At the end of the day I just think this is about childless people not wanting to pay more taxes.
You say incentives don't work, but nobody really tries. At most some country will provide 5-10% the full cost of raising a kid, often in in-kind services the parents may not even value (what does subsidized daycare do for a stay at home mom, nothing).
An extra $5k in taxes on taxpayers without children would fund $25k in CTC for a median family of four simply by returning their taxes paid (no refundability). That would make a big difference, rather then this pidly crap over $5k vs $2k.
Vance's comments were in 2021 when the childless cat lady demographic had closed my kids school and wanted toddlers to wear masks all day. There does seem to be a conflict between the interests of families and the interests of single women. That's why married people of both genders vote GOP and single women vote 70% DEM. I'd also like school choice but childless cat ladies oppose it.
At the end of the day I do think there is a certain bitterness going on. $5k more in taxes isn't a big deal, its admitting that you need to contribute more because you contributed less by not having kids that irks people.
I don't disagree that sufficiently large incentives could contribute to fertility rates, but I doubt they alone are enough to reverse the decline. To maximize their effect, incentives would also require a shift in social norms and cultural values.
Even to make sufficiently strong incentives politically feasible would require a paradigm (or vibe) shift. After all, it would require a large number of childless adults to support a wealth transfer to families. This, in turn, would require a sufficient number of childless adults to be pronatalists (at which point the culture would have shifted, and they might be having kids themselves).
On the first paragraph I think incentive structures can either cause or at least not retard cultural shifts. For instance, I saw a lot of people move to private/homeschool over the last few years, but as COVID ends a lot of people look at the prospect of paying private school tuition for 13 years per kid and balk. These private schools had a successful model, but with strong financial disincentive its hard to persist.
Meanwhile, in Florida where they have school vouchers people are flocking to private and homeschools.
On your second paragraph I agree. Though I think the main issue is that government doesn't like giving money to regular people in general. Even if you convinced people to "support families" it could just as easily become more Eds and Meds subsidy and some cash giveaways to the underclass. Your best bet for significant legislation would be a concrete proposal put out at election time, but nobody is doing that. If it didn't cost $25,000 to have a meet and greet with a candidate I would pitch it to them.
I learnt at 18, reading Indro Montanelli, the most important Law of History: restorations never work.
You simply cannot believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he resurrected in flesh and Soul. Vance does not believe it (he married a non Christian). He wants others to believe it, for reasons that are sound. But none of those reasons is that he believes.
In a materialistic-atomistic (post Newton and Darwin) world, the elite will not be able to hold a Bronze Age religion for long. It is a dead end.
Belief is one aspect of religion, but not the only one. Christianity, particularly its Protestant form, tends to emphasize orthodoxy (correct belief). However, religions may also focus on orthopraxy (correct practice) in the context of ethics, rituals, and community. Practice can follow from belief, but belief can also follow from practice. Moreover, reverence toward what is greater than your own ego/self does not necessarily entail acceptance of a particular dogma.
So I agree that a simple restoration is not possible in the sense that educated minds must take scientific discoveries seriously, which alters how we approach and conceive of religion. But science can also help us focus on the perennial wisdom of a tradition instead of historical accretions. (We can debate exactly where to draw the line between the two.) Whether that's how JD Vance sees his Christianity, I cannot say, but this strikes me as the most plausible pathway to an elite conciliation with religion.
Arguments for theism are strong, of course. But all revelations look simply too historic to be compatible with our knowledge of the reality.
“Restoration” is precisely people going back to believe in Resurrection and the sinfulness of non sanctified sex, or any other useful social beliefs that look a little bit too parochial for the God that created the Maxwell equations.
Our knowledge of reality suggests that we are hardwired with a "faith instinct" and that religion evolved to fulfill an important social function. Secular reason cannot tell us that religion is true—let alone which religion is true—but it can tell us that religion is suited to our psychology. Believers who are open to scientific discovery might see that in itself as evidence of the divine.
Because religion is "natural" to us, I'd argue not that a precise Restoration is possible but that a renewal certainly is. Religions that have existed for millennia have adapted to changing circumstances while maintaining core qualities. The Lindy Effect suggests that they will continue to endure into the future.
Christianity, for example, went from persecuted minority to state religion, syncretized with local paganisms, reconciled itself with vastly different sociopolitical systems (from empire to democracy), and split into numerous churches across vast spans of physical and doctrinal territory. I would not rule out a Christian future, even if it's not the exact Christianity we once knew (eg, a Christian, youthful Africa evangelizing a godless, aging Europe?).
By proving that religion is a generic natural need, Science also undermines the case for any specific (revealed) religion.
The Scientific educated minority is aware of this (and the rest of arguments against super natural beliefs) and permanently undermine the supernatural beliefs of the rest of the society. It is not only “Enlightenment”; it happens everywhere.
In any case, Asian countries show that societies can endure without theological beliefs (in China elite beliefs have been non religious for centuries, and religion is a popular phenomenon separated from high culture).
Science can undermine beliefs, but you’re overestimating the extent to which even the educated elite is influenced by science alone. Consider, for example, the many well-educated, secular elites who reject the scientifically established fact of biological sex. The decline of traditional
religion doesn’t inexorably lead to enlightened rationalism. More often, it leads to the adoption of substitute ideologies that fill the need for meaning and identity that religion formerly filled.
In East Asia, the rapid growth of Christianity in South Korea is actually an interesting counter-example to the secularization thesis. Buddhism remains prevalent in Southeast Asia, while even ultra-modern Japan is imbued with Shinto practices. China, of course, is run by a totalitarian regime that restricts religious freedom. But even there, the persistence of folk religion undermines the claim that societies can endure without theological beliefs (though, of course, Chinese cosmology is distinct from Western conceptions).
I believe it. And I don't know that Vance doesn't believe it, despite the fact he married an unbeliever. Maybe he was attracted to her and assumes that others besides Christians can go to heaven.
As to Montanelli, it seems a bad idea to assume this one person somehow has all the answers on a given topic. Compared to the entire rest of the world, believing and not believing.
At the end of the day I just think this is about childless people not wanting to pay more taxes.
You say incentives don't work, but nobody really tries. At most some country will provide 5-10% the full cost of raising a kid, often in in-kind services the parents may not even value (what does subsidized daycare do for a stay at home mom, nothing).
An extra $5k in taxes on taxpayers without children would fund $25k in CTC for a median family of four simply by returning their taxes paid (no refundability). That would make a big difference, rather then this pidly crap over $5k vs $2k.
Vance's comments were in 2021 when the childless cat lady demographic had closed my kids school and wanted toddlers to wear masks all day. There does seem to be a conflict between the interests of families and the interests of single women. That's why married people of both genders vote GOP and single women vote 70% DEM. I'd also like school choice but childless cat ladies oppose it.
At the end of the day I do think there is a certain bitterness going on. $5k more in taxes isn't a big deal, its admitting that you need to contribute more because you contributed less by not having kids that irks people.
I don't disagree that sufficiently large incentives could contribute to fertility rates, but I doubt they alone are enough to reverse the decline. To maximize their effect, incentives would also require a shift in social norms and cultural values.
Even to make sufficiently strong incentives politically feasible would require a paradigm (or vibe) shift. After all, it would require a large number of childless adults to support a wealth transfer to families. This, in turn, would require a sufficient number of childless adults to be pronatalists (at which point the culture would have shifted, and they might be having kids themselves).
On the first paragraph I think incentive structures can either cause or at least not retard cultural shifts. For instance, I saw a lot of people move to private/homeschool over the last few years, but as COVID ends a lot of people look at the prospect of paying private school tuition for 13 years per kid and balk. These private schools had a successful model, but with strong financial disincentive its hard to persist.
Meanwhile, in Florida where they have school vouchers people are flocking to private and homeschools.
On your second paragraph I agree. Though I think the main issue is that government doesn't like giving money to regular people in general. Even if you convinced people to "support families" it could just as easily become more Eds and Meds subsidy and some cash giveaways to the underclass. Your best bet for significant legislation would be a concrete proposal put out at election time, but nobody is doing that. If it didn't cost $25,000 to have a meet and greet with a candidate I would pitch it to them.
I learnt at 18, reading Indro Montanelli, the most important Law of History: restorations never work.
You simply cannot believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he resurrected in flesh and Soul. Vance does not believe it (he married a non Christian). He wants others to believe it, for reasons that are sound. But none of those reasons is that he believes.
In a materialistic-atomistic (post Newton and Darwin) world, the elite will not be able to hold a Bronze Age religion for long. It is a dead end.
Belief is one aspect of religion, but not the only one. Christianity, particularly its Protestant form, tends to emphasize orthodoxy (correct belief). However, religions may also focus on orthopraxy (correct practice) in the context of ethics, rituals, and community. Practice can follow from belief, but belief can also follow from practice. Moreover, reverence toward what is greater than your own ego/self does not necessarily entail acceptance of a particular dogma.
So I agree that a simple restoration is not possible in the sense that educated minds must take scientific discoveries seriously, which alters how we approach and conceive of religion. But science can also help us focus on the perennial wisdom of a tradition instead of historical accretions. (We can debate exactly where to draw the line between the two.) Whether that's how JD Vance sees his Christianity, I cannot say, but this strikes me as the most plausible pathway to an elite conciliation with religion.
Arguments for theism are strong, of course. But all revelations look simply too historic to be compatible with our knowledge of the reality.
“Restoration” is precisely people going back to believe in Resurrection and the sinfulness of non sanctified sex, or any other useful social beliefs that look a little bit too parochial for the God that created the Maxwell equations.
Our knowledge of reality suggests that we are hardwired with a "faith instinct" and that religion evolved to fulfill an important social function. Secular reason cannot tell us that religion is true—let alone which religion is true—but it can tell us that religion is suited to our psychology. Believers who are open to scientific discovery might see that in itself as evidence of the divine.
Because religion is "natural" to us, I'd argue not that a precise Restoration is possible but that a renewal certainly is. Religions that have existed for millennia have adapted to changing circumstances while maintaining core qualities. The Lindy Effect suggests that they will continue to endure into the future.
Christianity, for example, went from persecuted minority to state religion, syncretized with local paganisms, reconciled itself with vastly different sociopolitical systems (from empire to democracy), and split into numerous churches across vast spans of physical and doctrinal territory. I would not rule out a Christian future, even if it's not the exact Christianity we once knew (eg, a Christian, youthful Africa evangelizing a godless, aging Europe?).
By proving that religion is a generic natural need, Science also undermines the case for any specific (revealed) religion.
The Scientific educated minority is aware of this (and the rest of arguments against super natural beliefs) and permanently undermine the supernatural beliefs of the rest of the society. It is not only “Enlightenment”; it happens everywhere.
In any case, Asian countries show that societies can endure without theological beliefs (in China elite beliefs have been non religious for centuries, and religion is a popular phenomenon separated from high culture).
Science can undermine beliefs, but you’re overestimating the extent to which even the educated elite is influenced by science alone. Consider, for example, the many well-educated, secular elites who reject the scientifically established fact of biological sex. The decline of traditional
religion doesn’t inexorably lead to enlightened rationalism. More often, it leads to the adoption of substitute ideologies that fill the need for meaning and identity that religion formerly filled.
In East Asia, the rapid growth of Christianity in South Korea is actually an interesting counter-example to the secularization thesis. Buddhism remains prevalent in Southeast Asia, while even ultra-modern Japan is imbued with Shinto practices. China, of course, is run by a totalitarian regime that restricts religious freedom. But even there, the persistence of folk religion undermines the claim that societies can endure without theological beliefs (though, of course, Chinese cosmology is distinct from Western conceptions).
I believe it. And I don't know that Vance doesn't believe it, despite the fact he married an unbeliever. Maybe he was attracted to her and assumes that others besides Christians can go to heaven.
As to Montanelli, it seems a bad idea to assume this one person somehow has all the answers on a given topic. Compared to the entire rest of the world, believing and not believing.