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.
$5000???
Hahahahaha
Give me a house. Anything short of 1500 sqft, 3br, 1.5ba, on a half acre or more is just not enough for my gf and I to even consider.
And we are both gainfully employed.
I get the sentiment here, but a half acre is a lot of land and the development of large suburban lots is a big thing that contributed to the housing crisis in north america. We need to diversify housing and increase the number of 1000-2000 sqft apartments as well. Relatively small homes on smaller lots (1/4 acre and under) should also be being built.
A half acre is nothing. It’s ~20,000 sq/ft.
Which could be 10, 2000 sq/ft single story units or 40, 2000 sq/ft apartments in a 4 story building. We cant just keep letting cities build outward and cover farmlands with endless swathes of single family homes and barren lawns.
Yeah. I’m not having kids in those conditions.
Full stop.
Cause it is impossible to raise kids in an apartment. Just look at new york city.
I did not say it was impossible. At all. Get your strawman bullshit outta here. Stick to the point or stfu.
I said am not interested in those living conditions.
Full stop.
Maybe for any sort of food-supplementing gardening and/or egg-farming. For simple living space, it’s extravagant. I live in the Texas suburbs, and half-acre lots are nowhere near the norm until you get way out into the exurbs. Quarter acre lots are a rather generous and (and resource intensive), and 1/8 would be standard for “starter” homes.
Give everyone a house. How is this not a thing in the 21st century
Half acre? You don’t need that much space for kids 😂
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.
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.
It’s funny how all of the real solutions for increasing the birthrate are just generally good things for the country.
To reverse the trend one should make healthcare more competitive.
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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.
anyone else think this shit is fucking weird?
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.
It’s an incel mindset.
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.
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.
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.
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“What could raising a child cost? $5000?”
“You’ve never actually raised a child, have you?”
Is $5000 gonna resurrect my wife if my shit ass state policies force her to continue a dangerous pregnancy and she dies prior to giving birth? Also, fuck you.
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.
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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).
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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.
Throwing money at people won’t cause a baby boom. YOU NEED TO MAKE CHILD CARE AND HOUSING CHEAPER!! GIVE PEOPLE HOPE AND CHILDREN WILL FOLLOW!
I know I’m screaming into a void but I feel like it needs to be said.
And it’s a start. Make public transportation easier to access. Find public education better. Don’t sic CPS on parents that let their children play outside.
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.
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
Trump: “Gotta save the government money”
Also Trump: “Just throw money at it, maybe it will fix itself”
There is no plan, just incompetence.
