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.
Wow, look at that! The price of strollers just went up 5k!
Replace strollers with basically anything related to birth or infants. 5k more to spend? 5k more to earn by big business selling wares.
This assumes the hospital doesn’t determine that you seem to owe 5k more for that one out of network service provider they slipped in while you were distracted during birthing.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
$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.
Give everyone a house. How is this not a thing in the 21st century
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.
Honestly this is super common in many urban settings across the world. I think why this seems so unreasonable from the American perspective US due to the lack of public spaces/infrastructure/services.
Having a private lot seems less of a big deal when there are accessible spaces and easy ways to travel around town.
Like I get it, I also want a yard, but if I had an easy way to access other things and a safe place to recreate it would be less of a desire
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.
Don’t forget parking lots! The suburban strip mall is dependent on them. And since they take up valuable real estate that isn’t providing any tax revenue, it gets subsidized by taxes from neighboring high-density urban areas.
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.
hes just copying putin, putin promised equivalent to 16k for 10 children from moms.
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.
$5000? Does Trump still think it’s the 1950s?
I sizable chunk of the populace seems to harbor similar delusions
We will give you FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS! MFer please, diapers alone would be $5000 the first year.
Does Trump still think it’s the 1950s?
Very likely, yes.
$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.
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.
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
To reverse the trend one should make healthcare more competitive.
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“What could raising a child cost? $5000?”
“You’ve never actually raised a child, have you?”
Yeah girls don’t really wanna fuck like they do where/when abortions are an option and there’s no chance of legally being sentenced to death because of a still birth I’m shocked conservatives are too stupid to get this.
also in this economy? hcol? poor job prospects?
Or they could just forgive the student loans haha, they are so stupid.
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.
