White House proposes giving out $5,000 checks to address falling birthrates amid growing ‘pronatalist’ movement
One of Donald Trump’s priorities for his second term is getting Americans to have more babies – and the White House has a new proposal to encourage them to do so: a $5,000 “baby bonus”.
The plan to give cash payments to mothers after delivery shows the growing influence of the “pronatalist” movement in the US, which, citing falling US birthrates, calls for “traditional” family values and for women – particularly white women – to have more children.
But experts say $5,000 checks won’t lead to a baby boom. Between unaffordable health care, soaring housing costs, inaccessible childcare and a lack of federal parental leave mandates, Americans face a swath of expensive hurdles that disincentivize them from having large families – or families at all – and that will require a much larger government investment to overcome.
It’s a way of funneling money to the fundies and ultra-reactionary Catholics.
Just birthing the damn thing is like $50,000. He can shove the $5,000 right up his ass and I hope he gets paper cuts up there too.
It’ll join the light bulbs up there from the 1st term
I believe $5k is around the average cost (after insurance) to have a baby in the US if you have insurance.
Remove insurance. I know I was exaggerating but the bottom line is the poor are hit most and there’s a higher chance they don’t have insurance. Especially if Medicaid gets gutted.
My wife and I would consider another kid if the fed wanted to kick us an extra $25k per year.
A one time fee of $5K is hilarious. You’d maybe be able to cover the hospital bill from having the kid with that sum.
You’d maybe be able to cover the hospital bill from having the kid with that sum.
If there’s no complications.
Seriously! 100K minimum to cover the basics.
It’s not even his idea.
https://taxfoundation.org/blog/hillary-clintons-proposal-5000-baby-bond-essentially-already-here/
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s plan to give every newborn a $5,000 bond, money meant to defray college costs when the kids hit 18, continued to draw criticism yesterday from her right-wing rivals.
“It’s a quick way of trying to buy votes, which is irresponsible when it comes to the economic future of the nation,” said New York Conservative Party chief Mike Long, adding that the White House would have to raise taxes to finance the plan.
The bonds would cost about $20 billion a year, based on the 4million American babies born annually, according to Time magazine, which last month proposed a similar plan.
Not even cash, but healthcare, childcare, preschool, more tuition assistance (WTF, FAFSA no longer considers if you have multiple kids in college? Let’s start by fixing that), excessive housing and vehicle cost. Plus give us some hope for the future with investments in the environment and renewable energy, making the world a better place. $5k probably covers first year food, clothes, diapers but not much more
FAFSA calculations have been bullshit for years.
“Oh, your family was extremely abusive and they aren’t giving you a dime? Well, your stepfather still makes too much for you to get anything other than unsubsidized loans.”
Like, fuck, my mom stole thousands of dollars from me. I should have had a negative EFC.
Just shows how out of touch oligarchs are. $5000? Seriously?
What can raising a child cost? 5000?
This is how you get Idiocracy. The people that would take advantage of this would be the people you don’t want to over-breed.
The people that would take advantage of this would be the people completely lacking in critical thinking.
Thats mostly what happned in Australia back in the day when we tried it. Mu friends wife was a social worker, she said coercion to have babies was endemic and the money taken off the mother by the asshat father when said money arrived. Not really a lack of critical thinking per se, just desperate :(
What a debacle.
The people that would take advantage of this wouldn’t have the ability for critical thinking skills. I doubt the kids would be much better.
Sadly, I agree
In any case this combined with his dismantling of public education will certainly not help.
And the same people who are likely to vote for whoever his fascist successor ends up being.
He “could” TOTALLY pay his way into a baby boom.
Step 1: Tax the rich. Lower the pressure on the lower and middle classes.
Step 2: Fix housing pricing so that a single hard-working person can afford a house, a car, and two kids without their partner having to work.
Step 3: Put some guardrails in place to stop the 2-3 companies that are buying up everything. Give medium and small business a chance to thrive without needing to be purchased by a giant company.
Step 4. Fix healthcare so that the family above gets 100% coverage for whatever happens. Pay for it with Step 1.
I thought Republicans were against giving people handouts?
Only if Democrats are the ones doing the handouts. Trump was very happy to sign all those stim checks during covid. Didn’t hear them bitching about socialism and communism then.
He held up pandemic aid for his signature on them btw.
They’re pretending to offer incentives while their actual policies are why birth rates are declining.
5k won’t even cover the hospital costs for the birth. Let alone the child care, continuing to insure that child, food, housing, child care because both parents need to work, education which they’ve been staying refunding for decades…
They want people who aren’t smart enough to realize this having more babies.
Build massive amounts of new housing. Give people paid parental leave, and universal healthcare. Guaranteed baby boom.
There is no housing shortage, just an abundance of greed. There are 14,000,000 empty homes in the USA and most are owned by corporations who hold them as part of a financial portfolio or hedge funds. Ban corporations from owning residential properties and the housing shortage will vanish without cutting down more trees and burning more fossil fuels.
Idk man, around me it’s sprawling single family homes for miles, when it should be blocks and blocks of condos and town homes. The NIMBYs have prevented construction for decades and now a house costs $1.5m. There is a housing shortage. I think corporations recently taking an interest in buying houses is because the shortage makes their value appreciate so quickly. They’re like parasites taking advantage of the situation, not the root cause.
The corporations buying houses, and property, is exactly the root cause. If they own it all, they set the prices. It’s a cash cow. You pay, or you’re homeless. You pay $2500/month rent, but they won’t give you a mortgage where you would be paying $2000/month.
The root cause is a lack of multi family housing. Corpos buying houses is not the primary issue with housing, though it is also a serious concern.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/federal-social-housing-1.6946376 The Canadian government used to build social housing. We have a real problem with homeless people in Canada. There are only a few places left like this where I live. They are very well run complexes. My Son-in-law’s retired Mom lives in one. She worked hard all her life, but through a divorce and buying a “leaky condo”, she was left without a lot of resources. She was lucky enough to find a placement in one of these places. The rent is a percentage of her income. We need more places like this…
Agreed
Do we really need a baby boom though? I agree we need affordable housing, everything you mentioned and more. At the same time I don’t think the population should grow forever (so education and available birth control).
I don’t disagree. I was just clarifying what would spur one.
Truthfully, we are fucked either way. The truth is having a baby boom would help the economy, but accelerate environmental degradation and the consequences of climate change, which will be extremely destabilizing to society and possibly lead to collapse.
But, if we don’t continue to grow the population, the capitalist world, based on a need for endless growth will falter. We will see less productivity and consumption, which will also be destabilizing to society as the economy shrinks or becomes stagnant. This is also destabilizing to society and could also create a collapse.
You’d also have to subsidize childcare. It’s crazy expensive.
He’s making everything more expensive, gutting medicade to nothing (50% of babies are born on medicade), taking away food stamps, getting rid of the department of education, gutting hud, gutting head start, getting rid of free lunches in schools, sending us into a Great Depression, stripping worker protections and removing any hope for a future….but yeah 5k sure that will cover your first 15 minutes of delivery. What a joke this man is
And up to 80% of children are covered by Medicaid depending on the state.
and most elderly in nursing homes. That is going to be a whole lot of care work dumped onto women with little to no pay and dire economic consequences for women and families. It would be absolutely stupid to have a baby with this level of uncertainty
I’m just looking forward to when I have time to yeet my uterus (get a hysterectomy). It was a pain to find an OBGyn who would do it without asking too many questions, but I still brought my husband to the consultation appointment just in case there was any push back because I’m a woman in her 30’s with no children. I’ve had previous OBGyn’s refuse to even discuss a hysterectomy with me because “what if your future husband wants children” when I wasn’t even in a relationship or dating at the time.
“what if your future husband wants children”
“Then he shouldn’t be marrying someone without a uterus” would be the logical response. Sorry you had to go through that bullshit.
If it makes you feel any better, my wife and I were both 40 and already had two healthy kids in elementary school when I got a consultation for a vasectomy. They still made me do everything short of swear on a bible that I wasn’t going to change my mind before they would agree to do it. They insisted that my wife come in with me and sign a document affirming her agreement with the procedure before they would schedule it. Then they made us both give verbal and written agreement AGAIN right before they started. It was nuts (pardon the pun).
At least offer free healthcare and child birth, that’s $30,000 out of pocket if you’re middle class.
They don’t want the middle class breeding, those are the people they want to get rid of. They want rulers and servants. With this, poor people will have more kids for the short term gain because they have to. Parents get money and can feed thmselves for a while. Then the oligarchy gets a influx of child labour they can pay less for and will be indoctrinated from this early age. Those parents will realize having more kids means they can get more income off them and with be incentived to have 12 kids in the factory.
Why can’t countries understand quality of life leads to more of those productive babies they really want
None of the developed countries have a replacement birth rate. Higher quality of life has lead to lower birth rate in all cases.
because that requires the people in charge facing hard truths about their own lifestyles.
“What could raising a child cost? $5000?”
“You’ve never actually raised a child, have you?”
I’m not American. I thought “$5k/month for sure”. Lol.
Literally cost us $11k in medical bills to have a baby. That doesn’t include the cost of actually maintaining it either. $5k is a JOKE
$5k is roughly 1/4 the cost…
… of a birth.
Alone. Just, average medical costs of a birth, without insurance.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-baby/
https://www.uwhealth.org/news/how-much-does-it-really-cost-have-baby
… And they are slashing Medicaid.
If you do have insurance… $5k is about half the cost of a birth.
So… congrats, you can have two kids, and then uh lol have fun paying the cost of raising two kids, which is about half a million dollars.
And that’s just to 18, btw, this assumes those kids can find a job immediately after high school and move out into a place they can afford on an entry level income.
Which uh, is basically wildly unrealistic at this point.
Because all entry level jobs require 2-3 years of experience.
And housing costs are insane.
It costs 20 000 USD to give birth? My goodness that is insane
Yeah.
The US is indeed, completely insane, compared to the rest of the developed world, but the average person has no other frame of reference.
Literacy rates in the US are down to 80%, by the way.
20% of the adult population cannot read or write beyond a 2nd grade level.
The average literacy ability is a 5th/6th grade level.
So… something like 2/3 of the country has reading and writing skills below that of what a high school (primary school, before a college or uni) graduate is supposed to have.
Our school systems are collapsing.
(And yes, you may notice that proportion of people with sub high school literacy rates is so large that it also includes many people with Uni/College degrees. Yep. That is correct. Many of those also fail to teach basic writing skills before giving someone a degree.)
High school would be mostly secondary school I think.
Primary is like from ages 5-11, with secondary being 11-16.
College/sixth form 16-19 and Uni 18+
(In context of the UK)
… All Im really aware of as far as terminology goes is that basically its different everywhere, even inside the US.
What it was for me: grades 1 - 5 are elementary, 6-8 are middle school and 9 -12 is high school.
But different areas … either don’t do a middle school, or call it something else, or its only 2 grades instead of 3… it varies.
By the time you are done with all this, you are 18 yo.
So… 2nd grade is basically the schooling level of an 8 yo. 6th grade is the schooling of a 12 yo.
After that, you’re going to a college, community college, university, something like that, to get a 2 or 4 year year degree (associates or bachelors), then another 2 after a bachelors for a masters, roughly another 2 after that for a PhD (doctorate)… but there is also variation in terms of exact education track and how long it actually takes to complete them vs how long its ‘supposed to take’.
Public education in the US generally stops at grade 12, and then any college/etc after that is ‘secondary’, as in ‘optional’.
EDIT: Adjusted age dates. I just woke up from a nap, blarrrgh.
A big problem is that we stopped teaching phonics. School districts spent hundreds of thousands on a terrible curriculum (and this model of teaching reading had already been tried and showed not to work in the 70’s). Teachers were forced to use this shitty “whole reading” model.
The other big problem is that high school English classes don’t have students read entire books anymore. They read short passages with multiple choice questions, because that’s what the standardized tests have. When you think about what media literacy is - that’s what the point of reading books in English class is! Thinking about the point and purpose of long texts!
Jesus.
Yeah, if you only read short passages of a book… well you definitionally lose all the context of the entire rest of the fucking book.
I guess the teachers are just assigning Cliff’s notes summaries instead of the entire text now?
The attention span destroying effect of short form video content is literally stupifyjng us.
I’ve said this whole fucking time: TikTok should be banned for children. Not because its Chinese, its not like every US social media app doesn’t spy on you as well.
All short form video content is addictive, habit forming, spreads mis and disinfo, and ruins your attention span and ability to concentrate, makes you more emotionally unstable, fucks with your sleep schedule.
This has all been studied.
Brain rot is real.
Short form video content apps are the modern day cigarettes.
While we certainly need to do much better, this is a bit alarmis: I don’t believe we’re that different from other developed countries. I don’t believe it’s that low depending on what you mean. However I’m pretty sure you’re comparing numbers in different definitions.
One article that I won’t link because I don’t know the sources, though the numbers are consistent with good sources, stated it like
- The current literacy rate in the U.S. is approximately 99.0%, placing it among the higher echelons of global literacy rates
- 21% of adults aged 16 to 65 score at or below the lowest literacy level based on the PIAAC study
- 54% lack literacy skills above a sixth-grade level
So we have at least three definitions of what literate means, and very different numbers.
‘Functional Literacy’ is generally defined as 2nd grade and up.
By that metric, yeah, 21% of the US is functionally illiterate.
Technically, they can read and write at a very basic level… but not ‘functionally’, as in, they could not function in society. They couldn’t read a news article and understand all the words. They have a very limited vocabulary.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
Wikipedia is currently going with an 86% literacy rate for the US, and I’d be willing to bet the discussion page is full of arguments about how to reasonably compare different metrics.
You may also notice that 86% puts us as neighbors with Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
This is what happens when Ya’llQaeda takes over a country.
We had considerably better literacy rates a decade or two ago, more like 95%.
That’s on the low end. My son spent three months in the NICU due to being born premature. His hospital bill ran into the six figures.
Fortunately, thanks to a hiccup of history in which one of JFK’s family members was in the NICU for a similar length of time and experienced sticker shock. She lobbied Kennedy and he lobbied Congress. So now, this bill is automatically covered by Medicaid.
Sorry your kid and you and your partner went through that… that must have been just cripplingly stressful in so many ways…
But uh… yeah.
You understand got lucky by basically random chance, at least in the monetary cost part of that situation… but of course, there are so, so many other nonsense ‘exceptional’ scenarios which… well actually millions of people end up in each year, and they just get to be saddled with debt for the rest of their lives, for things that happened to them which would generally have been impossible to precisely predict or prevent.
We are ruled by idiot, corrupt nepobabies who just actually cannot theoretically grasp things that do not specifically, personally affect or traumatize them.
Only if you have complications.
