Population issues

Few years ago I paid nearly $200,000 in Tax and assorted Govt fees and charges and my take home pay that year was an income split of $22000 with my wife! Yep I personally earned $11000 for being on deck 24/7. Did I get a new accountant? Farken oath I did!

100% mate!  Because at the end of the day it's just a name on a piece of paper an entity with an ABN it's not a person so how the faark can it "make a profit"! 

I've got a bit of an example here that helped me contextualise my thoughts on this, because I couldn't quite figure out why the 'boomers got a free ride' argument has never quite sit right in my mind.

Every fortnight, I pay my entire wage onto our mortgage because we budgeted for me to be able to do that. I could donate the extra money that I pay off our house each fortnight which might be considered to be a sizable amount by some. Instead, I choose to secure a paid-off home for my children so that if SHTF financially there will always be a safe place for them to call home. 

My financial decision advantages me directly, because once it's paid off we'll have a large excess of cash that we've never had before and a disposable income at a relatively young age that could be considered to be excessive (and I mean, excess to direct cost of living needs, not Prada this and Versace that excessive lol). But am I being selfish or morally corrupt because the money that I earn could be donated to services or welfare groups? I could conceivably make a huge difference in the life of others, but instead I choose to put that money towards paying off a debt that secures shelter and safety for my kids a lot faster. It's a luxury to do so. Our loan period is 30 years so we could absolutely pay it off at the base rate and donate the additional elsewhere. And yet I've never once had anyone say anything other than 'that's a smart idea!' when I've mentioned what we're doing because they chose to perceive our actions as purely for the benefit of our children. It benefits us directly too, and probably even more so than them because we'll get to choose what happens with that disposable income!

The difference (I think) is the perception between taking advantage of system features only oneself or doing it to take advantage for the security or comfort of others. It's socially 'ok' to be using extra wealth to protect your children, but if we were a childless couple or boomer-aged, I can almost guarantee that it would be looked at as selfish because we'd be doing it to secure our own home rather than that of dependants. The system is set up to allow us to pay out our loan early with no repercussions such as massive fees etc. We specifically chose a bank that allowed that option.
How is that any different to choosing a pension fund that allows you to specifically choose investments with franking credits? In my mind, it's not. But society says that's totally different... Although no one can seem to tell me how, other than pointing to their own moral code of what's acceptable and what's not.

I am NOT defending the multimillionaires, soon to be multibillionaires in this economy, who created this system to be the standard. They set it up for themselves and I think we can all agree that any system set up by that group is never designed with the majority of the population in mind. But is it really logical to admonish those who aren't in the same category but are able to take advantage of some of the dregs that filtered down?

As always I try to look at both sides of the coin and be brutally honest with myself because that's where we find the truth. Somewhere in the middle. I find personally that the reason I tend towards judging them is not because I'm angry at them for being morally corrupt. I'm angry that the same advantages aren't available to me. That's the system that's broken, not the people taking advantage of it. Even if they stop taking advantage of the dregs collectively, and gave up all of those functions tomorrow, it wouldn't change the fact that the system is still the same and it's not a system created by boomers. It's created by 1%ers and those folks don't care whether we take the scraps from their plates or not.

Yes mate but if it's a Public Service job you hold, then it's a big wank you risk nothing! 

"if you're entitled to an extra payment then take it,"

I don't need it, yet, and don't feel its right to take advantage of 'birth' rights. We all are entitled to basics, no issue, but extra






We’re on a slippery slope; prepare for it to get worse before it gets better.

the racial theme is a very important piece of population decline. despite being a disaster for everything else, it will also dramatically erase many cultures, races, and ethnicities from the species. the cultures that are maintaining the highest birthrates are white christians, or atleast a sub section of white christians, and jews.

the funny demographic view is the self defeating left side of politics are breeding (or more accurately not breeding) themselves out of power. given that political leanings are highly cultural and heritable, the right will assume power indefinitely as conservative groups become bigger by comparison to the rest of the population. The left is often pushing the less people/kids agenda, but not creating kids to carry the that message into the future, oh the irony.

another thing to consider is can we have gender equality (in the modern sense) and a positive birth rate? I am leaning towards no.

I have to agree that no. If gender equality achievement remains in the modern sense, (and discounting the economic conditions or domestic troubles that we also face as a country) I don't see it trending towards a positive birth rate. I think it'll be because of several factors.  

There's so many other things that come into play but while we keep trying to shoehorn women into the traditional roles of men to 'make things equal', we're never going to experience true equality. We need to bring up the lot of women by seeing women as just as valuable as men and acting accordingly. In all ways. In the home, in the workplace, in society. But we don't do that. We just keep trying to fling women into the same roles that men traditionally gravitate to and being confused when that doesn't work instead of improving the lot of women in their traditional roles. And I do believe that a negative birth rate will be a knock-on effect if we keep trying to make women run double time by saying "do all the stuff that men do, and then do your stuff too".



As an example, what happens if (and it'll never happen, women on average will not do it but it's an example so roll with me...) if women all go into the STEM or corporate or typically male dominated roles that they keep trying to shoehorn us into to bring up our average base wage as a gender, what happens to all the caregiver roles? Where are you going to find your legions of nurses, primary school teachers, daycare workers, customer service roles, administrative positions... Who's doing to fill those lower paid roles? Not men. They expect and demand a higher wage as a group because that's what they're used to. "BuT iF wOmEn WaNt ThE sAmE cOnDiTiOnS aS mEn, ThEy HaVe To Do ThE sAmE JoBS!!!".


Don't block us from the same opportunities that men have, because some women do want to be in corporate, STEM, or skilled trades. But also recognise that the vast majority historically and traditionally don't want those roles and then raise the wages of the whole trades that we are on average actually attracted to, to achieve equivalence. Make it possible for a team leader of a daycare centre who's spent six years in tertiary education to achieve their qualifications equal to the wage that a team leader of an engineering team who spent six years in tertiary education to achieve their qualifications. It's the same amount of training, the same amount of skill, the same amount of responsibility... 


Actual true gender equality would be not trying to force women to be and do the same things as men for us to have the same playing field. Because we still also do our typical gender-based roles as well because that's what we're naturally drawn to. We should stop fighting human nature. I really dislike the ultra-conservative 'we should go back to the 1950s, men were men and women were women' bollocks. But there's some seed of truth in that you could look at those two gender roles and see far more equal respect for the care-giving roles, because being a wife and mother was acknowledged as a fulltime job. That was basically all you could be, but at least it was understood and accepted that it was a valuable job.



And I think that's where a lot of the older generations get frustrated by this very conversation. Because they do understand the caregiver role to be as valuable as the typical male dominant roles. They don't realise that younger generations have unintentionally removed that value and then added additional pressures to women. We got it wrong. GenX women saw the freedom of women in power-suits and mobile phones like bricks and didn't realise that it was a short-lived fascination. We'd never had entry into that world before and as a result far more women dipped their toes in only to find out that there's a reason they're not already there in large numbers. They're not naturally drawn to it. And that's ok, but again. We keep telling ourselves it's NOT ok. There must be something wrong with women if they don't want to be making as much money as men in roles that men do. For some reason we're not allowed to make as much money as men do in roles that WOMEN do.



And now women are exhausted. And not realising that society made a fundamental mistake by trying to overcorrect with initiatives to draw women into fields they're not typically drawn to, instead of improving the standard for care-based roles that we ARE typically drawn to. I'm an outlier. I know that women like me who are drawn to roles that are typically male dominant are not the norm. I'm not the standard. And I think it's unfair that we demand that women get square-peg-round-holed into 'not the standard' to expect the equality that I tend to get better access to as a result of not being the norm.

We're coming at the problem from the wrong angle and it takes SO long to get society to adjust course. I'm hoping my kids generation does better at it than we did, and I genuinely think that they will. The breakdown of gender norms that has been happening is uncomfortable for people who have an expectation of a status quo to understand their place in society. But I also think that it opens a lot of eyes to mistakes that we've made in a way that could never have occurred without it. 
I also think that we WILL see a reversion to typical gender norms eventually as a result but a better understanding of gender equality afterwards. It's just going to be an upsetting few decades for people who can't function without knowing how to orient themselves as individuals in society if other people refuse to play by their rules. They'll survive. 🤣