By Navy2711 April 28, 2025 11:05 am Category: Politics (0.0 from 0 votes)
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The Trump admin is tossing around the idea of a $5000 incentive for new mothers. Financially, that's ridiculous, of course. $5000 is a drop in the bucket of the $300,000 it's going to cost you to raise that child. And if the Repubs really wanted more families, and healthier families, they would advocate for better wages, maternity leave, better medical care for children, etc.
BUT ....
What I don't understand is people complaining that this is dystopian. They're saying, "This is just like the Handmaiden's Tale!" And while there are some genuinely creepy figures in the Trump admin that want women to be second-class citizens, I think there's a genuine concern about the birth rate in this country. As countries industrialize, their birth rate falls. Combine that with advancing medicine, technology and social factors, and we have situations where a country like South Korea is currently in a real crisis. Their birth rate is dangerously low. In a few decades, they will not have enough young laborers to support their elderly citizens. If no solution is found, then South Koreans who are middle-age today are going to be working for the rest of their lives.
We're not that bad in the U.S., but we're headed that way. As dumb as the Repub's plan is in the specifics, I don't think it's dystopian to be concerned about our falling birth rate.
(I will pre-emptively offer one counter-argument to all of this concern about birth rates: technology. It may be the case that in 40 years technology will be advanced to the point that we won't need as strong a working class to support the elderly. Maybe the robots will bring grandpa his medications.)
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