 Let's shift, shift topics. Last week, a bunch of a bunch of stories hit the press that I saw about the fact that COVID, there's going to be a baby bust. It turns out that people are not having babies during COVID. They're not getting pregnant, right? So yes, 2020, both rates are going to be about normal, right? But 2021, the expectation is, we'll see if this pans out, the expectation is that they're going to be half a million fewer babies born in America, excuse me, in America in 2020, half in 2021, half a million fewer babies than in a normal year. Now, both rates in the United States have been declining anyway, as they have in much of the West. But COVID has caused them to decline significantly. And it's interesting to discuss the reasons for that. And I think that basically two, one, I'd say is the conventional reason that people give. And I think there's truth to it, but I think it's over-emphasized. And then I'd like to give you my reason. And I think it's not just applicable, the reasoning is not just applicable to COVID, but it is also applicable to why both rates generally are dropping in the West. Why is Italy, for example, one of the, you know, shrinking fast, Europe generally shrinking, Russia shrinking, China, we know is shrinking and we know why one child policy. So there it's, but of course, one, even with the relaxation of one child policy, Chinese seem to be only having one child, but Japan shrinking significantly. So why is this? Well, there's clearly a correlation between this and economic uncertainty in wealthy countries and low economic growth. So what's interesting is that when you go from poverty to wealth, there is a dramatic decrease in the number of children, right? But that seems to stabilize at some point at replacement cost, replacement number or above, what's the replacement, something like 2.2 kids, right? You have to replace you and then you have to contribute to the fact to replacing some people don't have kids. It has to be a little over two. So 2.2. And then what happens is that in some most real wealthy countries over the last 20, 30 years, both rates have gone down again further. And the question is why? Why are people having so many of you? We know why when we go from poverty to wealth, there's a decline. Basically, your children are going to live. You can save money for retirement, you're not depending on your children to take care of you when you're old. So you don't need as many children, right? And you don't, you're not sending the kids to work. So they're not bringing in revenue. So there are costs. There are costs that doesn't fund themselves. And therefore, you have fewer kids. It's also true that women are working. That would reduce the number of kids. It's also true that that people become more selfish. They become more self interested. They are much more engaged in now that they're not struggling every hour of every day to survive as they did when they were poor. Now they have leisure time. They have opportunity to enjoy life. Well, fewer kids gives you more time to enjoy life. Not that kids are not enjoyable, but beyond the kids. So there are a lot of reasons why this has dropped. Now, many people argue that the problem right now is that kids, you can't afford them. So the reason we're dropping from 2.2 to 1.8 to in some countries 1.1 or 1.2, I think in Japan, it's just above one where the population is dramatically shrinking is one argument is it's an economic cost. It's just too expensive. And I don't really buy that. I mean, this has to do, I mean, it's some truth to it that if you want to maintain a certain lifestyle, if you want to maintain a certain level of, you know, live in particular places, do particular things. And yes, certain things are quite expensive like education in America, but in Europe, education is not expensive. Health care in America, but health care is not expensive in Europe. So part of it is that it's hard to afford, I guess, but I'm not sure I buy it. I mean, there was an article today about the hollowing out of the middle class and the middle class is being hollowed out. Why? Because even though people are making more money than they ever did, like it was describing this one family that makes $160,000, they can't make, buy. They don't save any money. This family making $160,000 a year was saving $125 a month and had $400 in their saving accounts. That just doesn't make any sense. I mean, there's a reason for that. Oh, and there were massively in debt. And there's a reason for that. It's because people are living beyond their means. It's not that they can't afford to live. It's not that you can't afford to have kids. And you choose to spend money on other things. You choose not to save. You choose to take on debt and consume. You choose to consume rather than to save. And that's a choice people are making. And I would argue that a lot of those choices, a lot of those choices have to do with your values. A lot of those choices have to do with the second-handed society in which you're trying to catch up with the neighbors. You're trying to catch up with the Joneses. You're not really pursuing your self-interest. You're not thinking long-term. And a lot of these choices have to do with government. Government that encourages us to consume. Government that does not, that indeed penalizes, earning income and saving money. But the reason we can't afford more is because we make choices. In our high-kill value, we place things above kids. So part of it is, part of it is, I think, true economics. But I think the economics to a large extent are driven by value, values, changes in values. But there is some economic issues, right? Economic growth is low. It has been low in the West for the last 20, 30 years. The economy just is not growing fast. It didn't grow fast under Obama, Trump, Bush. Last spurt of economic growth was during Clinton. So the economy is not growing fast. Job security is gone. So the old days of you got a job and you worked there 40 years, that's gone. It doesn't exist anymore in most advanced economies. If you look at Japan, Japan has had almost no economic growth for since the early 90s. But Japan has job security. Japan has job security. And yet, you know, both are plummeted in Japan. So I think something more is going on than just economic uncertainty. And we can't afford it, right? And low economic growth. And you know, if you look at COVID, what people are saying is the reason people are not having kids because of COVID. Luca is asking about Israel. And I promise I'm going to get to Israel in a minute. That's part of my explanation is going to be to explain Israel's high rate of children because Israel has a very high rate of children even among the secular people. And I mean, you can understand the religious, but even among secular Israelis, Israel has a very high birth rate higher than I think any other Western country. And I'll try to explain it in a minute. Where was I? I was about COVID. So the explanation given for the COVID is, again, economic insecurity. People have lost their jobs, people are uncertain about the future economically. They don't know how much money they'll have. They don't know if they can afford kids. So they're not having kids. They're not planning to have kids. So and that's all true. And I think all of that is effective. But I think there's something more going on, which has more to do with the values. It has more to do with people's attitude towards the future. And it has more to do with people's attitudes about their own lives. I think that a lot of not having kids has to do with people's attitudes about the future. I think Europe has turned pessimistic, turned pessimistic probably 20, 30, 40 years ago, pessimistic about the future, whether it's climate change, whether it's just the economy, whether it's immigrants, Muslims, whatever, because I think those are all fillings for a deep kind of, you know, lack of confidence, lack of self-esteem as a culture in terms of what the future will bring. And I think when you have that, then you're looking for the crises, you're looking for the problems, you're looking for the things that are going to go horribly wrong. So even though Europe is wealthy and Europeans are relatively wealthy, certainly by global standards, they're wealthy. They don't believe in themselves and they don't believe in the future. They don't believe in their ability to be successful in the future. Not just economically, but culturally. It has to do with, again, values and it has to do with kind of the sense of life, the sense of life of Europeans broadly, again, many exceptions. Everybody on the call from Europe right now is an exception. But they have a relatively dark sense of life. Things are going to get worse, they're not going to get better. Things are going to get dark, they're not going to get good. The world is going to freeze over, boil over, whatever their latest climate change prognosis is. So why have kids? Things suck. And when it comes to their own lives, they've internalized altruism. We talk a lot about altruism because it's so important. They internalize altruism. But they don't want to live altruistic lives. They believe in altruism as a noble ideal, but just like everybody else, they don't want to live that noble ideal. So what is their alternative? What's the alternative to altruism in your day to day life? Well, it's much more pedonistic. So Europeans don't tend to focus as much on career as Americans do. They don't tend to focus on the future as much as Americans do. They're not ambitious like many Americans are. They don't have this gung-ho sense of life that Americans do. And maybe, and Luca will have to enlight me, but maybe this also explains the difference between the Swiss and the Italians. Because I think the Swiss, because it's a freer country, because it's a freer country, because it's got less of that dark history associated with it. I think there's a more positive country. The people are more positive. The people are more future-oriented. The people are more ambitious for themselves. So it's less hedonistic and more thoughtful values driven about the future, whereas Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands are much darker places in terms of the mentality and also places where this deep-rooted pessimism, and therefore, when you're pessimistic about the future, when you believe in altruism, but you don't want to be that. You've accepted guilt. You've accepted guilt as part of life. Then hedonism is your avenue out. It's the way to get some pleasure, at least. It's a way to enjoy yourself, at least at some level. It really is an escape. Yeah, Luca affirms what I said about Switzerland. One of the reasons he says he moved from Italy, he's originally Italian, to Switzerland. So it's the hedonism. It's the darkness. It's the sense of life that I think in Europe is causing this decline in both ways. And I think to some extent that is true in Japan. I think with the collapse of the Japanese bubble in the early 1990s, I think there was this massive sense of optimism that Japan was going to take over the world, basically. In a sense, the attitude we have today towards China. And they could do nothing wrong. And then it all just went away. It just disappeared. And standard of livings dropped, and people never, never went back to what it was in the late 1980s. And economic growth has been static for 30, 40 years. And Japan has this attitude. Japan government inculcates this attitude. Same attitude, by the way, the European government's inculcate, and the American government is becoming this way. We'll take care of you. Don't worry. We've got you. We're going to have your back. We're going to take care of you in retirement. We're going to take care of your savings. We're going to take care of you. No matter what happens, we're going to take care of you. So that attitude dulls the mind. It dulls, again, that sense of values. And people become dark and pessimistic and not that interested in living. Not interested in planning for a future, even though Japanese live longer than anybody else. They're not engaged in planning, in believing in a future, in wanting a future. There's a fatalism and a passivity. Now, maybe things will change in Japan. Hard to tell. There is definitely a younger, more entrepreneurial, more individualistic generation in Japan. But collectivism, you know, it's not about your personal values. Then again, and you reject collectivism, but what do you replace it with? So maybe the younger generation in Japan is replacing it again, like Europeans with hedonism. But there's no alternative to the altruism and collectivism. There's no philosophy out there other than objectivism that presents an alternative. And the enlightenment is dead in Europe. So what is the alternative if you're giving up on altruism? If you're giving up on collectivism? And you know the dangers of collectivism, because Europeans suddenly know this. Where do you go? So it's, I think that declining both rates, and I think this is true of the United States now as well. The bigger government is, the more intrusive, the more it pretends to be your mother and father and to tell you how to live and what to do. The more fear mongering there is, the more disaster is, the more dark we get. And I think COVID, if anything, more than anything, more than the economic issues has just brought this darkness around. Not only people afraid of the virus, but people have realized that the leadership, intellectual and political are thoroughly incompetent, thoroughly incompetent. That's what COVID has demonstrated. They complete another incompetence of our government. And yet our government is telling us they're going to manage our lives. It's kind of a cognitive dissonance that people can't handle and what it turns into is darkness. What it turns into is pessimism. What it turns into is pacivity. What it turns into is hedonism rather than value orientation. And people like that don't have kids. Don't have kids. When you don't know about the future, when you pessimistic about the future, when you pessimistic about your life, when you have no real values, when you don't plan long term, when you're completely relying on other forces, and when you think the world around you is falling apart, which I think many people do post COVID, it drains the pessimism out. Sorry, it drains the energy out of wanting to have kids. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who like it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. 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