Comments by "Tannman" (@tann_man) on "Why Fertility is Collapsing: Shocking Stats with @MoreBirths" video.

Somebody gets it. Everything is downstream from the debasement of currency.
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This guy misses the forest for the trees on apartments. Using the state to violently prevent builders from providing what people want is evil and produces worse outcomes Which is more antinatal? cost of housing or size of housing? If building more apartments improves housing affordability (including for sfh) does that not overcome the limited size? COL for young adults especially housing ($/sqft/wage) has deep effects on more/earlier/bigger family formation. Young male prosperity relative to COL makes it easier to afford large housing on their own, leave their parents house and find a wife earlier and more often which leads to higher fertility. lower housing costs means these young men can move out and their boomer parents can size down. Given richer men are likely to be financially secure and have higher fertility and not live in their parents house and young women (like any normal human) want access to more wealth and status, these two marry and start families more often. This is what we saw during the baby boom. Asia is low fertility in large part because just affording a bug pod for a single young person is expensive. The only large affordable housing is in the countryside where there are no jobs or young women.
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@skylinefever a certain group of bankers who are known for coin clipping really did a number on German's prosperity.
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@derek4412 price matters. mcmansions are 500k in most the of the US if not more. When they constitute most of the supply it means young fertile adult children can't/don't buy homes and instead live in their parent's mcmansion which is low fertility. Additionally the suburban landscape seems to induce a generational anti-social decay (which reminds me of J.D. Unwin's observation of generational decay of sexual morays). In the 20th century when the first generation moved into suburbs the highly social community practices were brought with them but by the third generation much of that previous momentum has disappeared. The friction of the isolating, desolate, car dependent suburban environment halted pro-community behavior by the third generation.
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Excerpt from Arctotherium's "The Western European Marriage Pattern": "The WEMP created a negative feedback loop on population through the following mechanism: prosperity makes it easier for young men to form their own household early, which leads to more universal and younger marriage, which leads to higher fertility and thus population boom, which, in the context of a Malthusian agrarian economy, leads to poverty, which makes it harder for young men to form households, which leads to later and less frequent marriage, which leads to population decline, which leads to prosperity. This allowed for maintaining population below the Malthusian subsistence limit (and thus raising living standards) without active use of contraception or infanticide (as in East Asia), extremely high disease burden (as in sub-Saharan Africa), or constant warfare with correspondingly high mortality (as in Eastern Europe)."
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@derek4412 It's not urbanization vs suburbinization. It's bad suburbinization vs good suburbinization. The current American suburbs are devoid of any communal elements. Its a maze of identical houses only surrounded by major car roadways creating an island. You can build good suburbs with enough space if you include mixed housing, mixed commercial builds, and less dangerous paths connecting them. " can’t imagine walking with multiple kids on sidewalks only inches from busy streets" You can't imagine safe walk-able pathways. away from dangerous roads. We have a housing shortage. We need building generally. All housing building of any type dampens price pressure on all other types of housing. Building more whether horizontal or vertical will result in children leaving their parent's basement and boomers letting go of their chokehold on large housing. COL for young adults especially housing ($/sqft/wage) has deep effects on more/earlier/bigger family formation.
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@derek4412 no we're not entirely stuck. It is possible to incrementally improve our environments. We should not accept anything less. you're right tear downs aren't feasible. relaxing zoning/building regulations so newer better more mixed spaces can be built up is a good start. When old buildings and infrastructure does need to get torn down or we can replace it with better designs. We can also identify wasted space, empty lots, unused land for urban renewal. I'm from the suburbs of a rapidly growing metro. A few miles farther out they are building cookie cutter suburbs like mad which is both good and bad. Good because at least we're building which is keeping home prices some of the most affordable in the nation (but they're still too high, hopefully these builds can alleviate some of that), and bad because of their un-ideal American suburb design. high COL has very little to do with lots of elderly. If there is a low supply of working age people the young could demand higher wages because the demand for them is higher than their supply. It depends entirely on the scale to which central bankers further debase the currency and the scale of scarcity government involvement inherently creates.
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American suburbs could be much better. Currently they're desolate rows of single family houses which is isolating and makes us depend on driving a car to get anywhere or do anything.
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@aleidius192 You're creating a false dichotomy. European suburbs are much better, Small town USA though mostly hollowed out were much better, small cities are alright, villages are nice too. The only options aren't urban hives or american suburbs. Suburban homes are designed for privacy, with large lots, and fences which discourage neighborly interaction. When the vast majority of your social interaction is only with your siblings and parents that IS isolating. Community is much more than just family. Suburbs are car centric. In order to get anywhere or do anything you must drive. This increases the friction for casual communal interaction. It also makes us less active and more obese, not to mention all of the accident deaths, particulates and pollutants driving produces. People like kids or the elderly who can't drive are stranded within the confines of the rows of identical houses. There is no destination, nowhere to go except to other rows of houses which means less people walking and more people driving. It also means adults must drive to work usually from far outside the city to the city center which increases congestion and commute time which means less time for better more social activities. American suburbs lack communal places like markets, shops, cafes, boutiques, squares, community centers, bars, grocery stores, dance halls, etc... Mix use is the way to go but we made those illegal in most places (zoning/building regulations).
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The suburban landscape seems to induce a generational anti-social decay (which reminds me of J.D. Unwin's observation of generational decay of sexual morays). In the 20th century when the first generation moved into suburbs the highly social community practices were brought with them but by the third generation much of that previous momentum has disappeared. The friction of the isolating, desolate, car dependent suburban environment halted pro-community behavior by the third generation.
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@georginawhitby1320 You're wrong. More building units like an apartment complex significantly increases the overall housing supply in the area relative to demand, thus exerting downward pressure on home prices. Potential homebuyers consider apartments as viable alternatives to single-family homes, especially if they offer comparable amenities. More competition = lower prices. Why do you think NIMBYs are so adamant against buildings? It's not because their asset would increase in value.
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beauty is very much related to success. If you are hot you are much more likely to have a better life and be more successful and pass that experience on to you children.
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the marriage = good statistics are misleading. They're tainted by selection bias, reverse causation, survivorship bias, and often pollute the unmarried sample by including divorcees. When you exclude the bottom performing half of your sample and instead add them to your control, you have a problem.
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"Married men make more." They work a lot more hours and have less disposable income because their expenses are way higher. This first fact is said so confidently as if its an objectively good thing but it's at best a wash.
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Most of the studies I've read that people cite to claim "marriage good for men" compare unmarried men vs married men. Only some of them look at never married and all of them suffer from cohort contamination, certain types of men get married and certain types of men never marry. Those that never marry often are more risk taking or unfit/unhealthy to marry. There is no fair rigorous comparisons of the life outcomes of otherwise normal average men average married outcome vs never married. I'm sure successful marriages are good long term. The single best predictor of long term physical and mental health are good relationships/social climate. But those are the vast minority of marriages. I've seen a few well reasoned ad hoc comparisons and they seem to indicate that if you tease out the risk vs benefits of each life paths marriage on the average is a losing a bet.
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@dianaaugustine5438 juice isn't worth the squeeze. Too much risk too much cost too little return.
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