Even if we could find a free place to meet, what about equipment? People on SS can’t necessarily afford to buy a mat, and it’s not exactly safe to do yoga on the bare floor, especially for those over 40 who may suffer from bone loss. What if someone gets hurt, who is responsible? That’s why I think we need some sort of government sponsored program to get people involved, to take care of those details.
Another thing we could do is involve seniors in childcare, which would allow those single moms more time to work. I was raised primarily by aunts and grandmas, and I know that’s the case in a lot of families with single parents. A free or low-income child care center staffed by able-bodied retirees woudldn’t be a bad idea, and it would turn some of those “net consumers” into part time contributors.
Did you actually listen to what I said or did you just cherry pick it?
And you aren’t doing anything to raise my grandkids unless of course my kids cannot do it. The kids are raised by their parents. The salient point is demographic imbalance, a point you outright ignored in your response here.
You don’t collect social security at the age of 5.
Martial arts courses I have taken have insurance. You could work on getting grants to cover those expenses. But Obama is working on making every aspect of our lives government controlled so you might be able to find government funding, but still you’d have to write for a grant whether from the government or a foundation.
Yeah, that’s a great idea. These things just need passionate people to spearhead them.
Well since kids aren’t my thing (and therefore I’m creepy and a nutcase, apparently) it won’t be me doing the spearheading, but I’m sure I can come up with some people who would. I think it would do a lot of good for my neighborhood, and for the country if done nationwide.
There is always going to be a percentage of the population who doesn’t have kids–the infertile, the homosexuals (to some extent), the ones with heritable diseases, and the ones who just don’t like kids. Those people aren’t less valuable to society, and they aren’t all “consumers”. They can work in childcare, they can work in retail, they can teach, they can help out in community gardens or cleanup. There is an endless list of ways childless people can contribute, and there’s no reason to think that because they are childless that their contribution is less worthwhile. If they do nothing else, they pay taxes to support the education of other people’s kids. (I don’t condone doing nothing else, but I guess it happens.)
The problem isn’t that there are childless people, it is when the old start to outnumber the young. This is not a problem here, but it is a HUGE problem in Russia, Japan and Germany.
Well then assuming enough people are being born, we need to focus on raising the retirement age a bit and keeping those that are able in the workforce for longer. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be beneficial to have less people? Less starvation, less poverty, etc. If we could make it through a couple of generations, until the old ones die off and it balances out, wouldn’t that help out the economy? (Assuming we prepared ahead of time somehow, and that for some reason people were unwilling to have enough kids to compensate now.)
So, in 3rd world countries where there isn’t enough food for all the people who are being born, it’s not because there are too many people being born? Not having enough food to feed everybody in the world is pretty much directly related to there being too many people in the world, as I understand.
My reasoning about the economy is this–people who have fewer kids have more money to play with, which could be spent on cars or houses or luxury items that they wouldn’t be able to afford if they’d had more kids. I’m not an economics major, it’s just the first thing that ran across my mind. I assume there would be factors that outweigh this and therefore it wouldn’t be effective, then?
No actually, in poor agrarian environments people have more children in order to work subsistance farms. In developing economies it is due to many reasons, political corruption, tribal conflict, poor irrigation systems, backward social systems, etc… Not because there are too many people. You understand wrong. The US, Japan and Europe are some of the most populous nations in the world and they have very little starvation.
Economics has to do with how resources are distributed, you cannot extrapolate macroeconomic circumstances based upon the disposable income of well-to-do people without kids or with fewer kids. If you want to take the metaphor further, the nation as family, the nation is just as likely to have less money if it has fewer people because it cannot effectively utilize it’s resources. But nations are not families.
As I said above I am setting up my massage therapy practice and will be volunteering my services in some capacity when I am setup. Either by volunteering at a cancer center or by taking clients at reduced rates.
Fair enough, but we populous nations also have the natural resources or the ability to import to support ourselves. Somebody who is already starving in a place where food is scarce is only exacerbating the problem by having more children. Maybe there are other factors but you won’t convince me that overpopulation doesn’t play some role in the matter.
No that is wrong. In subsistance situations, having more children can help to farm to support the whole family, which is why in agrarian societies thruoghout history big families were the norm.
Right, I understand that, but what about the families who don’t have farms? What about the ones begging on city streets? In those situations, there would be more food to go around if there were less people. What if you have a farm, but there’s a drought? More people does not necessarily equal more food production.
You don’t think that having more people than there is food or jobs to go around might lead to starvation or poverty?
Off of the “reasoning” by the childed that they are being unselfish by providing workers to keep the economy going as the baby boomers gray.
Fewer. You don’t have to feed, clothe or (for the most part) house automation in heated/cooled homes. They don’t drive cars, they live where they work, they “reproduce” only when replacements are needed and when they retire they are recycled.
Not that it really matters either way to me, since it isn’t me that has to worry about what sort of world we are leaving to children. My only concern is that you don’t ruin the world before I die of old age.
Volunteering at a cancer center means what? Giving massages? Reduced rates is not free. Neither of these things you are actually doing at this time anyway.
Again, what free services are you offering to the community? If the answer is still none, why do you think others should be doing it when you aren’t doing it yourself? Particularly someone who is already has done/is doing quite a bit, and your contribution to society is you have decided you want to have children. Are you also like the parents in the TV ads, who tell me that I have to live more green so that the planet won’t be totally wiped out by the time their children reach adulthood? Hell, I totally reduced my carbon footprint - I didn’t have any kids! :rolleyes:
She stated that she would like to offer a service, and we had a conversation about it. Having children doesn’t increase your carbon footprint at all. It increases the carbon footprint of the child. I am sorry that my plans are not progressing to your satisfaction, and that you do not view my care for my child as something of value.
Anyway, I was having a nice conversation with starwarsfreek. Your bitterness at parents doesn’t interest me.
The rest of your post is made of straw. I never said having children is unselfish. I can’t recall having ever said any such thing in my life at any time ever. I do recall saying the opposite many times. So find someone who believes this and froth at them.
Except that isn’t what we are talking about - most children starving in third world countries are not living on farms, not farms that are actually producing a crop or livestock. Otherwise, why would they be starving? No, these days most third world parents have too many children for one (or both) of two reasons - birth control isn’t available or isn’t allowed, and/or they have to have a bunch in order to get one or two to live to adulthood. So they have five or six and four or five starve, die of some easily preventable disease, get killed by locals, etc.