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.
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?
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.
Free universal healthcare including dental.
Rent control for all apartments locked to single income minimum wage.
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.
Free childcare.
Free education from pre-K to Graduate levels.
Open immigration policies for countries with higher birthrates.
Increase minimum wage to make it a livable wage.
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
9: The outlawing of ghost jobs and heavy enforcement of workers rights.
To reverse the trend one should make healthcare more competitive.
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.
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