As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris race for the presidency, their boosters are insisting the stakes couldn’t be higher for the future of our nation. But Americans have already given up on the future and are demonstrating this despair in the most fundamental way: Americans are not begetting more Americans.
The birthrate in the USA has hit another record low. Though the U.S. is not yet at complete demographic collapse (e.g. South Korea or Japan), American fertility is still way below replacement rate. Regardless of whom voters choose in November, they are already issuing a vote of no confidence in the future by literally refusing to beget people to live in it.
Collapsing fertility will cause a plethora of problems — good luck sustaining economic growth and paying for entitlement programs with an aging, shrinking population. Importing high levels of immigrants to maintain workforce levels is beset with its own difficulties. But highlighting the challenges of a future with few children will not encourage people to have more kids; people will not decide to breed just because it might boost GDP in a few decades. Indeed, dwelling on the problems of a below-replacement world might even be counterproductive from a pro-natal standpoint, as it just reinforces anxiety about the future.
Neither candidate can fix this. Harris may be trying to float on a media froth of “Joy!” but the DNC’s celebration of sterility and abortion, including Planned Parenthood providing not just free vasectomies but even free abortions right outside the
