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Clementine's avatar

A point that many articles of this kind either neglect or miss entirely is touched on a few times here - once in the education graph, in particular, which shows the "U-curve" of fertility, though not in its entirety. The trough is Bachelors Degree, at around 1.3, recovering substantially as you look towards Masters degree holders, and then Doctorate holders. This peak is only 1.545, but this is simply because 'PhD' is too wide a category, and fails to isolate the truly elite.

This graph (https://i.snipboard.io/hmQcOo.jpg) shows the full curve, dividing it by annual income. The birthrate of the extremely poor is just slightly above replacement, at ~2.15, whereas the birthrate of the elite, the people with true power, start to see an exponentially growing birthrate, concluding at around 2.35k where the graph cuts out. The trough is, as you say, DINKs pulling between $150k and $199k, living for a simulacra of elite-hood rather than the real thing.

Something worth discussing - or at least thinking about - is the fact that we are not the only high-agency, high-fecundity faction looking towards future power. Our current ruling class has a birthrate that is substantially higher than that of almost any other demographic, even as they recommend that their most faithful clients behave otherwise.

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Alex's avatar

Your writing, whether here or on Twitter, is consistently some of the best found anywhere on what could be considered "our team" broadly.

I'm not Mormon, and never have been--grew up in the evangelical world and nowadays I'm fairly secular, but it has seemed to me for a pretty long time now that the Mormon church has enormous potential to carry on much of the future in the event of considerable broader decline or collapse. I hope it succeeds in maintaining its institutional resilience.

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