough scheme. They get a lifetime tenancy and get to use there ex partner as a passive income stream if they take the kids off him. It's brutal for children and fathers. They should call it Public Sector Parenting...
@stevenmackay3342 completely, it is a feature of a 'leech economy' where a safety net is not administered properly, resulting in, well, leeches. The gross earnings they would have to make to pay for the handouts is something we should all stop to consider when evaluating the entire point of working.
Wealth is concentrated among those who own things, and disproportionately that is elderly people. For the first (and likely last) time in human history people who don’t work have more resources than people who can work. Think about the reversal this is from the agricultural society we came from.
Japan is our likely future. Even stocks and bonds are losing their value and within a few decades labor will be worth more than assets once more. But it will be strange getting there.
TLDR
I agree 90 percent but if I don't go to work I'll end up on the streets, so sorry I'm not about to do that. Organised labour going on strike is a better option
Cant afford it.
Houses are too expensives.
Childcare too expensive.
Pensions too generous.
Saved you 48 minutes.
We have the lowest level of pensions in Western Europe.
@davidmorgan6896 public sector pensions i was referring to
@@richardcook1987 Not any more and for those that did manage final salary pensions had to put up with lower pay and poor promotion opportunities to pay for them.
I have the money, I can’t find a woman.
They can retire at 55 in China?
How is it so complicated to understand. By the time you have a deposit for a house to put it in you are to old to have one.
Cant have kids in house shares and vans . Upper middle class and above still have them. The under class still have them.
Upper working class and lower middle class dont. We are too rich for government assistance and too poor for help from mumy and daddy . Some deliberately drop themselves into the under class to have a child .
I’m curious if you see my comment…..I take part in debates like this but my comments appear hidden from the others…..yes agree it’s simple…….made economically impossible for rational people to start families….and I suspect it’s a deliberate thing to reduce number of people.
Houses cost a gazillion pounds while wages are essentially at adult pocket money levels. If you start saving now you could maybe have a child when you’re 130. 😂
Have you guys experienced schooling system? Childcare? Hospital care? Access to medications and basic doctor's appointments? Care for women's health 35+? Seriously, birth rates will fall further. And women are in their right based on reality.
Men too! Paying for all that while having an actual life is daunting
@@jacobjorgenson9285we're all bored with red pill. It's old.
Why on earth do we still have a 2 child benefit cap when women are not having enough babies and the population is aging? We should be paying women to have more and make housing and childcare a lot cheaper.
yes, and versus open borders.
Very good topic.
It's not a cap on child benefit - it's a cap on the child portion of Universal Credit.
We should have no cap on having more children when the population is ageing fast.
@@SGIQ7 We need those in stable relationships, who are emotionally and financially stable, with skills and qualifications having children not the long term unemployed having children by multiple partners.
Did you not listen to the lady? She said Hungary offers lots of financial incentives for having multiple children, it doesn't work. We also don't want financially unstable parents on benefits, having more children. Children growing up in that environment are likely to be reliant on the state even as adults.
There is a tremendous worry about what career opportunities any children will have : decent, secure jobs seem so hard to come by.
fewer job opportunities and growth over time, and illegal immigration sucks up all the low level jobs. The Labour party and most of government have negative growth policies and No Families, No Farmers, No Food, and No Future. This all being driven by huge BOE debts and deficits. This modern western economy going the way of the old USSR when a whole under the table economy flourished and eventually rotted out their society.
Child care is like paying a mortgage. Too expensive
Funnily enough the birth rate was way higher when there there was zero financial help with childcare.
@@old_toucs6283 It was perfectly fine to live your children alone at home and back in the days. Children use to come from school, to change from uniform and went to play outside with their friends. They returned for supper.
If you always totally discount all work that isn't remunerated then this is where you end up. You've optimised for "monetised" GDP.. and ignored and unvalued unpaid work. Like parents caring for children, caring for elderly parents etc. If you want to sort this out, you need to begin including the value of unpaid caring into GDP, otherwise the laser focus on "growth" will render having children to the dustbin of history. Right now government values child rearing at best as £25/week.. for a 24/7 activity that's less than 15pence per hour. You get what you pay for and our Governments simply don't value children.
Indeed. GDP figures impute rent on owner occupier houses but not on unpaid labour. If I fix my neighbours leaking tap and charge him £50 for labour and if my neighbour fixes my leaking and charges me £50 for labour those financial transactions count towards GDP. If I fix my own tap and my neighbour fixes his tap then there is no labour charge and no increase in GDP but exactly the same amount of labour has been expended and the net result in terms of fixed taps is the same. Exactly the same nonsense goes on with paid child minding being deemed economically beneficial while unpaid child minding is not. In reality even the government tacitly admits that looking after infants is real work by granting NIC credits to those who do it.
Who can afford 2 parents in full time (travelling) jobs? Who will cook, clean, nurture, take kids to medical appointments and activities? Homework, plumber visits? Car/bicycle repairs? Sick days or week? Spouse in hospital or after surgery? Which part of (largely) women do lots of unpaid 24/7 work for family do men not understand?
Having kids always seemed stupid to me. But then again, I've never had long-term job security so who knows if that would change my mind
Done on purpose.
Make houses unaffordable for young adults and they cannot start proper adulthood and consider having their own children.
Inward migration is one of the main causes of house price growth.
They need to limit the size of one persons property portfolio. Greed is also causing inflated house prices.
@@peanutboxes4076 starting with the King!
We haven’t built enough houses for decades.
And yet immigrants can afford the houses? Care to explain that logic?
@@peanutboxes4076they need to limit non-residents buying property and add an investment tax on second homes
I'm 68, when l was a kid women had few life choices, were not expected to go to university, didnt get equal pay, and were sacked on marriage or pregnancy! No if any contraception available, and were indoctrinated to be wives and mothers. I had catholic aquaintances who actually had the priest coming and pressuring them for more kids, even when doctors said it would be dangerous. Women now have alternative options and are living the way they want, not as they are told they should want!
And these new options will lead to the extinction of their own people. Well done. Least we can say we are morally superior though.
You made nine points. Eight are irrelevant to anyone of child producing age.
I think you're the first comment i see that is actually right.
Pro natalist policies increasing the birth rate by 0.2 or 0.3 children per woman could make all the difference to the financial viability of a society.
Dismissing spending 5% of gdp on this as unaffordable seems stunningly short-sighted and complacent.
Good. Its immoral to have kids you can't afford
There will be no catch up because cost of living is not coming down
The cost of childcare!!! Horrendous🤦🏻♀️.
What a joke that you think the cost of childcare is the root cause. The root cause is that you have to pay people to look after your own children because otherwise you cant afford to live. A single salary for an average person should be able to afford a reasonable life (family).
I'm a boomer born 1957, when large families, mom at home, and dad at a factory was common. It's 2024, it ain't the same!!!!
Wow, the closing remarks are a self damning condemnation of the inadequecies & failings of our institutions.
Ignoring the costs involved for a moment, we are on the cusp of four things - A world war, irreversible climate change, a societal collapse, and a second Great depression. There's also much more regional focused ones as well, like America looking like it's about to make the Handmaid's Tale a reality.
I'm not sure I'd want to bring a child onto a world facing all of that.
The problem is adding more workers in an economy with low productivity means it does not make much difference.....
Depends on the level of productivity - or the taxable amount of that productivity
@@kevoreilly6557 UK productivity is second lowest in G8. Reasons are obvious - we spend hundreds of billions on Victorian technology, like HS2, while we have the 56th slowest roll-out of 5G and 26th worst internet speeds.
At the moment UK is not adding more workers. They are adding more ill. gal migeants, reliant on benefits.
Where I live now in semi rural Thailand most kids grow up and live at home until they get married. Then when they marry the majority of them live with his or her parents. The parents then look after any children up to starting school. They also do the household chores including cooking and shopping. The married couple pay all the bills. The house becomes theirs when the parents pass on. Great system. Plus all future generations will be mortgage/rent free. Nobody goes into a care home. The family deal with it between them.
These deaths of despair are linked to our neo liberal/selfish capitalist financial system for the most part. It is the economic system that needs to change with fairer wealth distribution, higher wages, secure permanent jobs for all etc. This is the answer I believe.
Yes definately, I think the essentials of life have been made too expensive, and along with economic insecurity, this has created a situation where it is too risky and/or undesirable for people to have children. Even animals in the zoo won't procreate if they're held captive, as many people are nowadays by the way the economy is setup.
You right that is the answer. There just waiting for the number of people on plant to drop before doing something about it for real.
❤ it, another ill in our society is our media’s veneration of billionaires who seem to judge respect on how much money someone has made, now go and watch veritasium and everyone will see life’s success is largely based on luck, irrespective of family wealth or education level.
It's always how it should be but the greedy filthy rich ensure that it stays as it is
100%. No need for endless hour long podcasts on demographic collapse. It's simple. MONEY. The majority don't have enough. The minority have too much. I wouldn't bring new life into this BS.
1) Urbanisation (smaller housing, particularly apartments compared with suburban and rural homes)
2) High housing costs (lack of social housing, need for both parents to earn)
3) Massive increase in the number of people going to college / university (cost of education, time taken to gain education, time taken to establish a career, especially the huge increase in the number of women going to college, many jobs now require college / university when they were previously learned on the job).
4) Increased life expectancy (less need to have as many children, live longer after retirement)
5) On line dating and social media (whereas in the past for the vast majority of people you married someone you met locally online dating gives people a near unlimited choice and makes it difficult to choose, paradoxically people also have fewer "real" friends)
1) and 4) are reasons for selecting smaller family size.
2) and 3) result in starting families much latter.
5) results in people not meeting real people
South Korea, Japan and I would argue countries such as Italy and Greece remain strongly patriarchal at the level of who runs business and the country and women are voting with their feet and refusing to get married.
👌
Why should people bring more children just to suffer
Ha!!!!!😂😂😂😂❤❤❤❤❤
Immigration does not work to solve the issue of an ageing population. Canada has had a mindbogoling level of immigration over the past 5 years yet the population has still continued to age to an all time average age age of 41.6 years. Far from solving the issue of ageing, canadas immigration policy has likley exacerbaited it, as it is plausible that this massive boost in immigration has contributed to the further decline of canadas total fertility rate (which is now at an all time low of 1.26!!!) due to its pressure on the housing market and general infrastructure, along with the fact that immigrants who move to canada do not have replacement level birth rates. Besides its direct affect on ageing Canada's immigration policy has had massive social, political and economic ramifications such as the afformentioned steep increase in housing price, lower nation wide average productivity due to libralizing immigration visas to low productivity workers, suppresion of lower skilled wages, and incredibly fast change of the character of many neihgborhoods, towns, and cities against its' inhabitants wills. Western governments NEED to realise that immigration is NOT the solution to ageing populations. If anything, substantial increases in immigration exacerbaites the ageing problem in the long run due to housing and infrastrucutre pressures, creates second order nation wide economic problems, and above anything else is a deeply undemocratic way to address the problem as it is near unniveraly vastly unpopular. the ageging population of western societies will be a critical issue of the next half century, especially hear in the UK; maximizing effort into increasing the birth rate, and adapting our economies to the new reality of older populations is the only way we can have a prosperous future.
Yes agreed HOWEVER, immigration is needed to support the current social welfare model for the ageing population. Longer term would need adjustment for ageing persons to contribute more for their retirement aswell as for healthcare costs.
Agreed. It doesn't work to solve the root of the issue, the short sighted nature of Western politics should be mentioned
@@Pirake123 the degree to which immigration helps our current welfare model HEAVILY depends on what kind of immigration we are getting. If we are getting low productivity workers than I would argue that it is a net negative. Low productivity workers in non-essential higher demand sectors are very likely net-negatives for the health of our current social welfare system as they contribute less then they take. (the reason I say most likely is because this conclusion comes from data out of Denmark which analyzed net contribution to public finances. The data showed that workers from low productivity countries (on average) were total net extractors to the state's finances throughout the entirety of their lives. The UK does not have published data on worker produvitiy/place however I believe it is very probable (although not certain) that the same trend would appear.) This only type of low productivity workers that could be positive for the social welfare model are low productivity workers who work in essential sectors with lots of vacancies. However, this is still a net total drain on the state throughout an (average low productivity) workers lifetime because they are still net extractors. This is an immigration strategy the UK has relied on, and I think it has contributed to the worsening of our welfare model as successive governments have continuously had to rely on higher and higher levels of low productivity workers in essential fields resulting in worse national average productivity and thus a worse revenue/spending ratio. If anything, this strategy is a death spiral as the size of the state/social welfare system expands (which it has continually done and is expected to do so) because it will contribute to lower average productivity AND ageing, the true worst of worst doom loop! The Only type of immigration that is positive for our social welfare model is high productivity immigrants, as they will be net positive contributors in their working years. Incidentally, we (sort of had) much more positive immigration outcomes before Brexit as a much higher proportion of immigrants came from higher productivity countries; since we left this cohort of immigrants has been replaced and expanded upon by immigrants from low-prod countries. Therefore, as I expect British immigration patterns to continually come from low-prod countries I argue that our current immigration policy is a net negative on our current social welfare model.
@@bopndop2347 absolutely.
And high fertility rate immigrants start having fewer children by the second generation
The real concern is that those who should be having children, such as academics, aren't able to do so because they simply can't afford it or can't get ahead in life. Meanwhile, there are individuals at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum who, while not academics, understand the dynamics of economies of scale.
None of you mentioned net migration and the fact that over
500, 000 people left the UK in 2023.
They took their skills & experience with them and presumably lessened the burden on public finances from a health and pensions point of view.
Why do they leave?
What could be done to change their minds about leaving?
Wouldn't this reduce the blind reliance on immigration to fill a gap?
You also barely acknowledged the adverse cultural impacts on immigration from societies that don't wish to assimilate with our culture. Australia, Canada & NZ seemed to have this figured in previous years by targeting precisely the cultures they knew would assimilate without friction and quickly become net contributors to their economies ......
The Great Training Drain … I was part of it … fantastic eduction through the mid 90s (double masters) … moved to the states
@beatonthedonisSeems like you're the only one turning up to the conversation with only ideological & political prejudices.
There's more single mother households than married. I am a single mom of 2 and my big advice to my age mates out there keep your legs closed. Don't get pregnant out of wedlock or you'll suffer because you can't rely on government to help you as they didn't get you pregnant. Save save and save your money! Stop buying things you don't need and invest in yourself and travel. Bringing a baby into this selfish world won't guarantee you peace because everything changes once a baby comes in example your finances will shift, your job will be affected, no childcare, nanny is expensive and lack of support from grandparents , lack of housing, food inflation is real and as the kids grow so does their diet. My son has sickle cell disease you can imagine what his diet is like food wise, school uniform is expensive every year I spend alot on school shoes alone because my kids go to school and kick stones instead of football
I'm a single Mom of 3 and I regret bringing them into this hellscape. I agree with what you say. We need to close our wombs and protect ourselves. No one is coming to save us.❤❤❤
your experience is not going to be every women experience when finding somebody.
there are pookies and ray rays to avoid and good guys to be with you obviously chose the wrong man to be with
its not us good men fault its clearly yours
@@Mr.unknowndoffy it's always the man s fault. They re the one causing the pregnancy. Stop shaming women.
oh I'm sorry that I didn't stop and rescue these people from becoming single mothers from being with the wrong man on time. even when I don,t know where they at? and when this is happening! if only i had known things and predicted it before it happened then maybe things would be different sorry next time lol
@@blueamenaa749 It takes two.
Please could you do an episode discussion Land Value Tax? Every time I hear an economist talk about it they seem to go all moon eyed, wax lyrical about how amazing that would be and what a shame it will never happen, and then move on to something else. Is it really that great and, if so, why haven’t we got one?
It does have a lot of benefits but it definitely would be politically difficult to sell. Not only is home ownership sold as the way for middle class people to escape poverty (when that's at the cost of other people as land is a fixed supply) it's also culturally seen as something you can't mess with. Then there's the richest people who have large property portfolios and land banks who have a lot of political power. I think a good start would be to replace council tax, stamp duty, and business rates with an LVT - it would need to be somewhere around 1% to raise the equivalent amount - Dan Niedle who has featured in some IFS stuff has some good stuff on LVT on his Tax Policy Associates site.
@ thanks, I’ll check that out! I imagine you would actually probably need it higher than 1% since you’d almost certainly want to have exceptions for things like farming and charities like the National Trust. But I would still enjoy a proper discussion on IFS Zooms In :)
@@phueal yeah there's interesting things you could do with exceptions and differing rates, perhaps a higher rate on unused land etc. And if you did it right, you could actually capture the LVT by the increase of neighbouring land values, for example, central park in New York is a big untaxed protected area but it hugely increases the values of the properties around it. Those are all extra details though, the real pure economics of the LVT is just to incentivise efficient land use overall. If you find yourself going down the Georgism rabbit hole fully then Lars Doucet is another person with some good accessible writings on the issue.
Its very simple. Both partners have to work now to scrape by and young poeple don't have the time or money for starting families
That was the best thing I’ve seen on RUclips - well done. Honest and informative.
1) triple Marriage Tax Allowance 2) stop vilifying boys and men in the education system
It's a human rights issue. We don't have the right to not get hurt, to not suffer, to not do things we don't want to do, to not go to school and work all our lives. We don't have a right to be born into a world that is safe, a safe family, a safe environment, a healthy, sexy (dont act like you dont care liar!) body, we dont have a right to mental health, to have good ppl in our lives, to possess the physical and psychological characteristics we wish for.
We are denied so many basic fucking rights but just being born!
Ppl deserve better than the lives we endure. Just to have food, health, a home, a strong friendship circle and relationship is almost a dream for most ppl. Do we not deserve better than to be born into a world that demands adherence to toil, confusion, deprivation?
It's about human rights.
💯
We don't have right to choose not being born, right to choose our family, right to choose good genes, rights to live life on our terms, right not to work.
Shrinking countries is a good thing, not bad. It wasn’t long ago they were ringing alarm bells over over-population. Fewer people means less strain on the planet. Stop panicking.
it is a problesince thwre will come a time when the working age population wouldn't be able to financially supporting the retired population.
@ Don’t rely on the government to fund your retirement.
@@grimmlinn you do not get it, right?
It isn't only about the pension. The whole infrastructure would be untenable. it is the working people's taxes that funds the function of the country. You mayvend up not having access to Healthcare and social care because the facilities may get closed due to the lack of funding. And you may not have the staff to work there as well.
@@puclopuclik4108 Healthcare is privately funded in America. Only the low income get free healthcare, which again, don’t rely on socialism to save you. Plan to take care of yourself, not living off others. If you can pay for private health insurance, it will never go “unfunded”. The only people who would go unfunded, is those relying on government socialism and failed to take care of themselves.
It’s harder work looking after children than going to work. This has not been recognised . Whilst you pay presenters exorbitant amount of money and others struggle with time and money why would you have children-it’s an impossible situation
Why is Africa having kids then? Seems like the women are okay with raising children on low income. It's lifestyle choices. People want to live a HIGH quality life to Keep Up With The Jones. South Africa is starting to reflect that with people having fewer kids to maintain a high end lifestyle. 8 kids won't do it, they want 2 or 3 and 2 big houses, 5 cars, and a dog
If not for using North Sea oil in the 70's which replaced coal, it is doubtful the UK economy would have made it this far.
With everything changing all the time it is difficult to plan and manage companies and families.
@@suzygirl1843fertility rates are also falling in Africa albeit more slowly
@suzygirl1843 Many African women would love to not be married off as children, finish their education to university level and have control of their reproductive choices but they can't due to poverty, war, sexual violence and religious coercion. Please do the research on gender equality and human rights for women and girls in African countries.
@@evif9377 Don't act like you care about their choices. You won't even elect a woman president in USA. Seems like we doing African women a favour not selling them Feminism and lies about being equal to men
Melinda is such a knowledgeable and articulate expert. Have learnt a lot listening to her.
All I see is willful avoidance of the truth.
When people get told you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford it, don't be surprised if they don't have kids. Plus guys are moving from the dating market as a result of delusional high standards.
Well, it's true. Don't have kids if you can't support them.
I've just come back from 7 1/2 months in Nigeria. This was my 9th trip there for work and I've spent more than 2 years there in the past 5 years.
I don't think people in the UK (or other developed countries) really understand just how bad things are in places like Nigeria. No one alive in the UK was around when people were being kicked off farms and went and lived in slums hoping to get a job in the nascent factories. There was somewhere between 2 and 3 generations from the late 18th to the middle of the 19th centuries where many people went hungry and we were "lucky" that so many children died or there would have been even more adults without jobs. Added to that the UK and much of Europe was involved in wars every decade or so.
China alone has more manufacturing capacity than the world needs so countries such as Nigeria cannot hope to compete. This means that people leaving farms (often with very low levels of education) have little chance of finding meaningful work. And Nigeria cannot feed itself with a very inefficient agricultural sector (essentially you would need to modernise the agricultural sector by mechanisation and vast reductions in inefficient labour). Every wealthy country has largely mechanised agriculture which allows people to do more productive things - except there aren't more productive things to do. If women have 6 children then that is 4 more mouths to feed and educate with the same money as having 2 children.
On a positive note in the country with the worst child mortality in the world (which is in sub-Saharan Africa) the rate is about the same as the England in the early 1920's. This means that far more children become adults.
The median age in Nigeria is 18, in Niger it is 14. There are no jobs. Essentially, much of sub-Saharan Africa is on a fast track to collapse. And that collapse will result in 10s of millions of refugees heading to Europe.The future is bleak.
we seriously need to force those people to use birth control then. I'm sorry, but stop having children if you don't have food to feed them! No one on another continent is going to shoulder YOUR responsibility.
Don't you think they'll go to Asia? What jobs is there in Europe? No more industries.....
What would you suggest as a solution?
@@dantesparda7719 Build industry in Africa
So it's OK to devastate Europe because Africa is unstable...hmmm.
What’s wrong if the population shrinks? Less population, less poverty and less pollution
Boomer: Pay my pension so I can live in Spain.
GenZ: what do I get in return,?
Boomer; 2 things. Dunno and don't care.
The Boomers paid into their pension funds. They're not getting them for free. How would you feel if your investments were removed from you?
The rising cost of living is making it too expensive for individuals or couples to live, the extortionate costs of rent, gas, electricity, transportation, council taxes, people can't afford to bring another life into the world, the previous government and the present government were hoping to kill off the British people by allowing so many migrants into the country, now where it's so expensive to live here, the working class migrants are going to Germany where the cost of renting is around a third or less than here in the UK, so I'm told, overall the cost of living is cheaper in general, Poland is an up and coming country, many people are going there, just speaking for the UK, there's no incentive to come here unless you have turned up illegally because our government will welcome you respect you
The government here in the UK don't want working class people having children, it's a privilege for the wealthy, as far as the elderly, the government have taken away their heating allowance, so they're hoping for a freezing winter to kill off the older generations, if not, I'm sure another pandemic can be thought up, a miracle cure quickly discovered and the medication will end older lives, here in the UK, birth is for the wealthy not the working class people
The government whether Tories or Labour have always said that a pension is a privilege, with the increasing debt here in the UK, I can see, probably not in my lifetime because I'm approaching pension age, but even those of us who have contributed to a personal pension, we will be told to work longer and eventually the pension/retirement, unless you're a politician or someone extremely well paid, the working class won't be able to afford to retire and, I think that it probably will be Labour who will say that the pension money that we have saved will be sucked up elsewhere and the law will change as such that people won't have a personal pension either, the video discussed the health service, the Tories stopped investing in the NHS, I wouldn't be surprised if Labour scrapped the NHS and we go Americanised and we have to pay for our treatment at the time, if you can't afford treatment (which many working class people won't be able to), you have to suffer, if you save, the government will tax savings so high it won't be worth it
The planets over populated. Politicians want growth in total GDP to excuse borrowing past and future. But its real GDP per person that matters to the population. Less crowded roads, less crowded countryside, reduced demand for services, less need for power and water, less pollution, less need for imports, the benefits of a reduced population are endless. Humans are not exactly on tbe endangered species list.
Less people means less demand which ultimately means negative growth, which means permanent recession. Look at Japan, countryside empty, people moving to cities for work, house prices in cities go up, birth rate declines more. When japan was growing and reached 100 million people there work 8 workers for each retired person, when their population drops back to 100 million there will be 1 worker for each retired person. Is this our future.
That's not how it works. People are flocking the big cities because of better education and job opportunities, so rent and house prices is rising even in countries like Japan, Italy and South Korea that are in a massive demographic winter, meanwhile the countryside is disappearing and old people are dying alone. Also, the economy isn't a cake of set dimension that is divided between the population, but it can grow bigger or smaller. Having an old population means a shrinking economy because elders consume less, and elders also don't produce because they can't work and need welfare, paid by young working age people. Good luck trying to keep your country going and not having a massive decline in quality of life meanwhile your population become older.
Is it possible that the economic argument is not the right reason behind the decline, what role does cultural norm play in this? Scandinavian countries, e.g. Denmark, have great support for new parents and their birth rate is still shrinking. How does economic argument explain higher birth rate among low income earners both in the developed and developing countries?
The problem is: to be employable and make a living, you need to learn and be trained. Women prime fertility years: 16-30. Most women these days are educated, and teen pregnancies are down. Educated women postpone family until they feel secure. In this economy, if you are lucky, you have to elbow your way until your mid-30s to feel somewhat secure, and even then, if you stop working for 2 years to have kids.. its a big problem. Households can't survive on 1 income, and resuming a career is difficult. Capitalism just does not mesh well with human nature.
😂😂 I have 2 daughters and 1 son. 26, 24, 18. All of them say they are not having children. Reasons. 1: Net Zero. The cost. The socialism. 2: a proxy ban on affordable means to drive one's own personal vehicle - Restricting work options and therefore salary level. 3: taxation. High income tax. Taxes added to all utility bills, VAT - too much tax making life too hard to enjoy with a dependant for upstanding people that do not want to wallow on state benefits.
The Hungry Income polices are weird.
Let’s be real - if a Women has 4 children - it is unlikely that she is career minded and will pay any meaningful amount of income tax. That’s a minimum of 6 years in her prime career building years at home with children. Even past the initial phase pregnancy and maternity leave, juggling 4 children and career is unlikely. It sounds more like a cynical policy to try coax mothers back into the workforce.
If hungry was serious about improving fertility they would extend the income tax break the farther.
My daughter has four kids and works full time. The short time she spent out of workplace she concentrated on further study so she could earn more when she returned to work.
When I was a child, a man with a stay at home wife could claim her as a tax deduction. I wonder why they changed it.
If people can’t afford to have children….
The highest birth rates are among conservative religous peoples and people in poor rural comunities.
Everybody is talking about money and housing. How about just women not willing to go through it physically? There is no amount of "love" I'd go through that shit. No epidural right from the beginning, no one's going to pay for your pension.
Yep. I don't get it either. I'm not maternal and never wanted kids. It's as simple as that. And I add more reasons to my "why I don't want to have kids" on a daily basis.
There are so many uncertainties such as child health and own economic situation etc. - why would I want to go through that?
The economic argument is meaningless because birth rates are falling / have fallen below reproduction rate even in poor countries. The only area in the world where this hasn't yet happened is sub-Saharan Africa. Nepal, South America, North Africa, ... are all falling, so it must have to do with the global Zeitgeist. I would also argue that social media is a big reason because it enables people from poorer countries to see what people elsewhere in the world do and how they live, and that surely has an influence on decision-making, maybe even more than one's own cultural environment and practices.
Roughly 15% of women choose not to have children and don't regret not having them.
Roughly 5% of women choose not to have children and do regret not having them.
An increasing number of women want children but don't get around to it. This group is growing fast. This group is driving the issue.
The remaining women want children, have them, and don't regret it.
Every thing this lady said is bang on 100%.Thank you.
Housing costs, rotten schools, poor work prospects. novel medical practices, decline in religious practice. Taxed to death.
Optimum population for UK is about 30 million.
In the long run falling fertility rates are a good thing … the world’s major problem is too many people. The transition will be hugely painful (economically, socially etc.) but perhaps we should all embrace it as a good thing for humanity in th long run. Whatever the causes (better education, cost of housing, cost of raising children etc. etc.) we should work out how to make things work with fewer people and a falling population than trying to incentivise a higher fertility rate.
I’m no ecomentalist, just someone old enough to see how we are ruining the world around us and can’t think of any solution that doesn’t require far fewer people.
Britain has the second worst productivity in the G8, so there is plenty of room for improvement.
Exactly!
Does this mean you will personally make sacrifices, for example will you give up the state pension entirely to stop the tax burden on working people.
Is it really any surprise given how difficult having a family has been made in most developed countries. Edit ps no im not happy to keep working a second longer than I have to.
Having children for many in the UK (and other parts of the world I'm sure) is unaffordable given housing costs, whether renting or buying, and the cost of living in general. Given the desperate state of the UK in 2024, I'm sure there are many who don't feel inclined to have children even if they can afford to.
This topic is actually very simple and we don’t need experts to analyze and discuss it ad infinitum. Humans beings want to own a home and travel and children don’t allow that so they don’t have them. It’s really that simple.
My Dad told me a long time ago, if everybody waited till it was economically feasible to have children, nobody would have them. I can remember being young and thinking about raising a family, for every positive point I could make, I could also make two negative ones. So sometimes it's just about doing it. Sure you'll struggle but I suppose you'll learn to adapt. Honestly we're more resilient than people know.
It's not so much about waiting for economic feasibility as the real impact of women finally have control of their own contraception. We now get to really choose and resist pressure. And women don't want to be milch cows.
76 pence in 1972 would be worth £10 of today’s money.
The Corporatocracy takes all the wealth to the point people cannot afford children.
That's meaningless if salaries increased more than inflation.
Which they consistently did.
@@harrydamien6346 and yet buying a house used to be 3 years your yearly salary and now it's 8 or more and if you cant live with ur parents ur extorted in rent
@@user-im8bv8po2wBecause people are flocking the big cities in search of better education and job opportunities. It's a world "problem". But if you like an house in the countryside, it's very cheap. In Italy we "sell" houses in beautiful middle age villages for 1€.
I am from Russia originally where in general you can have 10-12 hours of free childcare(in some big cities maybe you pay while waiting for a free place)
Currently I am living in Berlin while having a second kid and we have 7 hours for free since daughter was 1 year old.
In between we were living in London (moved when our daughter was about 2 years old). 3 hours of childcare since she turned 3 and it was like in strict boundaries like from 12 to 15, bo minute yearlier of later.
All the time I was there I was thinking about HOW people handle kinds here? Like HOW they decide to have kids at all😂 So happy not to stuck there with my second kid! I think we could not come through it in that country
PS maybe we were on work visas and did not have access to something
Sorry but I don’t think a lot of us will want to look after our elderly parents after years of their pure selfishness.
They are indulging themselves in their good years when they’re relatively healthy, wanting little to do with us and their grandchildren.
They are too busy travelling, golfing, taking constant yoga and whatever else classes, going out for meals with friends etc.
They told us bluntly, if we want to book a holiday, we need to sort out a childcare first. So we’ve only went away once on a three day holiday 12 years ago and also haven’t been on a date night out since.
They couldn’t help out with looking after the older children while I was going to hospital to have another baby.
With our last baby is was booked for a c-section, we asked them if they could look after the little ones at home for about 3 hours so my husband could go in with me but they said sorry but no. They couldn’t because they were recovering from a holiday jet lag.
I ended up going in alone and it was a scary experience.
Unfortunately a lot of people in my generation will relate.
I do not feel any sense of duty to look after any of them in their old age. Sorry.
More on this topic please. It underpins everything!
I wonder what are the extreme ideas to fix this issue? Are old people getting too much support? My aunt gets atleast £3000 a month from the state because her husband is in a care home (both pensioners). One 89 year old woman shouldn't be getting and above average income, at what point do we start calling these things out?
Can you provide a breakdown of that £3000 a month?
@@darranwilliams2031 I can't because it's not my place to ask about her finances but that is the amount she receives, it will include housing benefit and disability.
Why is it made out that when it comes to sex the lack of fertility only has a male cause? Why not quote studies regarding childless women as well since fertility rates are based upon number of births per women? Also, what about the cultural question: is Modern society & modern feminism (3rd & 4th wave feminism) ultimately anti-child?
The economic argument is meaningless because birth rates are falling / have fallen below reproduction rate even in poor countries. The only area in the world where this hasn't yet happened is sub-Saharan Africa. Nepal, South America, North Africa, ... are all falling, so it must have to do with the global Zeitgeist. I would also argue that social media is a big reason because it enables people from poorer countries to see what people elsewhere in the world do and how they live, and that surely has an influence on decision-making, maybe even more than one's own cultural environment and practices.
I would love to have children but I can't afford it
This is a fine and rational decision
@@FireflyOnTheMoon yep but it's heartbreaking
why would you want to bring a new life into world running full steam ahead towards chaos
250k excess deaths compared to other European nations due to austerity. We just lived through 15 years of zero real interest rates without fixing the roof. Well done IFS egg heads, you've done a great job, the young are really looking forward to what's coming next.
Whereas the young in the 1970s put up with 18% interest rates and sky-high income tax, with power-cuts and three-day weeks, an economy impoverished by war debt and rising oul prices. There was an awful lot less existential moaning though. Times have been hard since 1929.
@@davidmorgan6896 Honestly economically things were way better in the 70s than now. It wasn't paradise, but there was a level of economic stability for working people thanks to strong unions and functioning social democracy, with major room for improvement which is fine. No time period is ever perfect but we have to be honest and confront how much living standards have collapsed in England since Thatcherism
Have to factor in the potential of having your child in your home for 30+ years now. Plus how the low wages compare to home cost bringing in a child that’s set to struggle doesn’t make sense. Ten years ago we decided to have our child. But with how things have changed in today’s world I wouldn’t
If I'm not happy with the world I'm living in, how can I ask a child of mine to live in it?
One factor is too often overlooked to explain the fall in birthrates: the role of airlines and train companies (SNCF in my country). Allowing them to travel among the other passengers, rather than containing them in specific spaces designed for families, has done tremendous damage to the reputation of children.
This is why I find the conservative hostile approach to immigration amusing. They'll demand that the numbers come down as we are apparently full, but when it comes to struggling existing families who are unable to feed/support their children. Those same conservatives view those families as irresponsible. "Don't have kids if you can't afford them", "too many avocado lattes". How do they expect the population of this country to maintain/grow if we don't do either of the above? They'll then say the apathetic thing of 'There's too many people on this planet'. That's great Cliff, but when you want to receive your care as your health slowly declines, or if you need to go into a care home. You'll be looking for a generation of taxpayers to fund you that do not exist.
They do not care about this country, or their community. They only care that their own wealth is preserved.
💯
Correct. No one willing to stand by the reality that wealthy boomers need to pay back into the system that thrive off, instead dancing around the issue.
The system needs radical action to give actual wealth distribution. Wages have just not kept up with real inflation, and kids are now unaffordable.
The reality is the super wealthy don't mind at all, less mouths to feed, less people to corral and more desperation means easier to manipulate.
Easy. Lower immigration would soon free up a lot of houses.
Good discussion, thank you. The question at the end 'How do people feel about this?' wasn't really answered very well, maybe because time was short. It focused on men's health and fitness to parent, which has become the polite way of deflecting criticism from women's choices but is clearly not the whole picture. Women consistently say they want more children than they end up having and women's self reported happiness has declined along with the fertility rate.
And does anyone really think that the working people,of the UK will actually meet the state obligations inherent in public sector pensions? No. The productive people and wealthy people will gravitate to those wise nations that do not have such a burden
All nations have this burdens .. so good look there … and i love people still think they can just move countries …😂
The wealthy might abandon the country they grew up in, speak the language of and their children are at school in, but the term "productive people" covers an awful lot of income brackets. Also what do you expect the other people will do, who will need public sector pensions later on, but who are presently doing all the grotty little jobs that the wealthy depend on them to do?
That's why unfettered immigration is the way forward.
@@kalebdaark100Will the wealthy leave? Some, obviously, but hardly the majority.
@@davidmorgan6896 Yes most of the wealthy will stay in "the country they grew up in, speak the language of and their children are at school in".
She said it's hard to draw causality between millions of immigrants needing housing and an increase in house costs... Woman moment.
Low paid jobs, unavailable housing, childcare costs, economical instability , all that is what effect birth rate.
Given how stupidly overcrowded the UK is, news of a falling population is to be welcomed.
The ensuing economic collapse that comes with it won’t though so take your pick.
They touched on most of the biggest issues but one big one that they missed was how women who try to find a suitable man to make a family with later in life have often become jaded from hookup culture and the men that they want simply dont want them in return. Men who want families arent looking for emotionally damaged women whos biological clock has almost run out.
Fair play though, they managed to mention most of the other reasons.
1. Women in the workforce, not wanting babies until they are older.
2. Cost of living and house/rental prices.
3. Wages not keeping up with inflation.
I would also add contraception and abortion. There are probably a lot less unwanted babies now than there were 50 years ago.
Also religion and social stigmas. All my aunties and uncles and their friends were all married by the time the were in their mid twenties. Compared to my social circle where hardly any are married and only 1 couple i know got married in their 20s.
Divorce rates being sky high is probably another thing that deters men. Not wanting to have children with someone who is highly likely going to leave them in the future.
Social media is another reason, highlighting and encouraging the worst side of human nature, promoting hypergamy and mgtow, although this is more prevalent in the US i believe.
Likewise, women who want families aren't looking for old men who are jaded by hook-up culture and failed relationships. My dad was a very capable man in all areas of life. He didn't look sideways at other women. Likewise, my mum. A man can't expect to f around all his 20s then expect to give off hubby vibes in his 30s to the women he desires. Men who have had a 'past' do not give off the good, stable and loving vibes that attract women.
@@catherineball7584 You are projecting what men want on women. Women prefer experienced guys. Whereas men prefer v1r g1ns.
Thank you for looking at the health profile of those who don’t have children! I watch a lot of demographic related videos, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard this angle covered. I would be curious to know if there is a similar profile among the women who choose not to have children. Many of the people that I would assume who describe themselves as “childless by choice” likely have some illnesses they are interested in not passing on to another generation. Would just be curious to see what you guys find! Thank you so much for covering it.
Choice vs Constraints - I imagine it's super difficult to find evidence that not/having children 'makes you happier'- a lot of confirmation bias in any data- hell I can't even get a straight answer out of my mates!
Life expectancy is shrinking drastically in the UK. It will continue to shrink.
Not true. The main killers include heart disease and cancer. All those older relatives aren't taking those prescriptions for fun. In so many ways people are kept living longer. Hip operations are a modern thing because people are living long enough to need them.
@@stephengreen8986 When was the last time you looked on the government websites about this subject. Go and look. The reduction in life expectancy has been discussed in the House of Lords and in Parliament. Google reduction in life expectancy in the UK. You will get lots of results. You could have done that before you replied.
Hey paul, hey IFS, its not a mystery if you think about the economic benefit of having children. In the good old days, no state or even private pensions, no welfare, you would be mad to not have children. These days where children are a dead loss, why would you want them? Explain to an alien what the economic benefit is of having a child in the 21st century - to the parents themselves who bear the costs.
The costs of housing etc issues all assume that everyone "just wants children" but they don't.
So your answer is to keep people in abject poverty just so they breed out of desperation? Parents have always had to support and pay for children. Those who had no means to support children were culturally discouraged from breeding.
Dont put it all on cost, you dont truely know the cost of kids until you have them. No one looks at how much nursery care is until you give birth 😅
There is also the life styles of current generations who see kids havint a major impact on their quality of life.
There is also the idea that we aren't settling down to form nuclear families/relationshops now. Just dating and repeating.
Enjoy this video ❤ Thanks from Taiwan .❤
It is a whole load of issues. Cost is a factor , but also women having the ability through contraception not to have children. Children are a major commitment if you are to do it well .
Remedying low birth rates won't just require a 'whole society' approach, but a 'whole world' approach. No nation alone will be able to afford it.
Move all new public sector workers to standard Workplace Pensions. Then the high cost workers will phase out as the population grows less. Financially will sort itself out.
No our population is not living longer due to austerity/low paid work leading to ill health. Pension age should not be raised in my opinion. Men and women could both retire at age 65 with different choices. A move to taxing wealth rather than work e.g. more tax on those with wealth/assets over £10 million would solve the problems. As mentioned our state pension is much less generous than most of Europe - criminal in my opinion.
When the liberals introduced the state pension in 1908 you had to be 70 yo to claim but people lived much shorter lives coupled with families having more children back then.
Things won’t change here. Be happy with what you’ve got or leave. Simple as that.
@@jeremiahpoole6526you do know that it’s not a “gift”
Unintended consequence would be zero tax on wealth as it would go overseas to somewhere with less Tax.
They want everyone to work longer although we are having technical revolutions like machines, AI and other robots. It just doesn't make any sense at all. It's ridiculous.
We have to permit assisted death - people are living longer, not living better
Nothing stopping most people planning ahead to depart early without involving the cold demonic hand of state bureaucracy as a legal actor in ending the lives of it's increasingly expensive elderly citizens - many societies had honour systems that weighed on the old to not overly burden their children & grandchildren; nonesuch appears to exist at all in our own society.
And we all know they will want those who can't afford the increasingly expense healthcare to choose premature death. The poor will economically be forced to choose the 'needle'. That is not a civilised society. I would not vote to give the state the power to legally kill me. No way. I see the terrible danger with this. People who want to die can commit suicide. Abortions started out only for exceptional cases and this has evolved into getting rid of the baby just because it's inconvenient for the parents. It shows absolutely no respect for human life. If a person wants to live, it's a poor show, when they can't in the richest nations on earth.
No we don't. I'm not voting to give any state the right to put me down just because it suits their economic purposes. If you develop a chronic medical condition, would you like your doctor looking at you and wondered how he can end your life prematurely when they should be helping you live a dignified life even if you have needs. All done under the guise of compassion. Nobody should be shamed for being alive. There's loads of money, it's mainly just hoarded by the Western and International oligarchs.
Really insightful podcast
You have to make marriage safer for men. Men rightly fear divorce and so less pair bonding and reproduction is occurring. Plus putting money in man's hands make men more likely to pursue women. Putting money in women's hands makes them less likely to pursue men.
True, marriage really only makes sense if you are marrying your childhood or school/college girlfriend and they are ultra traditional about relationships. After that the logic disappears. But it is heresy to point that out.
Single mother ls are given housing, single men are left homeless. If single men were given housing, women would have more incentive to stay with men.
again, I have to correct this panel. Lack of marriage among men due conclude in a higher risks of deaths of despair among men. Dr. Brad Wilcox has demonstrated the cauzation vetween these two.
Feminism. Dual incomes. Property price inflation. There is your cause.
The problem is that it isn't trendy to say that.