Vivek Ramaswamy: A baby shortage threatens America's future while our leaders nap
The Democratic Party and their media allies are smearing vice presidential nominee JD Vance as "weird" because he dared to suggest policies to reward family formation.
America’s declining birthrate is a far greater risk to our future than, say, climate change. Yet most politicians are too scared to talk about it. Now, it’s apparently taboo.
The entire Democratic Party and all their media allies have spent the past week smearing vice presidential nominee JD Vance as "weird" because he dared to suggest policies to reward family formation.
You can agree or disagree with his proposals. Maybe you favor mass immigration or Hungary-style child stipends. We should welcome a robust debate about how to address the fertility crisis. What we can’t do is turn up our noses at it.
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Here are the facts: our nation’s birth rate is now down to 1.62 births per woman, the lowest in history and well below replacement rate.
It's not even that people don't want kids. In fact, American women on average have *fewer* children than they say they’d hoped for.
The "graying" of America means an overloaded health care system, as the elderly become a larger share of the U.S. population.
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It’s already leading to higher taxes for all. In the early years of Social Security, there were more than 40 people in the workforce for every retiree receiving benefits. Today, there are only about three workers per retiree. By 2060, that number will be down to two. This is partly the result of increased longevity, but the declining birth rate certainly doesn’t help.
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An aging labor force also means lower rates of business formation and slower economic growth. Every 10 percent increase in the proportion of individuals over 60 is estimated to reduce GDP per capita by 5.7 percent.
The birth dearth is a symptom of a deeper economic malaise. Thankfully, we know how to fix that. Drill, baby, drill and frack, baby, frack – because when energy is cheaper, everything’s cheaper.
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Slash the oppressive regulatory state to make it easier to create the jobs that feed families. End senseless occupational licensing laws so qualified workers use their God-given talents in the trade of their choice instead of getting locked out by anti-competitive cartels.
Reform zoning and other restrictions on new housing. Monthly mortgage costs have nearly doubled since January 2020, and in 2022 more than 22 million households spent over a third of their income on rent. If we increase housing supply, we bring down costs. That’s basic economics.
But this isn’t just an economic issue. If it were, richer nations would have higher birth rates, when in fact the opposite is true. The fertility crisis is a symptom of a deeper crisis of meaning.
If you’ve embraced false religions like wokeism or climate-ism or think your kids won’t have the same shot at the American Dream that you did, you’re less likely to have any – or bother to be productive yourself.
If we fix the economy and solve our national meaning crisis, we fix the fertility crisis too. But we don’t have a lot of time left to do it.
