Rant 704 / Pyre

Today's weather is probably the best in a very long time. Cool breeze since yesterday evening, cool afternoon interrupted by a quick but heavy rain. Since then, a cool easterly wind has been blowing through my room.

Which, of course, means it's coming from my bathroom and out of my room's window.

Though it sounds nasty, it really isn't. This is one major reason why I maintain the cleanliness of my bathroom regularly. If there was even a trace of piss, the wind would not have been pleasant at all no matter the temperature.

Despite my efforts, things aren't completely perfect. For example, I well aware of the times my neighbours have diarrhoea during the day. Shit happens.







With the recent focus on dropping birth rates among Singaporeans in the news, it made me think of how the people with lower income do not avoid having children because of rising costs.

Is it because they're too stupid to think about it?

Is it because the better educated women worry too much about money?

Are people with higher income more reluctant to sacrifice part of their lifestyle in order to spend more on children?

Are the people with higher income just poorer?

I'm sure a lot of people have read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Among the various vague concepts it teaches is one I'm not sure if a lot of people understand.

People with higher income are not necessarily wealthier, mainly because they also want to spend more. What makes people wealthier, or at least one of the factors, is the difference between one's income and expenditure.

Then if we throw in the concept of "future expectations", it gets even worse. Obviously, when you make more, you expect to make even more in the future. When you do that, you'd plan on what to spend the extra money on. Expectations.

Except I don't think a lot of people put the idea of "children" into the equation when they do that. Either they accidentally omitted that or they plain ignored that. More likely the latter.

So here is the deeper layer of the problem. It's kind of like having pets. They're cute and all, but someone has to pick up their shit, clean them, change the water, clean the bed or tank, take them to the vet and etc.

When they don't want to have children and not because they had forgotten about that in their long term plans, it means they see having children as a negative thing, something to avoid, just like work except it's fifty thousand times worse and doesn't get them paid.

This is the real problem people should be looking at. Money is superficial, an excuse. The perception of what it takes to raise a child is the root. People don't do things when they think it is not worth the effort. In this case, the "thing" is having kids.

As long as this psychological issue is not resolved, the birth rates among those who think more and plan further ahead will continue to drop.

The rich shrinks. The middle class rises up to fill the vacuum. Then the poor rises to fill the gap in the middle class.

Even though we're about to have 7 billion people on Earth this year, the world does not have an infinite supply of poorly educated people ready to migrate to wherever they're needed. Most developed countries have the same problem of dropping birth rates among the better educated and a working solution is nowhere in sight. Someday, something drastic will have to be done.

IMO, it's going to be some kind of human farm/orphanage, where kids are born from surrogate mothers and taken care of by the government till they're adults. Then there's also the alternative, which is to make it a law for women to have children, kinda like conscription. I have difficulty judging which is worse. Heck, maybe both will happen.