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.
There’s already an annual child tax credit: https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-child-tax-credit
I’m sure they didn’t even check if birth rates are influenced by this…
$5k when having a kid costs $3k in insurance copays with a normal birth and average insurance. So you’re down to $2k before even leaving the hospital. This dude has all the intellectual depth and forethought of a mushroom.
And The 2K is gone pretty quick purely from adding the baby to your insurance. Boo.
Why do I have a feeling the administration would still try to find ways to not pay nonwhite families having kids?
Trump was propped up by people who believe this bogus “Great Replacement” theory and I don’t think they would be willing to back down from that stance on account of a generally declining population.
This is exactly the plan. Of course this kind of thing will only ever be meant for white parents.
anyone else think this shit is fucking weird?
It’s an incel mindset.
It makes more sense when you realize that money has solved all of Donald Trump’s problems in the past. Get a little too handsy with a woman? Pay her off to keep quiet. Have a business partnership or contract you want to get out of? Pay lawyers to harass them in court until they give up.
Heck, he doesn’t even need to use his own money most of the time, he can spend out of one of his companies like it’s a slush fund then declare bankruptcy, leaving business partners and banks with the bills.
He is now running the government like one of his privately owned companies, and using our money to try and solve his problems. Give them a pittance to go away, and when they don’t, you can say “we gave them a chance” before kidnapping them.
I was told this was communism. And that this is bad.
No amount of money will convince a meaningful amount of people to have kids if they can’t reasonably believe their children will have a good life. Climate disasters, pollution, financial struggle, no access to property, crushing work life, unemployment, racism, unfair public policies, regressing social rights. All of these have to be addressed seriously before you can even start dreaming about reaching replacement birth rate. Fascist governments will go for an easier solution: enslave women.
It really makes no sense of why they want to increase the population… when close to 5% are unemployed, as more people is ready to work soon.
The only thing I can think of is they’re trying to sink the usd more, make it a country like China that is like manufacturing, and many Americans lost a huge chunk of salary (like what happened during the Great Depression).
There’s not enough white babies for them. You’re looking for financial logic when it’s closer to white supremacy being out-birthed.
What you’re missing is that, in ~10-12 years or so, those babies will have grown into a massive labor demographic. I wish this was hyperbole.
It’s like they have in charge some nerd who’s only experience with planning and development is 4X games.
They want a slave class. That’s all.
Lmaooo no shit it won’t work. Daycare alone is $20-$40k a year. A pittance one-time payment doesn’t change the fundamental calculus of how fucking expensive everything is now
It shouldn’t work, it should give the right publicity. 1/8 of yearly daycare cost is you know what? more than 10% of daycare cost and more than zero. It doesn’t matter this is small, what matters is that people will subconsciously remember it exists.
Propaganda works like that. Various pieces of the right mechanism will be planted into your brain (yes, even your brain) to work in the right moment, when, despite everything having turned into shit, you’ll vaguely remember that there are some programs helping someone, not all other countries are perfect too, terrorists exist and should be fought, even though it’s done with wrong methods, and your ruling clan is full of dumb thieves, which is what they want you to think. And at some point this will make you defenseless for a full takeover.
Well, that’s what worked with Russia, USA is kinda stronger (not being a stagnating totalitarian state that just stopped breathing helps), but such people improve and perfect their methods too.
I bet it will have the opposite effect.
Just what we need… more boomers on the way
Build massive amounts of new housing. Give people paid parental leave, and universal healthcare. Guaranteed baby boom.
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.
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Agreed
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…
Hey non-Americans, fun fact! If you have a baby here, you can expect $15,000+ in hospital bills.
$5,000 should cover that, right?
That’s the most laughable part of this idea. Even with a great insurance plan that $5k is basically a hospital discount. Furthermore, the few people I know that are interested in having more kids and have “uneventful” home births under their belt, thus minimal medical bills, are all Hispanic.
Let’s not spread incorrect numbers, our hmo made the cost of labor about $100 (maybe because of California). Childcare, formula, etc is still way more than $5k but labor is only expensive with bad insurance or no insurance, which is actually kind of more ironic since that applies more to MAGA than the rest of us.
That’s the fucked up part about America. You can walk out of a hospital with no bill or life-crippling debt depending on your age, income level, state, and employer (i.e. employer-based insurance).
I’ll say life-crippling debt roulette is certainly one of the more frustrating aspects of our system, yeah. Non-labor costs are a hit or miss of rejections, especially, since you don’t have the same protections.
E.g. Indiana friend owes 40k for a 15 dollar mandatory procedure, for instance, and he has to fight it since it’s clearly a random rejection. It’s very upsetting. I just don’t want to paint the picture it’s always life-crippling, just… very random.
Not in California, but we had twins, a couple days stay in the hospital, and have really good insurance. Still got billed 7k for the supposedly 80k total the hospital was billing for.
A C-section will run you $60K easy. With the 80:20 insurance thats $12K owed by the parents. . With the federal out of pocket maximum being $9,450 for the mother. The baby also has a $9,450 out of pocket maximum. So the family will likely owe at least $12k before leaving the hospital
$5K handout is seriously ignorant. It will cost a hell of a lot more to reverse the trend
In order to increase the birthrate above replacement level here are a few things that need to happen.
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Free universal healthcare including dental.
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Rent control for all apartments locked to single income minimum wage.
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Ban on investment properties for single family homes. If the house is classified as single family, you can’t rent it out. It must be sold.
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Free childcare.
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Free education from pre-K to Graduate levels.
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Open immigration policies for countries with higher birthrates.
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Increase minimum wage to make it a livable wage.
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To pay for it all - Increase corporate taxes to 95% for more than $100million income. Increase personal taxes to 95% for more than 1 million in income.
9: The outlawing of ghost jobs and heavy enforcement of workers rights.
To reverse the trend one should make healthcare more competitive.
It’s funny how all of the real solutions for increasing the birthrate are just generally good things for the country.
And also things the party that most wants it to happen will never ever enact because their ideologies conflict with one another
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Im paying $12,000 per year for daycare/preschool just so I can go to work.
You got a good fuckin deal. I don’t have kids but my friends pay between $20,000 and $30,000 for daycare
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.
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.
It’ll join the light bulbs up there from the 1st term
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.
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.
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.
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
Just shows how out of touch oligarchs are. $5000? Seriously?
What can raising a child cost? 5000?
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.
Each kid is like a $1m commitment.
