{"id":1491157,"date":"2022-05-25T08:01:25","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T12:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1491157"},"modified":"2022-05-25T08:01:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T12:01:42","slug":"elon-musk-is-right-having-kids-is-not-an-economic-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/elon-musk-is-right-having-kids-is-not-an-economic-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Is Right. Having Kids Is Not An Economic Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Felon-musk-is-right-having-kids-is-not-an-economic-decision%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1491157&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>For the first time since 2014, and after decades of almost constant decline, the total fertility rate in the United States rose in 2021. But before you start popping bottles to celebrate, here\u2019s what the birthrate looks like in graphic form, and no, that\u2019s not a crude drawing of a ski jump.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/grph.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-272928\" width=\"525\" height=\"491\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/grph.png 585w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/grph-300x281-1.png 300w\" \/><\/p>\n<p><figcaption class=\"col-12 col-md-6 body-xs px-15 pe-md-0 ps-md-30 py-15 m-0 text-center\">Source: Wall Street Journal<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>In response to this, Elon Musk, who has seven children, most of whose names you can pronounce, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1529100718065569792?t=cXnZxotgxAe_ett7ZtJZEg&#038;s=19\">tweeted<\/a>, \u201cContrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have. I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While it\u2019s great to see the eccentric billionaire highlight the value of children, his pronouncement <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UUMdCV-Z7kk\">doesn\u2019t go too far enough<\/a>. It\u2019s not just that the ultra-wealthy or regular wealthy people aren\u2019t having kids, it\u2019s that no one is, hence the graphic. In short, the baby boomers gave birth to a baby bust.<\/p>\n<h2>The Biological Imperative Isn\u2019t About Buying Stuff<\/h2>\n<p>Given all the battles over sex and abortion right now, it\u2019s obvious that people greatly enjoy the activity that leads to children, as they should, but they tend to get a little neurotic about the natural result of that activity. We\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/10\/01\/its-a-child-not-a-toaster\/\">covered the fact that having kids isn\u2019t about economics<\/a> before, but as that lesson didn\u2019t stick, I guess we need to circle back to it again, Psaki-style.<\/p>\n<p>Because what\u2019s implied in Musk\u2019s tweet is a longstanding argument for why people don\u2019t have kids: the cost. If people have money, why aren\u2019t they breeding? But as the famous quote that <a href=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2014\/03\/26\/two-reasons\/\">no one said<\/a> goes, there are usually two reasons a person has for doing something: a perfectly good one and the real one.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving aside that in this case we\u2019re talking about something for which there isn\u2019t really a perfectly good reason, plus that the topic is what people are not doing, Musk gets to the heart of the real reason. How can prosperous people in prosperous times be expected to self-actualize in a maximally fulfilling way if they\u2019re stuck caring for offspring?<\/p>\n<p>To put it another way, how can men and women become excellent workers, climb the corporate ladder, and contribute to the GDP if they\u2019re taking time off for things like doctor\u2019s appointments, school award ceremonies, sports, trips to the playground, trips to the emergency room, trips to the grocery store, and trips to theme parks, where they may or may not <a href=\"https:\/\/coffeeandcochon.com\/david-marcus-talks-disney-world\/\">catch Covid<\/a>?<\/p>\n<h2>We\u2019ve All Become Wooderson, Just L-I-V-I-N\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>Never mind that children <em>are<\/em> insanely expensive, which also contributes to the GDP, the problem is that the real goal here isn\u2019t furthering society or swelling the GDP, but just living, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ls_8cFgBUj4\">l-i-v-i-n\u2019<\/a>. We\u2019re caught in a doom loop, much like many old mainline churches, in which people aren\u2019t so much afraid of what financial challenges the future might hold as they are solely invested in today.<\/p>\n<p>By way of example, there was a story an Episcopal priest once told me about helping get a church in a retirement village going. When going over the finances, the vestry, that is the governing board, didn\u2019t want to invest in a baptismal font, their reason being that they were in a retirement village and none of them were having any more children. When the priest pointed out that no baptismal font meant no grandchildren being christened in the parish, the money quickly became available.<\/p>\n<p>As a nation, we\u2019ve embraced the same initial mindset, and not solely because <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/341963\/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx#:~:text=In%202020%2C%2047%25%20of%20Americans,2010%20and%2047%25%20in%202020.\">fewer people<\/a> are going to church than ever. Post-WWII abundance led to a focus on the present, rather than the future. As more people focused on their own present, and that present\u2019s concomitant luxury needs, they started having fewer children. They started seeing their legacies as being enshrined in spreadsheets rather than in the lives of their offspring.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s not working out well for us.<\/p>\n<p>When the real reason that people don\u2019t have kids is because of the effect it will have on their present lives, and again, it <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/05\/14\/its-true-fatherhood-isnt-for-suckers\/\">totally will!<\/a>, they lose sight of the truth that civilization functions best when we aspire to make things better not so that we might enjoy them, but so that future generations can. <\/p>\n<p>Sure, true visionaries will invent and create because they are driven, but most of us aren\u2019t true visionaries. We won\u2019t have biographies written about the companies we founded or the time we launched a car into space just for the heck of it.<\/p>\n<h2>We May Be in the Playground, But We Can Still Look to the Stars<\/h2>\n<p>But if we think beyond our inability to be remembered for greatness, or accept that we might not even be broadly remembered at all, we can focus on positively affecting change, whether it be in nurturing local institutions, preserving natural spaces, updating the neighborhood playground, or maybe, just maybe, building a rocket, so that our true legacies will be able to enjoy them after we\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n<p>While it\u2019s true that having kids isn\u2019t a necessary precursor for any of that, children do more concretely connect us to the time when we will cease to traverse this earthly plane. They remind us that life continues after us. They change our focus from tomorrow to 50 years from tomorrow. That\u2019s why, in a follow-up tweet, Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1529193812949614594\">added<\/a>, \u201cPopulation collapse is the biggest threat to civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Elon, the world\u2019s wealthiest man, has done his part to stay connected to the future with his seven kids. I, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rcromwell4\/status\/1518947979364904962\">the world\u2019s richest man<\/a>, have done mine with three. Now it\u2019s time for everyone else to get with the program and start getting busy. We are flesh and blood, not economic atoms, and though our time is limited, our reach can be limitless, even if we never get around to building a rocket of our own. \u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast <a href=\"https:\/\/coffeeandcochon.com\/%E2%80%9C\">Coffee &#038; Cochon<\/a>, you can find him on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jrichardcromwell%E2%80%9C\">Facebook<\/a><br \/>\nand <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rcromwell4\">Twitter<\/a>, though you should probably avoid using social media.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time since 2014, and after decades of almost constant decline, the total fertility rate in the United States rose in 2021. But before you start popping bottles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":701,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1491157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}