by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
Yes, there is one coming — right here, in the United States.
Now maybe you believe the jab campaign has destroyed fertility and maybe you don’t but it doesn’t matter when you get down to it. The US has ruined, over the space of three or more decades, both the incentives and desire for young people to have children.
There are an utterly huge number of factors at play here — too many to actually list them all — but I’ll list a few.
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- Everyone has to go to college. That would be nice if a semester’s tuition and books could be earned spinning pizzas or serving drinks at night. It can’t. It used to be able to, and not that long ago either; I was able to do it. But the edifices of so-called “higher education” have combined with wild-eyed expectations of luxury accommodations and sushi bars instead of a mess-hall line food experience along with wild-eyed views of overhead in other areas, never mind crazy-land text publishing deals to turn college into something that comes with a five-figure price tag — per year. This in turn means most graduate with debt and that means inhibiting spending that money on family formation.
- Female fertility peaks at 24, like it or not. By the time you’re 30 you had better have a plan and by the time you’re 35 every kid you intend to make should be breathing on his or her own. Why? Because nobody owes you a tomorrow and beyond 55 or so it becomes a more-tenuous proposition. This is not just limited to women; a parent dropping dead is very bad for a kid’s psyche, never mind their standard of living. Yes, there are exceptions, I know — and the media is full of them. Nonetheless these are facts.
- No, you cannot have it all — at least not if you want lots of, and healthy, families. Simply put racking up the cost of living in all respects (housing and medical being two of the big ones) to the point that one median income cannot support a family of four means you will get all manner of less-than-good outcomes. Sorry, that’s a fact too. Every kid who goes on to be a gang-banger or welfare dependent is one that does nothing for the future generation, and likely does not create another generation of productive citizens. People like to link this to religion, particularly on the right, but it isn’t founded there; that’s a symptom rather than a cause. Going to church will not make you a good person, in short; if you think so I’d like to introduce you to a bunch of Catholic priests who thought buggering little boys was a fine way to pass the time.
- Driving labor offshore guarantees those on the left side of the bell curve become unproductive. Like it or not intelligence and capacity is a normally-distributed thing. There has to be an answer to the question of “what does a person with an 80IQ do that (1) is productive and provides meaning to their life and (2) allows them to have a family and live in dignity?” For everyone with a 120IQ there is someone who has an 80IQ and you must have a place for both of them in a productive society. When you offshore all the lower-skill labor — or worse, import people with 80IQs and no education — you ruin the capacity of those people to live a reasonably-full and rewarding life.
- Filling seats with unqualified butts, or worse those that extract funds from others, makes it much worse. Do you want the guy who got a D- in anatomy operating on you? Well? How about the dude who’s just filling a seat running a train that can wreck and catch on fire, or someone flying an aircraft? Again there has to be productive labor at a reasonable standard of living for all or you have no society in general, but you can’t shove people “up the curve” without serious consequence both to safety and to cost, and thus doing so screws everyone.
Well, we’ve done all the above. Now we have a birth deficit and its getting worse. It won’t get better by doing more of what we have thus far.
Think about this folks: Who’s going to buy the houses that the boomers (or you) currently live in and at what price will they be able to do so, and at what rate of interest?
Oh, you think everyone who currently lives in a big Blue City (NY, Chicago, etc.) is going to move to East-bufuistan and buy your house for cash since they sold theirs in a much-higher cost of living place? That’s nice. Where are you going to live? The person who owns a house now gets no benefit from a bubble: He sells a bubble house and then buys a bubble house; the net is negligible.
The person who is just getting going, on the other hand, gets hosed. That’s the person who can’t make it work, and that, by the way, is who has to make it work if you want a next generation of productive taxpaying citizens.
So who benefits?
You don’t, if you own a house; indeed you lose as the property taxes continue to go up.
You only “benefit” when you die and you can’t enjoy it anymore, can you so in reality the only people who “benefit” are your heirs or if you reverse-mortgage it or similar before dying and spend it all. But then you don’t have a house anymore, do you?
Still think that sort of bubble was ever a good idea? Well, other than if you’re a Realtor and get paid a percentage, or a city council (or county commission) jackass that funds your favorite pet diversity project with property taxes that are a percentage of value! Why, pray tell, isn’t a house assessed for property taxes on utility? For example, $100 per bedroom, $25 per half bath, $50 per full bath and $25 per enclosed parking space?
Oh, but you say, the rich person should pay more! Why? Does his kid consume more instruction than the poor child in school? No. Does he consume more police or fire resource? It’s probably the other way around!
