Baby Boom or Bust! - 5 Cents
I want to be the first to tell the census bureau that we're
at the beginning of another baby boom. And it's not just because everyone I
know is having their first or fourth kid. No, there is more to this than just
evidence. We're at the backside of a war; the stock market will likely go up
another 10% this year (there were 15% gains in 2006); housing prices are coming
down a little further; and everyone entering the anomalous entity known as
adulthood figures that raising kids seems very adult-like. So having kids is
the most American thing people can figure to do these days.
As an aside, why worry about Social Security? These new
boomers will help pay for the bankruptcy of the Social Security system
predicted for whatever year it's predicted for, probably something like 2035.
These Social Security people are the same guys that told us we were going to
run out of coal in 2008 and oil in 2023. And now when are we going to run out
of coal - 2120? I'm not saying earning 2% on our Social Security is any good. I'd
much prefer to have that money earning the 15% stocks went up this year. I
digress.
So here's my prediction: another baby boom is upon us, and
the year for Social Security's predicted bankruptcy will change 10 more times.
© 2007 Dime Brothers
Reader Comments:
Sure there might be a baby boom, but speaking from a PhD candidate perspective ... is this a good thing? Think about the movie "Idiocracy" without the crazy extrapolation. The poor unfit people are having way more kids than those who are focusing on their carrers in their 20s. So what we are having is a few people with "normal" talents and many with below average skills due to lack of resources and nurture of them as kids. I look around me and see very few people I know having kids and all would make excellent parents. Some even swear of having kids and those would probably be the best parents of all. The baby boom is even a deeper division than the rich and poor.
Swear off kids (Positive)
I know a guy at work who swears off having kids. In his case, it is definitely the right choice. Mark knows what I'm talking about! ;)
That's a good question. I tried to leave out the positive or negative connotation. But since I do have an opinion...I used to generally think that Americans would be emulating their European neighbors' model of having fewer and fewer kids. I think not having kids is a bit selfish. It's another way for an individual to avoid commitment. This is the "me" generation, after all. And where did we learn this "me-ness" from? The baby boomers! Sure it's fun to not have any responsibility, and I definitely don't advocate getting involved in a relationship just to have kids or what have you. But I think our "me" generation is learning something, both rich and poor. We're learning about the importance of community. We have a desire to belong to something, and because we all still believe in the inherent goodness of America, this is one way in which we can contribute to that. I'm still fleshing out the idea of the goodness of the new baby boom, in that I hope it can be more equitable than the last. I don't want to see positive economic growth influence a selfish pattern of development in which everyone has "got his." And I don't think we will. The rise of urban living will hopefully make the new baby boom more equitable for rich and poor, improving the communities that people from all economic backgrounds live in.
A European model of child rearing would doom this country, so hopefully we don't keep going down that road. Growing US businesses offer more jobs, and those jobs can be filled overseas, by immigrants in the US, or by born-and-raised US citizens. Currently and in our future, jobs will be filled by a mix of all three, but if there aren't enough homegrown Americans to fill what's needed, that'll encourage businesses to lean on the other two groups. Leaning towards immigrants isn't necessarily bad - at least the US has the space to support many of them (maybe not the resources, though), and they do a lot of the "dirty work". But homegrowners can help the economy without creating the need to rely on policy-making and the controversy of immigration/sending jobs overseas. Overall, I hope for a little boom.
To continue with the baby theme, an article trying to explain scientifically why less babies are being made. I still say it's because we're contracting out baby-making to countries like Mexico and India.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070217/sc_livescience/whywomenhavefewerbabies
As mentioned first on this site, here's a link talking about the recent
semi-baby boom in the US.
Almost a full year ago, on February 14, 2007, I declared a baby boom upon us.
Here's the article.
Here's a
link to an article on the recent mini-baby-boom.
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