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Notes -
I think a lot of it, combined with cheaper housing like 2rafa said. The problem that afflicts the PMC is they value living an urban and high-status lifestyle over having children, and act accordingly. When they do have children, they stress them out pushing them to become petit elites through prestigious education, so they too can afford a shoebox apartment in Manhattan.
The other problem is a lot of the interesting careers for smart people require geographical clustering in urban areas — and more upper-middle-class people are interested in those careers. Work-from-home was a big plus for people whose main problem was this; it enabled people who were trained in a professional field to work in an area with red-tribe property values. A ton of the COVID-era population shift came down to WFH making it an option for moderate professionals to move from blue tribe areas to red tribe areas.
I’m critical of the impact of WFH on productivity, but I think some element of professional geographic distribution would be the greatest thing that could ever be done to get the PMC to consider having more children.
The really interesting thing about this is that the PMC lifestyle in Manhattan looks like poverty to rednecks with three kids- it's a shoebox apartment, after all. Public transportation might be nice if it was clean, orderly, and safe, but the subway is... not that. Materially, the people in a trailerpark outconsume them.
Agreed.
That being said, I think there’s a lot to say for an urban lifestyle — if, as you’ve said, it’s safe, clean, and accessible. My view is that our biggest problem is our country has so many great and historic cities, but we’ve allowed inner-city crime to absolutely gut and destroy them, so any and all who want that kind of life have to fight over the scraps that aren’t totally ruined. We’ve allowed the bad optics of arresting and detaining criminals and gangsters who happen to be black men to absolutely ruin the possibility of city people to live good lives in many places, which is a very sad way in which the Democratic coalition is at odds with itself. And meanwhile Republicans are just living their best lives out in the burbs or the country.
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