The Current State Of Men And Women And The Role Government Plays

Most of the industrialized world is facing demographic collapse. Many places don't have enough workers to support a growing retiree population already, and the rest are on the brink of it.

Immigration was meant to be a solution, damn the changes in culture and ethnic composition (they're just serfs anyway).

But after examining cause after cause, there isn't any other conclusion. The collapse is almost entirely due to changes in expectations about roles in families and society, and notably contraception and abortion. It's about as politically incorrect to talk about as things get today, which is why it is rarely mentioned in other than very soft tones buried within reports of studies and investigations.

We've built a trap for humanity and let it run to the point where nothing can be done about it politically now.

 

Mechanization is taking up the slack, if not fast enough. Changes in my husband's factory allowed consolidation and robots do a lot of the assembly line jobs. Look at Musk's factory. I just watched a vid on tomatoes--one of the last produce items that could allow for mechanization because they are so delicate. So, they bred a new type of tomato and invented a new harvester. Musk has robots who can eventually do housework. I am in line for one of those. I don't need a robot vacuum now that we don't have dogs.
Organic produce is how I might get along. Those tomatoes don't taste all that good.

 

Automation doesn't do any good.

With fewer workers there is less support for pension and other retirement funding schemes. And less workers having even fewer kids means less consumption in all market segments, so forget about the stock market or savings instruments funding retirement.

It's a death spiral for a society. There is anthropological evidence that this has also occurred several times in prehistory. In those cases infant mortality may have been the driver though.

 

I believe Jacob is right about some of the reasons for demographic collapse whether we are allowed to discuss one of those causes on this forum or not.

 

Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society gave the men the excuse to leave their women because they were able to get by without them. I'm not saying that people were never justified in these situations, just that more situations changed.

I do remember the women talking about the cow and the milk. When I was a young girl my mother and other women would get together for sewing or maybe just coffee around someone's kitchen table. If I was quiet enough I could sit on the floor playing with paper dolls and listen. I learned so much and I'm sure those sessions saved me from some troubles later in life.

I also think you are right that this would make a good stand alone thread as long as all aspects of the situation can be discussed in a civil manner.

 

I think "they" keep us gnawing on each other ineffectually by citing extreme cases to keep both sides of the issue at each others' throats. That way people don't come together to create a solution or solutions that work for most people in the general case.

Who are "they" and what do they get out of this?

Well a lot of it goes back to Margaret Sanger, Eugenics, and decreasing "undesirable" population segments. Not that she was alone in this by any means.

Still, what's the gain?

Maybe breeding for docility and a large labor force to keep the cost of labor down. Undermining labor rights and organization, suppressing the middle class that had stolen away the dominance of mercantilism that followed the colonial expansion era.

If a family either needs two incomes or going it solo makes you dependent on the State... you get a bigger cheaper labor pool and increase the advantages of docility to the individual.

With the demographic crunch getting worse expect a return to the normalization of child labor, greater income inequality, education further pared back to industrial necessities. In general more gilding of a new Gilded Age.


I won't go deep into the crude Eugenics of slave breeding in what later became the Southern US and elsewhere. Not so "scientific" but more reliant on stock breeding knowledge. Strong and docile workers being the goal, with most ambition suppressed culturally if nothing else. Do you really think those Irish and Scot surnames were inherited from slave owners and not slave mothers? Would it shock you to find that the earliest Aunt Jemimas on the plantations were stocky Irish lasses?


Still, who are "they" then?

My guess: the "same as it ever was, same as it ever was" i.e. most likely today's "dukes" and "dames" and "barons" the upper class just below the ruling elite and the monarchs above that. Not so much money as lineage and peerage, at least in the first wealthy generation in a family.

Isn't this what the widely-mocked term "lizard people" was shorthand for rather than ever meant literally? Cold-blooded elites.


But now I risk falling into the deep end.

 

I like the title and there are a lot of things that fall under it.

It seems like eons ago when I first started talking about politics online there was a lot more conversation about things like welfare, government programs, poverty and even how to avoid it. There was a list of bare minimum things that a young person needed to accomplish to support themselves. They were very simple and basic things. There may have been a few more but here are the 4 things that I think are absolutely necessary to emphasize to the young people in our lives.

1. Graduate from high school.

2. Get and keep a full time job.

3. Do not commit a crime.

4. Do not make a baby before making a solid marriage.

There are things I would add but even today, I think if young people start with just these things they can start and improve their lives as an adult and be successful. So many of our young people still drop out, don't work, get involved in petty crime and/or become involved in creating a pregnancy while they are barely out of childhood themselves.

A young person can work and get a certificate in the trades that will raise their value in the job market and they can still move up in America.

Creating a pregnancy too soon has lasting effects no matter how it is resolved. Two people are best to take care of a child. All resolutions of a pregnancy have lasting emotional or financial effects. especially when it occurs too soon. It is much better for anyone to wait until they are established a bit and more mature.

 

I don't know about an excuse, but I knew men who left their families because the government wouldn't help them if there was a man in the house, so the men felt their families would be better off without them. As you said, it was during and after the Johnson Administration and the "War on Poverty" legislation. A man leaves his family and the family automatically got Medicaid and Food Stamps, as well as a number of other benefits.