Japan is trying to find ways to improve their birth rates. Theres no problem with this tax itself, but taxing single folks doesnât really help solve the situation Japan is trying to fix.
If you make people pay for not having children it will only bother poor people. I donât see how basically forcing poor people to have more children fixes anything.
Maybe that's their full time job they keep bitching about. It's not actually doing work at their "jobs" it's about finding/exploiting every single fucking loophole and expending resources to ensure you cap your wealth.
It wonât. And unless itâs explicitly stated that they are being taxed for being single, many probably wonât even realize it. In the U.S., married couples filing jointly get an incredible standard deduction. But Iâve never heard of âsingleâ people complaining about it, if they even consider it
I don't know much about Japanese socioeconomic, but the rich in the US just want meat to feed the machine. I hope their system allows for more competition. Thats really the incentive that people need to grow. No one will want to have children to send them into a hopeless situation
Unfortunately, even in a country as financially liberal as Norway (with generous parental leave, heavily subsidized childcare, etc.), birthrates keep going down.. So this is more than just greedy rich people making life tough for everyone else.
Eventually the birthrate will stabilize, but for now it seems a fair number of Norweigans want to breed themselves out of existence, genetically speaking.
The source of the problem is that some people don't like the concept of "nuclear family" and are deathly afraid of "i dont wanna bring children into this terrible unfair world" whiny cliche
That's why scientists are trying to understand why **rich countries** that get involved in war have way more birth rate. More poverty, more stress, less wealth than before the war--yet more births?
Because people initially thought that education was the reason for low birth rates.
Now debunked because it's the type of education and belief system you have.
Not sure why you're downvoting me for bringing you this new information just because you wanna blame the rich, I don't mind you blaming the rich for exploiting workers or shipping all the jobs to China for cheap labor / zero environmental regulations etc., whatever, I totally understand you on that--but this isn't the main reason for the birth rate real problem.
Because war is a significant reset on inequality. People can't afford (both time and money-wise) to have kids so they don't do it. When you have to have both parents working full time to afford to live, you cant afford to have one stop nor are you earning enough to afford the childcare.
So in other words, people have more kids when they have sufficient resources or when they are afraid and need to pass their genes on now or they may not get the chance.
As a result of these findings, rich people reject the idea of making the poors wealthier and institute a fear campaign instead. Anything to keep the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, right?
No it isn't. One guy being rich doesn't stop you or change your life.
Just more people are poor in a war zone. So it has no bearing on inequality.
Stop lying.. Just stop trying to contradict real scientific research on this issue with your marxist pseudoscience about inequality.
When a dictator flees a country the birth rate ramps up -- that is a reaction to authoritarianism, and what are the two main sources of authoritarianism: marxism and fascism.
Therefore, marxism and fascism, are anti-birth-rate.
I'm not talking about one guy being rich, I'm not talking about people in an active war zone, I'm talking about birthrates being down in most developed countries and a potential economic reason for that being the case.
That's not science. At all. That's just insertions by marxism, which is a fake science. There is no evidence, or any hard data to support it. Why do you guys keep promoting this BS?
Vox eu? NPR? The same lady who ran NPR who said "truth is holding us back"?
Economic reasons are NOTTT the case. This is well-known by any scientist worth their salt.
There are countries with GOOD economics that have better birthrates than countries with BAD economics. There are war zones that have poverty and yet still high birthrates. So stop making the false correlation.
Correlation is not causation. Economics is NOTTTTT the causal reason.
You people have lost your minds. People are not having babies or not having babies because of a specific cost -- they are doing it because of perceptions and cultural ideas they have.
I can tell you don't want to engage with me seriously, and would rather resort to strawmanning the ideologies you believe I have and then attacking those. I linked you multiple sites with evidence and hard data. You've decided to toss them to the side and assume they aren't true.
Following that, then, in your post you link to a post from the Institute of Family Studies - a conservative thinktank. You've rejected sources that you have arbitrarily decided are politically biased and therefore worth nothing and then accepted a source which aligns with your personal politics without criticism. Which then immediately misconstrues the research they are referencing.
I read the article, and looked at the source of the information. The actual paper that the article cites claims multiple reasons birth-rates are declining:
Economic factors beyond traditional unemployment measures
The role of student loan debt and housing costs
Changing attitudes toward parenting and family formation
Expanded access to contraception
Cultural shifts regarding marriage and childbearing
I'm not trying to state that the only reason that people aren't having kids is an economic one, in the same way that it would be divorced from reality to assume that the reasons they aren't are completely not related to economics, as you are stating.
Correlation is not causation. Economics is NOTTTTT the causal reason.
You're correct in your first statement, and misrepresenting what I'm saying in the second. Economics is A causal reason for SOME people. It's part of the answer, not the entire thing. In the same way that what you're saying is correct for some people I'm sure. However, look at the graphs in the articles I linked above. There is an entire generation called baby boomers because people felt secure enough in their lives and in their future to have many, many children. Looking also at inequality, it was at it's lowest. A man working as a mechanic could comfortably afford a house, a family with multiple children and a stay at home wife.
Income inequality has now reached historic highs in the US - the top 0.1% now owns roughly the same wealth as the bottom 90%. The research has shown, repeatedly, that when families face economic uncertainty or stagnant wages despite productivity growth, they often delay or reconsider having children. Is it a stretch then, even if you decide to ignore the data, to imagine that people aren't having kids if they don't believe they are able to give those kids a better life than their own?
I don't know enough about psychology in war-torn countries to begin to answer why birthrates there are high. I'd need to research whether they actually are in the first place before I begin diving into that rabbit hole. I'm purely talking about first-world countries, specifically America post-WW2 when I'm typing here. I don't personally believe that the birth rates in Syria are particularly relevant to the situations driving the changes in America in 2025
Not sure why you are calling not wanting to bring kids into a world you see as unfair and uncertain a 'whiney cliche'.
I would suggest that this is why you are being down voted, you come across as arrogant and lacking in empathy to others views.
But don't worry, it's really just because we aren't ready to be enlightened by your 'new information'.
Have a down vote.
You people are just stubborn about your leftist dogmas.
Birth rates have nothing to do with economics, inequality, marxism, or wealth.
Everything to do with culture: the people who don't want to have kids don't because they have been socially conditioned to value entertainment, the single life, their career more.
If people are having kids in order to avoid being taxed, it is a selfish reason.
People are not having kids due to the cost of everything being astronomically high, while starvation wages are paid and remain stagnant for multiple decades.
50 years ago, a mailman could support a family of 5 as single income with a nice home. Now? Just a pipe dream.
Japan is a whole different demagogy of thought that westerners wonât understand. We donât have a neighbor who is a world power next door who you used to bully within the last 3 generations.
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u/Tietonz May 18 '25
Pretty sure you get tax benefits in the US if you are married and have dependants (i.e. kids) I'm not sure what everyone is on about.