There will never be a Trumpian baby boom
The Trump administration has been tossing around the idea of a $5,000 “baby bonus” to help encourage young marrieds to have kids. Elon Musk’s Genghis Khan-like IVF efforts aside, the national birthrate is in decline, leading to bureaucratic fears of a population collapse. If this bonus were to happen, it would give fresh meaning to the term “stimulus.” But there will never be a Trumpian baby boom. You hear all kinds of excuses for our procreative decline: rampant pornography, sex robots, institutionally encouraged gender dysphoria, microplastics in the water. But the major reason that American people aren’t having kids? They’re too expensive. The baby bonus floated this week is supposed to address that, but there’s one problem: it’s not nearly enough.
