this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
507 points (98.3% liked)

Not The Onion

15918 readers
1852 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

WTF

Edit: I wasn't sure what I was appalled by at first but now I realize it's that this fucking medal just encourages women to be treated no better than a prized heifer.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] OmgItBurns@discuss.online 1 points 1 hour ago

I feel like I missed part of the article where it said that the current administration was planning on distributing this medal. What I read was more along the lines of them saying that the current administration is potentially implementing some pronatalist policies and the it describes one policy promoted by a pronatalist group, but nothing about the current administration planning on implementing that specific policy.

Not saying any of this is good and I tend to mentally gloss over parts of text that I read, I'm just earnestly missing where it says that specific policy is one that is being looked into and I would appreciate someone pointing it out to me.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Can this medal be exchanged for food and shelter?

[–] justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 47 minutes ago

That would be communism!

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 34 minutes ago* (last edited 30 minutes ago)

ok so this is inconsistent

i read two fucking weeks ago that economists around the world are waking up to the idea that people should have fewer children because otherwise the rich and corporations might have to pay taxes to provide income to the people that the wages don't. if there's fewer people, they don't need to pay people subsidies so much. trump should talk to his economists.


edit: context: wages are predicted to drop so low over the next 20 years that people will not be able to feed themselves on wages alone. social unrest is painful and to avoid it, some sort of Universal Basic Income will be unavoidable. That would have to be paid for by taxes that the rich would have to pay, since literally nobody else has any money. You see where this is going: the rich don't like their wealth to be taxed.

[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 14 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

That's what women of child bearing age want and need. A medal. Not jobs, food, housing, security, nor equality.

[–] GreenCavalier@lemmy.ca 1 points 33 minutes ago

Also those child-bearing age women do not want nor need maternity care, and are TOTALLY into receiving a huge hospital bill after giving birth.

[–] justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 45 minutes ago

All the best countries did that, and US will be greatest of them all, that is what he will make it. Great it will be made...

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 31 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Jesus fuck, if you want people to have kids, it is not that hard. Remove obstacles. On average, people want to have kids. It's an evolutionary drive. People override that drive when they do not feel secure enough to start a family. Just make that easier. That's it. Make sure people can afford to have kids, that they can provide them a comfortable and safe upbringing, that they can ready their kids to become adults, and that their kids' future seems likely to be bright. How?

Decrease inflation. Subsidize child care. Increase wages and benefits (raise the mimimum wage). Mandate maternity/paternity leave. Make coverage for kids on health, dental, and vision insurance less expensive, or provide medicare for all (or at least all children). Make sure young people can afford good homes off of minimum wage. Make sure good schools are available to everyone by improving public education and providing bussing. Make sure kids are safe in schools with gun control laws. Make sure college/trade schools are inexpensive and accessible. Stablize the economy. Promote good middle class jobs. Avoid war. Fight bigotry. Provide comprehensive sex education and family planning resources including abortion rights so that people can start families when they are ready and promote generational welfare rather than propogating generational poverty.

Notice how damn near all of these things that would increase the birth rate are antithetical to GOP policy though? You want the results, but not the means. You want to offer "medals" for motherhood like a boss offers a pizza party for a record profits last quarter. It's unserious, unhelpful, condescending, insulting, and still leaves new parents struggling to get by. Be better leaders with sensible policies. Maybe then you will get your wish.

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

I would gold this comment if I could!

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 22 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

Wait so we have too many immigrants but not enough babies?

What's going on?

[–] jabeez@lemmy.today 12 points 4 hours ago

Sounds about white.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 16 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Your masters want you to breed.

Whether you can afford to have children or not.

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Especially when you can't afford their education. Those are the best kind of voters.

[–] mhague@lemmy.world 13 points 6 hours ago

Augustus did this 2000 years ago. Dictators can only imagine so far.

[–] TheDeadlySquid@lemm.ee 2 points 7 hours ago

Have you heard about the military parade on his birthday?

[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago

comes with bag of onions.

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 19 points 12 hours ago

Meloni copying this (once more, as Italy has already done it many times, since the 1920s) in 3...2...

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 14 hours ago (2 children)
[–] delgato@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago

This is the more accurate comparison. Yes, Trump’s government is like nazi Germany in many respects but the pronatalist movement is straight out the Putin playbook.

[–] DicJacobus@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago

the US Government is bought, paid for, and owned by the Russian Mafia. So much so that the Subordinate tries to emulate the master in every facet now.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 37 points 14 hours ago

...could he just skip to the part where he feeds himself a bullet just like daddy-Hitler, already?

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 131 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (9 children)

Governments are always offering weird wacky incentives for women to have children, when the solution is usually patently obvious: you can increase fertility by making it easy and affordable to have children. Stipends for food, paid maternity/paternity leave, free childcare services, affordable housing, and a good economy with an abundance of high-paying jobs.

I mean... there's a reason the baby boom happened in the 50s! But no, that would be socialism!!

[–] CalipherJones@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

But that'd hurt billionaires.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Nooo not the billionaires!

[–] nargis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I think you're forgetting the marital rape, financial dependence on men, lack of choice, sexist culture and general helplessness and misery of women involved in creating the 'baby boom'.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 45 minutes ago

Were those new problems that didn't exist before the 50s?

[–] bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Germany has most of these and a low birth rate.

[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You still need 2 working parents, few people want to balance a career and children. We're not designed for it. And their social help, while good for global standards, amounts to a fraction of the cost of having kids. In prehistory a whole village raised children and people barely worked. Social policies help but we need a global structural change.

Yes, the social support structure is essential. If you have extended family for example; that will help you out a lot with costs and care. Families are small, atomized and fractured today.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago

There are also signs that there is an opportunity window that closes for large families.

As families sizes shrink, the children of those families go on to have a family size similar to what they grew up in. This is especially problematic for single child households.

[–] Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 14 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That's how you create a society of responsible adults capable of critical thinking. They want a society of mindless workers used to hardship and deprivation of their rights.

[–] ZeffSyde@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago

Ehm, on paper I agree, but you've witnessed the generation that came out of the post WW2 baby boom, right?

What were they called?

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

IIRC. the US is one in two countries in the entire world that does not offer paid maternity leave.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure Somalia does not have paid maternity leave

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#By_continent

National laws vary widely according to the politics of each jurisdiction. As of 2012, only two countries do not mandate paid time off for new parents: Papua New Guinea and the United States.

Somalia 14 [weeks] 50% [pay] Employer liability [source of pay]

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Somalia does not have a functioning state apparatus to enforce any of its laws in most of the country

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 hours ago

Because all the Sommelier babies are wine-drunk.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 34 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

These fuckers will do anything to invent a flying machine except the proven model that works because they knoooow it gotta be possible with large square blocks of quarried marble tied to huskies. Just need more dogs. Or maybe more marble. mush! Ok add some more marble see if that works.

[–] ZeffSyde@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I posit that if we add a spoiler with 20" rims and a high flow muffler, this block of marble will surely take flight.

[–] iheartneopets@lemm.ee 2 points 1 hour ago

Well somebody's about to get added to a Signal chat

[–] vividspecter@lemm.ee 17 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly, we need to reform our economic system and not continually rely on fertility to solve all of our problems.

I'll add that even those incentives probably won't help, as fertility declines are strongly associated with education levels and money (and women's liberation in particular). Give women options and unsurprisingly, some will choose not to have children.

[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 8 hours ago

Honestly, we need to reform our economic system and not continually rely on fertility to solve all of our problems.

Fertility and demographic collapse aren't about supporting an economic system. Even if we were a post-scarcity communist utopia women would need to average 2.1 children/woman to maintain the existing population (2.1 isn't growth, it's maintenance - if you wonder why it's slightly higher than the number of people involved with making new people it's because you also have to cover for infertility and mortality among those children) or the same population-level result would occur. The nasty thing about demographic collapse is that it's subtle until it isn't and by that point it's really hard to fix. There is no economic system where people don't need to make more people to have a stable population, at least not unless/until we achieve some kind of immortality.

Ultimately you have three options when it comes to the topic, and they all have downsides:

  1. Get your people to make more people. Downsides: Those new people aren't really contributing to society for a couple of decades, which means it's a long term fix for a problem that might be a big problem in a shorter term than that depending on where we're talking about. Also, there aren't a lot of ethical ways to do this, and the ones that are ethical aren't extremely effective.

  2. Import people from elsewhere. Downside: If you do this too quickly and/or without pushing for assimilation you will irrevocably change if not destroy your culture. This is why places like Japan and South Korea aren't allowing unlimited mass immigration from anywhere people are willing to come from despite being on the cusp of the "until it isn't" part of "subtle until it isn't."

  3. Do nothing, and hope it just fixes itself. Downside: This is essentially a death spiral for your people.

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 6 points 13 hours ago

Also the belief the future will be better and more abundant. People need that as possible parents being scared of the future are not having (more) children.

And the society we live in tells us money, expensive status symbols and varying experiences you can brag about are the most important things. Having many children stands in the way of that

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 70 points 19 hours ago (7 children)

Founding of the Trump youth organization in 3... 2... 1...

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

If we ever get a group of MAGAlings running around, I'm going full Anakin Skywalker...

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

That's what they're hoping for. That's the whole point of using children as human shields.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Australis13@fedia.io 40 points 18 hours ago

the Trump administration has shown signs of enthusiasm for a pronatalist agenda. DOGE head Elon Musk, a father of 14, posts regularly on social media about the need for Americans to have more babies; he has also promoted NatalCon on X. Vice President JD Vance has proposed the idea of a weighted voting system, in which the votes cast by parents would be valued more highly than those by the childless. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (a father of nine) signed a memo recommending that his department prioritize “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

Got to provide a continuous supply of children for the labour camps.

load more comments
view more: next ›