Letter: The decline in the birthrate has multiple socioeconomic causes. Not addressing them with reforms could come to haunt us.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune)
There has been a great deal of concern from our national and local leaders lately about the decline in our birthrate and the increases in average ages for both Utahns and United States citizens.
There are a number of socioeconomic factors contributing to this issue:
Delaying or skipping marriage due to the inability to earn a decent living even with a college education or a trade;Choosing not to have children due to the high cost of raising and supporting them;A tax structure and economic system that favors billionaires and penalizes the working class;The transfer of trillions of dollars from the working class to the top 1% through the tax code revisions of the past 45 years;For-profit health care that prioritizes shareholders and fund managers, sacrificing accessibility, affordability, and quality of care.We can either reform our tax structure, economic system, and our health care system to enhance families’ abilities to provide shelter, food, health care, and other needs for themselves or their children and stop subsidizing billionaires, or the marketplace may do that for us in a repeat of the 1930s Great Depression in an economic reset with widespread deflation and reallocation of resources due to the inability of the working class to earn a decent living and afford housing, medical care, and other needs of modern life.
The question I ask is this — which method would you prefer?
Daniel Herbert-Voss, White City
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