You think having a newborn is a “vacation”? Oh dear.

Having a baby is risky for a woman, physically, financially, emotionally. Perhaps the outlook of the world isn’t great either. Combine that with women realising that they have choices, that they don’t have to have children, and you get the decline.

We’re not forcing people to come here you know. Also the nordics are generally winning the “happiest country” award, so I don’t get why you think people here aren’t happy.

The decline in births is a global phenomenon. It’s down everywhere except Africa, parts of Asia and parts of South America. I think 1-2 countries in S.America and a few more in Asia.

Wouldn’t surprise me if countries will beg migrants to come in a decade or two.

Sweden has one of the highest living standards in the world, and you think we should let that go just to avoid immigration? I hope I misunderstood, because that’s just dumb

How easy is it to get housing for a family of 5? How is child care if a child is sick? How high is the expectation for women to lose weight after birth and look good?

Housing obviously depends on where you want to live, but for the most part it’s accessible, and you get handouts from the government if your salary isn’t enough. Child care is free as I said, and you get paid if you need to stay home to take care of sick children. Not sure how to measure the expectation on women to look good, but I don’t think it’s a major factor in society.

If people have 2 children but not 3 then something is missing. It could be that a third child is simply too expensive, even though almost all resources were bought for the first two children. It could be that parents are already too old and don’t want to lose more sleep. Maybe all TV shows just show two children.

People aren’t having even 2 children, but for those that do have 3 or more, you get extra money from the government to cover extra cost.

What I’m saying is that there are massive incentives for parents here, but people aren’t having children. We’re having more than other countries, but no where near enough. So we need immigrants.

One year paid leave per kid per parent, almost free child care, free health care, free dental for kids, free education up to and including university, both parents expected to be on leave, can’t get fired for taking leave. Oh, and you get a government alimony of about €100 per month. This is for Sweden, other nordics might differ slightly.

Having kids in the nordics is insanely good, I don’t know what else we could do.

If we didn’t have immigration our population would decline, along with our living standards.

The fewer workers exist the higher the wages rise. Look at the compensation for people after pest waves.

That’s only true if either the work can’t be moved elsewhere. The other option is that output drops to match the available workforce, like in Britain after brexit for fruits and vegetables for example.

Immigration allows the elite to avoid the consequences of their bad politics. If living conditions were good enough people would have children.

I don’t mind better politics or living conditions, but look at the nordics. Best places in the world to have a kid and we still can’t manage to have 2 kids per couple.

Now people are moved instead of moving production processes to where the people are.

That’s been happening for the last 200 years, which is why most manufacturing is in China and other parts of Asia now. But if we want to keep people in work here we need workers, and there’s not enough of us.

The anti immigrant stance confuses me. I get that this is being used by bad actors to drive a wedge between people, but how is it that people can’t see that migrants are needed to keep the standard of living?

The amount of working people compared to the elderly or sick is diminishing, so you either have immigrants, raise taxes, reduce welfare or raise retirement age.

To me, immigration seems like the obvious choice.

Not really. The world needs the oil unfortunately, so someone needs to transport it. Who should do it? The option “nobody” isn’t really realistic.

Do I wish we didn’t need oil at all? Very much so.

Do I wish we could just say no to all Russian oil? Absolutely.

Sadly reality gets in the way.

Who would you prefer make money on the logistics? The EU27, or Russia?

So in other words, the EU doesn’t want to end Russia’s money stream, if they can strike a good deal out of it…

Not quite. They realise that the world is dependant on oil and cutting it out completely world cause a massive recession, so the next best thing is to make sure Russia makes next to no money on the oil that the world needs.

I do wish we could just stop using oil, but I also like to eat.

They shouldn’t rule it out. Make the capability a problem for Moscow. The fact that they COULD strike means that Moscow now needs better defence, which means less in other places, such as Ukraine.

I wonder what it is that draws boys and young men into radical organisations such as IS. I doubt they are more religious than girls or young women.

Some are.

I’m boycotting bourbon, not because it’s american, but because it’s disgusting.

I’d rather have a Scottish or Irish malt.

I’m not saying that women are more intelligent than men, buuuuut…

I’m not opposing what you’re saying, but just to be clear, plenty of countries have rebates in one form or another; Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany for example.

Depends on how you count I think. The lower tariff does almost nothing in offsetting the big drop in EU trade, so in pure economic terms it would have been better to have the full tariff but be a member of the EU. Kind of like dropping £100 and then seeing finding 10p a benefit.

China is also opening new coal plants iirc. A few years ago I heard that if my home country (Sweden) stopped all co2 emissions today, the co2 savings would have been wiped out in a week, by China opening new coal plants.

The US might have gone dumb, but that does not make China good.

Feel free to cross post. I just put up content that I find interesting and that I think others might also want to check out.

Do it have to have an account on piefeed to post there?

Caveat, is that a synonym for felon?