• SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It’s not much better in the rest of the West too. Turns out that building a society where money and career determines your social status and doing unpaid work like taking care of a family and raising children is not valued at all and even very expensive makes people choose to have less or no children.

      People of course do want children, but those that do very often will choose one or two children, below replacement rate.

      • JillyB@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I lived and worked in Japan before returning to the US. It’s much worse in Japan. When you leave college, you’re basically employed for life by one company. Your place in society is determined by your work in that company. My company was one of the more progressive ones. Salaried personnel still had to clock in and out to prevent people from working too much overtime. People put in great effort to cheat the time clock and put in more overtime than would be acceptable. People would get to work an hour early and leave at 10pm. There was little effort to make work more efficient because the employees can just work more. The company had an employee discount deal with customer products and employees were pressured into buying their products. It’s much better in America where the common tactic is to switch jobs every few years. America has a long way to go when it comes to work, but saying it’s almost as bad as Japan is just not true.

      • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        People of course do want children

        Do they? I mean, even if first-world people aren’t as well-off as they could theoretically be, they’re still much better off than people in poor counties (or their own ancestors a hundred years ago). But those people in poor countries and those ancestors have/had a lot more children. Meanwhile people in Sweden have fewer children than people in the USA.

        I think that many people in first-world countries do not in fact want children.

        (And within a country, poor people have more children than rich people, so actually making more people poor would increase fertility.)

        • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I am not sure if it’s really “I don’t want children” or more “I want a career (too)”. In Sweden 76 % of women are employed versus 57 % of women in USA. There are also more women with higher education in Sweden than in the USA.

          You have to decide whether you want a career or a child. And when a good career is a viable and achievable option, you decide to have a career instead.

          I wanted children, but I wanted to be independent and not poor when I am older, more. I know so many women who are poor and lonely because they did not focus on their jobs. While I am often sad to not have children, I’d never give up my independence and safety cushion just for that biological urge. I know of many women who think the same way.

        • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          pays for the children of non-working people (there’s a shitload of subsidies going into their pockets),

          Do children deserve to starve because their parents aren’t employed?

                • ElHexo [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Because the US is one of the best examples of your desire to see the children of poor and unemployed people starve?

                  “G-g-g-get a grip, I don’t like my shitty views being challenged and I can’t actually defend them”

                  Mate if you’re going to post dumb shit you probably should have a better response than that.

                  I’m assuming you’re not actually very dedicated to the idea of starving children, that’s just something you’ve heard and parroted because your own economic status is precarious

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              people deserve to starve in an age of plenty

              this pigbrained subhuman cruelty betrays you as an american citizen, thank god your shithole is in decline lol you should all rot and die there for the good of the world

              • Asafum@feddit.nl
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                1 year ago

                Can you maybe not see entire groups as the same?

                There are Americans that routinely get sent to jail protesting/fighting to change America for the better every day. There are those of us in this very thread that agree with you calling the other commentor a pigbrained subhuman. The strict adherence to an absolutely shit narrative given to them by Reich Wing Media disgusts a large portion of our population.

                It’s not entirely our fault that propaganda is so effective at keeping the absolute worst possible people in office and rotting the brains of our neighbors. The blame rests on the oligarchs and ultra wealthy assholes looking to divide and conquer, turning all of us against each other while they laugh all the way to their 3rd private island…

              • Archlinuxforever@lemmy.3cm.us
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                1 year ago

                I only had to read this one comment to know that you’re a tankie who probably worships every little thing the Kremlin and the CCP say.

              • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                America falling apart would be horrifyingly destructive for the rest of the world, for it will allow other corrupt capitalist powers that are, let’s be honest, not as humane, take over the rest of the world.

                Then again, the destabilization of the U.S. is well under way and our collapse is inevitable so I guess disputing it is a moot point.

                • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  America falling apart would be horrifyingly destructive for the rest of the world, for it will allow other corrupt capitalist powers that are, let’s be honest, not as humane, take over the rest of the world.

                  Well technically the continuation of america is more destructive than its inevitable decline, since america has a very awful pattern of killing millions of people for the enrichment of its elite, via means such as invasions, installing genocidal puppet leaders, and corporate extraction. The worst part is that america often destroys countries just as their people are on the brink of greater liberation.

                  Notable examples include:

                  Installing the Taliban in Afghanistan to oppose a Socialist government then destroying it

                  Destroying Iraq for Oil

                  Helping quash the Protocommunist Taiping Rebellion in China

                  The current blockade of Cuba

                  The current blockade of North Korea

                  The murder of socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile and the installation of Pinochet, a neoliberal dictator

                  The Contras

                  Sending $3 billion a year to isntreal for the mass killing of Palestinians

                  The genocide of first nations peoples on the North American continent itself

                  Assassinating Fred Hampton and the political killings of the Black Panther Party

                  Meddling in the affairs of practically every single third world country on Earth

                  Fucking Monsanto and their land grabbing bullshit

                  It is also probably the most inhumane of the corrupt capitalist powers as revealed in the details of these genocidal ventures either by using its own weapons or by proxy.

                  As such, the death of america would enable the possibility of a flourishing of socialist nations without the threat of the worlds most powerful military brought to full bear against their people for daring to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

                  • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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                    1 year ago

                    If US hegemony ended today, it would mean immediate war between Saudi Arabia & Iran, China & Japan/South Korea, Russia & the former Soviet states, and probably China & India eventually. The US is far and away the most powerful military in the world, and without the threat of the US military intervening on behalf of its allies, those conflicts are nowhere near as one-sided as they are today.

                    For example, see what happened as the Ottoman Empire & European colonial empires collapsed at the beginning of the 20th century. Then scale that up from a 2.3 billion global population to 8 billion.

                    Whatever you want to say about the crimes against humanity committed in the maintenance of US hegemony, I will agree with you, but that doesn’t mean for a second that the alternative is better. Be careful what you wish for and all that.

                  • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    …Until Russia and China start doing literally the same things if not worse. Russia wouldn’t hesitate to nuke countries that wouldn’t play ball with it, for example.

                • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  America falling apart would be horrifyingly destructive for the rest of the world, for it will allow other corrupt capitalist powers that are, let’s be honest, not as humane, take over the rest of the world.

                  This is what every imperial power says about itself

            • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Capitalism by its nature has an interest in keeping part of the working class unemployed. Look up “reserve army of labor”.

        • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          When you work 8 hours a day, have 1 hour lunch break, waste 2 hours commuting, to earn barely enough of what Adam Smith considers ideal (twice the cost of living), it’s hard to sustain a second person, much less a third that requires near constant monitoring for over 7 years.

          From a pure economic perspective, a child is a total money sink for at least 18 years. In many places (mostly urban), it’s simply not viable to have one.

            • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Short term, raise the minimum wage. Force walmart to fill the gaps between what they pay and what their workers need to live. Right now, it’s the government is subsidizing that gap.

              • Asafum@feddit.nl
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                1 year ago

                Gigantic mothefucking emphasis on short term.

                Our piece of shit, bought and paid for politicians LOVE to pull the “we’re fighting to raise the minimum wage from X to Y!” but only over such a long timeline that the value of Y equals what X was… God forbid the Job Creators™©® have to ever actually pay more.

                • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Agreed, but getting an increase in minimum wage would get the ball rolling on other worker right reforms.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          the children of non-working people

          Your wording alone demonstrates exactly what SloppyEngineer said about unpaid work not being valued at all.

            • FreeLunch@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              But how high is the rate of unemployment in your country? In Germany it is really low, so it probably costs a working person only a few euros per month to support all children of unemployed persons. Not sure if it is worth it to not help these children as they are already severely disadvantaged. Not to mention it can be seen as an investment in these children.

                • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  You would be surprised how many people actually cost the state money instead of bringing in money via tax in some countries. The problem isn’t the few unemployed people who could potentially work, the problem is that wages between high earners and low earners are out of proportion.

                • candybrie@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Incentivizing people to have children is pretty important for a society to continue on. Most societies are based around there being more young people than old people. When you reverse that, you historically don’t have enough people working to keep the country chugging along.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It’s crazy how much doesn’t even get done. No one wants to leave before their boss, so they space out their work and give the appearance of being busy.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      For what I’ve heard japanese spend a lot of time working

      According to the OECD, the average Japanese worker works just about the same number of hours per year as the average EU worker. It’s actually pretty surprising because the average Japanese worker seems to work less than workers in countries that most people do not think of as being overworked (e.g. Canada, Spain, Italy).

      Of course, averages don’t account for distribution, so there absolutely are workers who are chronically overworked. There’s also more part-time workers in Japan, which kind of explains things. On the other hand, you then have to ask how/why it’s financially feasible for so many people to sustain their livelihoods with only part time work.