Ezra Klein: prediction

Transcript context

…We don’t know. I think we need to try them more and more extreme. I am extremely open to birth subsidies. The question of where you should take them from in the budget is an interesting one, but I’m extremely open to birth subsidies. I think people should be paid for being parents. Part of why people do not have children earlier — particularly for women — a huge financial penalty that is lifelong. I’m not sure we know though, whether or not there’s a birth subsidy at a level that is politically in any way viable that actually works. I would love to see any country in the world pass some non-authoritarian, like non-Romanian decades-ago policy that seems to have an effect on birth rates. I both think we are going to have severe political problems as societies shrink, and in my own moral framework, I think the continuation of human experience is a beautiful and important thing in the way it has just been absorbed into a liberal expressive individualism. I hear people talk about it as if it’s a good that is akin to whether or not they should take an international trip, like what are the cost benefits? I think that’s mistaken. I’m pro trying to think about fertility. I just have not seen any policies that work. The more uncertain we are about birth subsidies — and I agree that’s the correct view — doesn’t that mean we should all the more commit to some kind of revival of cultural conservatism on matters of family? That there’s an asymmetric pairing. Families should be expected to have three or four children, and that’s the alternative. Yes, we should try subsidies, but the more uncertain we are, we’ve just got to go the Ross Douthat route. I think he has five kids now. Good for him.…

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