What are ya alls thoughts on the cost of living crisis? As a separate but related issue, how impossible it is to have kids

Only rich people can have kids now. Doesn't that prove that God doesn't exist.

The propaganda is about to become reality since you guys voted to become a globo- communist country.

I mean, single mothers working two minimum wage jobs are responsible for a disproportionate share of all live births, and their children typically make it to adulthood, so simply keeping a kid alive doesn't strike me as particularly hard in this economy.

Good life is also rather subjective. So far as I can tell, premodern people living in conditions so comparably brutish we have a difficult time wrapping our heads around it had a lower suicide rate than today so the average person must have found life more worth continuing than not.

Should we settle for the cost of living we have now? No. There are things we can do to improve it, like encouraging the construction of affordable homes, relaxing local zoning laws, taking power away from HOAs, letting medicines be purchased directly from cheaper foreign markets, etc. But should we let it turn us into blackpilled antinatalists? Also no.

FLRW wrote:

Only rich people can have kids now.

I would say, that the above is a categorically incorrect statement...I would suggest that wanton materialistic capitalists choose not to breed...Whereas the bottom tier will keep churning them out, as will the religiously and culturally oppressed.

Doesn't that prove that GOD doesn't exist?

If it could proven that a God did exist, then your question would be unnecessary...As it stands I would also categorically disagree and say that there is no direct correlation between your primary assertion and your secondary.

I'm feeling categorical today.

You can have kids no matter what, it's just do you really need to have one?

linate wrote:

I mean it's like punishingly expensive to do basically anything. It's punishingly expensive to keep yourself alive. And keeping a kid alive and giving them a good life? Buddy, no shot. Birth rate is in decline for a lot of reasons.

A huge amount of this is the retarded war in Iran. And even if Dems/Trump pull out and sign the Obama deal 2.0 it won't do back to normal. Biden already drained the reserves dangerously low and Trump has drawn them down even further to absorb price shocks. These will need to be rebuilt, which means when floating storage starts to flow again it will not provide immediate price relief.

So that problem isn't going away. The housing market problem is not going to go away as long as we continue to import people to do jobs Americans can do, like Microsoft laying off thousands of employees and then applying for H1B replacements. Those people need to rent or buy houses, usually the most inexpensive options as fresh arrivals which drives up 'starter house' prices. The fact that Trump did little to address the abuse of visas to undermine American wages because his tech buddies profit off overseas slave labor means that all his deportations did jack squat to alleviate housing pressures.

Anything you can do to address this issue will run afoul of the donors. No more endless scab labor supply to depress wages? Daddy isn't happy. Extra taxes or outright bans of corporate ownership of single family homes? Daddy isn't happy. In fact, politicians of both parties are working overtime to make the problem worse by trying to waive or reduce property taxes for retirees, which will reduce pressure to sell and shift the tax burden to young families that are already struggling. The only person doing anything to fix this is Mamdani taxing extra property holdings at higher rates, and this is part of why the Republicans just got absolutely wiped out and the DSA is enjoying historic wins. They are simply too beholden to their donors and to boomers.

Just more investigation from the New Democratic Congress.

I have never understood people saying they don't wanna have kids because of the cost. Of course , having more mounts to feed is more expensive than if you don't. But there's no way to predict your financial future. And there are countries like the US where having kids can be a financial benefit even if a small one.

That makes more sense to me than whether or not they can afford it.

linate wrote:

I mean it's like punishingly expensive to do basically anything. It's punishingly expensive to keep yourself alive. And keeping a kid alive and giving them a good life? Buddy, no shot. Birth rate is in decline for a lot of reasons.

I think that is the stereotypical thought process with parents in every generation. Most parents decide if they wait till they can afford it, they'll never have a family, so they have kids and just figure out how to afford mater.

It ends up being a very wise investment. The increased cost of your life is nominal compared to the increased quality of your life that it buys you.

If you think prices and inflation are high now, wait until most things are "free"

Great thoughts

You dont sound like a stereotypical conservative

linate wrote:

Great thoughts

You dont sound like a stereotypical conservative

I'm not really a doctrinaire conservative. I think that seeing or believing in any 'we' in politics is retarded. There's me. There's my family. There's my local community. And then there are politicians. The second I think that the politicians are part of my 'we', that they are 'on my team', and start voting for them unconditionally is the moment they will give me and my actual 'we' groups jack shit. Because the only thing they need from me is my vote. This makes my vote the only weapon I have. Someone who thinks of themselves as a Democrat or a Republican or even as left or right to a lesser degree renders themselves politically inert, because they give up the only weapon they have for free. This is why the far left is eternally pussywhipped; most of them would never do what elements of the right and center just did and punch their own side in the mouth, even if it means the 'bad guys' winning.

In the mid term elections the voters did make a difference.