Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 451: It Was a Pleasure to Burn

(+) Yeah! (+)

"This is the fault of non-whites."

Just IMAGINE a Presidential Candidate saying that in the 90's. It would end their career. For Trump it's just a thursday. Because enough of our country is racist to let this continue.

Except that I don't think the incentives would be as effective as you're assuming. Unless we create a dystopia where basic living is impossible with government subsidies for having kids. So either we make women second-class citizens, or we make everyone second-class citizens

Either way, the point is that people have way less kids when they have more options in life. Kids are difficult and a massive time investment.

Yeah, virtually the whole first world has been trying to increase birthrate and nothing seems to work. The USA has a stable population from births that is slowly rising from immigration actually so I don't think we need to do anything.

I mean Trump removed the child tax credit and it immediately caused issues until Biden brought it back, so the incentives definitely work. But yeah there's a ceiling. It's been fine in the US due to good levels of immigration (which has also helped e.g. Japan) but that is obviously at risk. And Trump might take the child tax credit away again too, if desperate for short term tax revenue.

Bay area ATC tower now has 0 staff. Apparently it's been understaffed and poorly run for over a year, and the current admin's solution was to bring in a new contractor (probably good) but with massively reduced salaries (obviously bad). And the FAA will not staff it.

So essentially, air travel is becoming a second class priority in the US, when it used to be an unrivaled jewel of our infrastructure. At least all the airline investors got rich off their $60 bil bailout 5 years ago.

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CASMATEO/bulletins/3cfa1e0
https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/12i558z/san_carlos_sql_tower_in_crisis/

Trump isn't going to worry about collecting more taxes. He knows there's a much better source of funds for government spending - the printers at the Fed. From his point of view, it only has to work for 4 years. At some point, Democrats will be in office again and if that's when massive inflation hits, all the better.

https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/01/29/bill-criminalizing-votes-for-immigrant-sanctuary-policies-constitutionally-suspect/

Included in the governors wide-ranging proposal to coordinate with the Trump Administration on mass immigrant detentions and deportations is a provision that creates a Class E felony for public officials who vote to adopt or enact sanctuary policies. Sanctuary policies can shield undocumented immigrants and limit cooperation with enforcement action
The felony charge, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $3,000 fine, would apply to any public official who votes in favor of a sanctuary law, policy or on non-binding resolutions.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/014475ac.jpg
cool cool cool

10 days in and we're already at "vote for dear leader's policies or go to jail"

Seanchan posted...

Hey guys, what if we just completed eliminated the term "gender"? You guys cool with that?!?

depends, are we eliminating it in the cool anarchist way or the horrific authoritarian way

(just kidding i know which way)

KamikazePotato posted...

The only way to significantly raise replacement level would essentially be to make women second-class citizens again.

I think you could also do things that make raising a kid cheaper and easier. More parental leave and flexible hours at workplaces. Affordable day care options. Affordable health care (for the kids and especially for the mom), food programs and free activities for kids. Strong public school options. Lots of free or cheap support for both the kids and parents.

That is the kind of incentive I think would actually work in making people want to have kids more. Or at least be more effective than a tax credit.

i still like hungary's policy when it comes to this.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/have-four-or-more-babies-in-hungary-and-youll-pay-no-income-tax-for-life.html

don't know how well it's going but conceptually a program that supports the ideas of families, including grandparents being paid to help, should go a long way for stability.

red_sox_777 posted...

Trump isn't going to worry about collecting more taxes. He knows there's a much better source of funds for government spending - the printers at the Fed. From his point of view, it only has to work for 4 years. At some point, Democrats will be in office again and if that's when massive inflation hits, all the better.

It could easily hit before 4 years if he doesn't do it properly, or the market is more sensitive than it was in his first term. The way Biden left the economy actually make it much riskier to print a bunch and cut rates, because it could bring on all the inflation that was delayed, all at once.

He could also be going for a dictatorship or otherwise not intending to pass off the inflation to a future Democrat. In that case it doesn't matter if inflation hits in 1 year or 4 years, he's still gonna end up in power.

If youre a middle class family, four kids will probably give you enough to equal no income tax already tbh.

I only have two, and during Bidens first and second years my tax returns were FAT.

Significantly less in the last two years, but Im not 100% if it was a policy change or entirely because of the withholdings change at my job when we got bought out tbh.

Oh hey this article just popped up literally two hours ago.

https://www.ft.com/content/2f4e8e43-ab36-4703-b168-0ab56a0a32bc

The baby gap: why governments cant pay their way to higher birth rates
Governments offer a catalogue of creative incentives for childbearing yet fertility rates just keep dropping

Maniac64 posted...

I think you could also do things that make raising a kid cheaper and easier. More parental leave and flexible hours at workplaces. Affordable day care options. Affordable health care (for the kids and especially for the mom), food programs and free activities for kids. Strong public school options. Lots of free or cheap support for both the kids and parents.

All that sounds like great ideas! Zero chance of it ever being implemented though

Maniac64 posted...

I think you could also do things that make raising a kid cheaper and easier. More parental leave and flexible hours at workplaces. Affordable day care options. Affordable health care (for the kids and especially for the mom), food programs and free activities for kids. Strong public school options. Lots of free or cheap support for both the kids and parents.

All great ideas, but Europe has most of this stuff already and still has the same declining birth rate issues.

Wanglicious posted...

i still like hungary's policy when it comes to this.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/have-four-or-more-babies-in-hungary-and-youll-pay-no-income-tax-for-life.html

don't know how well it's going but conceptually a program that supports the ideas of families, including grandparents being paid to help, should go a long way for stability.

Apparently it didn't help, flat birth rate over the last 6 years there. Although it did go up a bit in 2014.

It makes sense that authoritarianism is a great contraceptive. People need to be rich in Maslow's needs to feel confident in having a child. Tax incentives work great when you're in a free country and you're just missing some money. Day care and schooling options work great when you're missing time and energy (although those can be bought with money too). But if you're in a dictatorship, money isn't really going to do much.

Wanglicious posted...

i still like hungary's policy when it comes to this.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/have-four-or-more-babies-in-hungary-and-youll-pay-no-income-tax-for-life.html

don't know how well it's going but conceptually a program that supports the ideas of families, including grandparents being paid to help, should go a long way for stability.

Hungarys birth rate has actually fallen again the last few years, and though it rose during the 2010s it never got anywhere near replacement rate.

This is basically what were saying, the reasons people are not having as many children are not just economic. While economic incentives can help people who already want children but are putting it off for economic purposes have children, its not going to make people who dont want children want children. Honestly I dont think anything can.

Numerous modern studies have found that single women are considerably happier than single men. I recall one study suggesting that the happiest demographic of all might be... a childless woman in her 40s. If the idea that "childless women always grow up resentful, regretful, unhappy, and alone" was ever accurate, it's certainly LESS accurate now.

Economic incentives only go so far if more and more women realize they might be happier without children than with them.

YoBlazer posted...

Economic incentives only go so far if more and more women realize they might be happier without children than with them.

The point is there's a ton of people who want kids, or more kids, and can't afford it so they don't.

Yes the polarization between single people and multi-child families will become more extreme, but overall with a better economy, the birth rate will go up if everyone who wants more kids is able to do it.

Also, one sentiment among women I've seen grow more and more over the years is that they do NOT want to get pregnant, even if they might theoretically want kids. The reality of pregnancy and what it does to the female body is scary. When you aren't expected by society to have kids as a matter of course, putting yourself through a 9-month ordeal that could wreck your health and body suddenly starts looking like a bad idea.

YoBlazer posted...

Numerous modern studies have found that single women are considerably happier than single men. I recall one study suggesting that the happiest demographic of all might be... a childless woman in her 40s. If the idea that "childless women always grow up resentful, regretful, unhappy, and alone" was ever accurate, it's certainly LESS accurate now.

Economic incentives only go so far if more and more women realize they might be happier without children than with them.

The gender pay gap is also largely driven by the effect of having children so that makes sense. Only children see significantly better outcomes due to more resources as well. Societies just need to adapt to falling birth rates instead of attempting to dodge them.

YoBlazer posted...

I recall one study suggesting that the happiest demographic of all might be... a childless woman in her 40s.

Oof. In a couple of years if I suggest to my wife that she should be happy that we weren't able to have children I suspect she might murder me. But she might just be the exception to prove the rule :)

I think 'heterosexual woman dating a guy' is also the least-happiest demographic.

More people in general are unhappy and medicated than ever before. Single adult men are probably the most unhappy group of people by a mile Id guess because a lot of them dont have ANY friends where single women still probably at least have friend circles to socialize with at worst

KamikazePotato posted...

I think 'heterosexual woman dating a guy' is also the least-happiest demographic.

Id say most likely and from the evidence Ive seen its probably older Gen X men which is likely very, very related to how theyre screwing us all with the way they vote. The number one Trump demographic by a long way.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Id like to see those sources, because everything Ive read says women are more unhappy and medicated than ever.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241287960

That's one. I'm confident there are other studies which support similar conclusions, but I'm not gonna bother looking them up.

swordz9 posted...

More people in general are unhappy and medicated than ever before. Single adult men are probably the most unhappy group of people by a mile Id guess because a lot of them dont have ANY friends where single women still probably at least have friend circles to socialize with at worst

Yeah, I'm not even sure I'd argue that single women are HAPPY, just that they are clearly less unhappy than single men, and largely for the reasons you mentioned. Women have a much easier time forming and maintaining human connections outside of coupling. A single man is more likely to find himself completely alone.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Please tell me this is fake news because jesus christ.

sadly, real

Women get approached in more than just dating. So they tend to have a more robust social life than men. All of my female friends and coworkers have pretty robust social lives, while only about half of the dudes I know have as much.

More and more people are unhappy than ever because of social media addiction. It affects men and women in different ways, but the end result is unhappiness, jealousy, anger, and anxiety.

swordz9 posted...

Single adult men are probably the most unhappy group of people by a mile Id guess because a lot of them dont have ANY friends where single women still probably at least have friend circles to socialize with at worst

Warning: kind of a rambling post incoming but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and this post made me want to try to those thoughts into words.

So as someone who has experienced both it definitely does suck in many ways to be a single adult man. My life has gotten markedly better since transitioning, even despite having to deal with transphobia (and, to an extent, misogyny) now. It's hard to say how much of my unhappiness before was because of being "stuck in the wrong body"* versus it being awful to be a man more objectively, but it feels like the latter was a big part of it.

And it's weird to talk about this because like. Institutionally, societally, being a woman and/or trans is fuckin awful, way worse than being a cis man. There's really no debating that, as much as some people try. But interpersonally I've only been treated way, way better. I'm closer to my friends and family, everyone seems more comfortable around me and with expressing affection towards me, and dating has literally never been easier in my life.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post except to say that men's unhappiness is a hard problem to solve, especially when, frankly, a lot of it is men making each other and themselves unhappy. If we're talking institutional discrimination you can make a law against it; you can't make a law that says "men must be more supportive of and kind to each other". And the greatest social movement to address this issue is, despite the name, feminism -- and we've all seen what unhappy men think of feminism and feminists.

*Not exactly my experience but an easy way to think about it for the purposes of this post.

If you're a man who isn't a piece of shit it's actually a fairly hard time to be alive honestly if things aren't going well.

Like yes there is some privilege to being a cis man, but it's entirely dependent on your pre-existing living conditions. If you're not the type to exploit that or if you lack any real footing to (like for example you're poor) you're not really in a better spot than the more oppressed groups.

In some ways you're worse off because you have less avenues for support systems and are treated as the enemy by basically everyone who is systematically oppressed while still having nothing in common with the oppressors.

So yeah it's an easy time to feel pretty alone is what I'm saying.

Lopen posted...

and are treated as the enemy by basically everyone who is systematically oppressed

Ridiculous hyperbole. It's talk like that that turns young guys towards the incel/men's rights/maga indoctrination machine.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:on5oeywiqx32fh2zau473wz6/post/3lgy6bxk6is26

NYT reporting that staffing was "not normal" at the DC Air Traffic Controllers last night. Which is to say, they had one ATC - a notoriously very chill and relaxed job - trying to do what they would normally assign two controllers to do.

"hmmmmm"

that's a shame about hungary's stats. was hoping it would've had some success because i like that program as it mixes up tax breaks with a stronger family unit, which i absolutely support and want to see more of.

as for who's unhappy more, yeah if you're a single dude in your teens or 20s you're at the bottom. most don't even have a handful of friends, their dating prospects are absolute garbage with a third being virgins still in their mid-20s, and with no chance of getting a home of their own either they're forced to compete with guys in their 30s and 40s who do have the bells and whistles. no shot for growth or success. would they categorize themselves as "unhappy," probably not with that exact language. would they be, absolutely. just gotta see the suicide stats to get that one. nobody cares about 'em, so things spiral downwards, not up.

Kenri posted...

And the greatest social movement to address this issue is, despite the name, feminism -- and we've all seen what unhappy men think of feminism and feminists.

This is a great point, and I think a huge portion of 3rd wave anti-feminism is the "crabs in a bucket" syndrome. Feminist ideas are based in pretty standard American-style individual freedom, libertarian in a lot of ways, that most anyone can agree with. But if you're destined to be unhappy, you might not want that.

Like if you're 45 and spent 20 years miserable but apparently you could've just chosen to be happier with some mild worldview and behavioral changes, that is kinda infuriating. So you take the (blue in the movie, red IRL) pill.

Also if you're a lonely single man JOIN A DAMN CLUB. There's something for everyone, and they are usually desperate for new engaged members. You will quickly have more activities than you can fit in your week. They exist in suburbs and rural communities too, maybe even moreso than bigger cities.

Physical crafts (knitting, wood, metal, electronics)
Digital crafts (gamedev, photoshop, blender)
Exercise (running, climbing, dance)
Language
Bars & clubbing
Board games

Most will say they are too awkward and introverted to go to a club, but I assure you if you go to your local gamedev, chess, or arduino meetups, you will not be surrounded by a bunch of boisterous extroverts.

It's weird because so much manosphere media targeting sad men is about this stuff. Learn a language, lift weights, download Rust and make a game. They'll watch hundreds of hours of podcasts telling them to do stuff, and they won't even try. Maybe because the deeper manosphere content is all about staying miserable, and directing anger at women and minorities. But at some point you have to blame the adult who choses anger over community.

I'm an angry adult...

...but I'm also happy with where I am in life.

But what if youre a single adult man who is also suffering from conditions that would prevent you from being able to join any such clubs? Lots of adult males also seem to suffer from anxiety and crippling lack of social skills on top of being depressed!

swordz9 posted...

But what if youre a single adult man who is also suffering from conditions that would prevent you from being able to join any such clubs? Lots of adult males also seem to suffer from anxiety and crippling lack of social skills on top of being depressed!

foolm0r0n posted...

Most will say they are too awkward and introverted to go to a club, but I assure you if you go to your local gamedev, chess, or arduino meetups, you will not be surrounded by a bunch of boisterous extroverts.

And if all else fails, compete in a Smash tourney

swordz9 posted...

Lots of adult males also seem to suffer from anxiety and crippling lack of social skills on top of being depressed!

misery loves company.

foolm0r0n posted...

Also if you're a lonely single man JOIN A DAMN CLUB

I think there's a significant element of this about not wanting to appear "gay". "Oh you have no girlfriend/wife, no friends, and you want to do an activity that involves hanging out with a bunch of random guys? Are you..." It's utter nonsense and only contributes to the problem, but that perception is not nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApuauYGKTl8

Now he is saying return to office by February 6th? That's a helluva lot less than 30 days. I'll still be waiting for the official word to filter down through management.

i know people with cbas with remote in them through 2028 that have no plans on returning and legally speaking I don't think they can force them to (or fire them for it)

Forceful_Dragon posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApuauYGKTl8

Now he is saying return to office by February 6th? That's a helluva lot less than 30 days. I'll still be waiting for the official word to filter down through management.

Are you in a bargaining unit?

Seanchan posted...

Are you in a bargaining unit?

Yes, covered by NTEU which requires a 30 day notice.

At this point I'm not even sure the 30 days has started.

On the 24th we received an e-mail stating:

The OPM guidance specifies that by 5 pm on January 24, agencies should revise their telework policy to state that eligible employees must work full-time at their respective duty stations, subject to certain exceptions. The guidance recommends that agencies set a target date of approximately 30 days for full compliance with the Presidential Memorandum, subject to any exclusions granted by the agency and any collective bargaining obligations.

Treasury intends to fully comply with the Presidential Memorandum, and we are currently evaluating how it will apply to Treasury employees. We will provide additional information as soon as possible. Employees will receive notice before any changes in their telework or remote work status are implemented.

Then we got the "fork" email on January 28th

And then a couple emails clarifying details about the fork email. But nothing else about return to work and certainly no actual deadline has been communicated for the return to office.

FFDragon posted...

legally speaking I don't think they can force them to (or fire them for it)

Right. If i'm following everything being communicated by management then I don't see how I could be fired.

Or if I somehow still am then I'll probably have a heck of a wrongful termination case :shrug:

I am not in a bargaining unit but only got my telework officially cancelled today. Fortunately, there are extenuating circumstances (that I won't get into) that are supposed to mean I'm not back in office full time until the beginning of March. But god knows that could get changed and they'll start trying to cram us in sooner. I just have no union protection available.

foolm0r0n posted...

Also if you're a lonely single man JOIN A DAMN CLUB. There's something for everyone, and they are usually desperate for new engaged members. You will quickly have more activities than you can fit in your week. They exist in suburbs and rural communities too, maybe even moreso than bigger cities.

I will say that despite being very introverted I've somehow made a staggering amount of good friends, and an even more expansive amount of good acquaintances, and it all started from joining public groups. It's kind of hard to classify between the two, but there's at least 50 people who I hang out with or talk to on a regular basis, and it's all from meeting a handful of people at events, and being introduced to their friends, and then having new people join the events, and bringing them in our friend group, and then spending more time with each other outside of the events the more we got to know each other.

As someone who went through a very difficult time period in my 20s and had cut off contact with my old friends, suddenly realizing I had somehow made so many new ones so easily was quite a shock. It's worth looking into what hobby groups, etc. are in your area from time to time and just joining in.

YoBlazer posted...

Ridiculous hyperbole. It's talk like that that turns young guys towards the incel/men's rights/maga indoctrination machine.

Not so ridiculous as you would think, though I'm speaking through the viewpoint of someone who is not a "visibly oppressed" by being very much a cis-male but am a noncamp bi. I have gotten full-on hateful stares even eating in a restaurant alone within the past month and if I didnt have my best friends of fifteen years and a local LGBTQ+ community organization having my back I'd probably be in a somehow darker place. Dead, that is, not maga-koolaid'd.

But then I'm also not young, am I?

swordz9 posted...

But what if youre a single adult man who is also suffering from conditions that would prevent you from being able to join any such clubs? Lots of adult males also seem to suffer from anxiety and crippling lack of social skills on top of being depressed!

You're not reading what I'm saying. Who do you actually imagine will be at your local 3d printing club? A bunch of hot girls and Tom Holland doing shots and singing karaoke?

You go and someone presses a button on the machine and you watch it extrude plastic for 45 minutes, then you go home. After 3 or 4 of these they might let you press the button yourself. That's it.