Wanpieserino

I'm literally going to financially reward my wife for taking time off work in order to take care of our kid.

Parenting is labour. When you're parenting, you can't be doing a different job.

My wife's parents in Indonesia don't have a pension much. It's barely anything. Her mom just gets money from my wife and her 2 sisters.

That's how it used to be for a long time, pension is relatively new.

So in the vast majority of history, parents always were financially rewarded for having children.

Median age in Indonesia is 30, while in Belgium it's 42. While we're far wealthier in resources. People just stopped having children because it wasn't necessary anymore.

We can't act like this isn't a problem, unless the people that willingly caused the aging population issue take full responsibility and go through hardships in order to help the society battle a period of low work force.

These families already are adequately supported. We need to find a way to guide people into the actions we want them to do.

Like, they want me to stop using the car to work. Okay, they allow everyone at my hospital to use their taxes to pay for a commuting e bike. It's a financial incentive. (Don't worry I'm not a healthcare worker, just administration, I am not the right person to work with people in need).

Indeed there are exceptions and therefore exemptions. If a medical examination says that it's difficult for you or your partner to have children, then they'd be exempted of any punishment.

I don't think it's psychologically a smart move to punish not having kids, but to reward having kids. That's why I say "extra pension". (By behind closed doors reducing pensions in general first, but they don't know that).

Helping people that can't have kids... We could allocate resources to them to help them adopt a child. Something like that. Once again, psychologically it would help them accept this. People give them the option that nature didn't provide them.

We're competing against the funds actually. I own ETFs that tracks the Stoxx 600. It has a yearly expense of 0,07% while bank funds would take like 2% or whatever.

Personally I'm not even thinking about my pension, cannot know what will happen in 37 years so I'm definitely taking it into my two own hands to accumulate assets.

Now, I understand why a pension is desirable. It's a safety net. And I agree with that. High minimum pension for anyone who is unable to work due to old age. Just like for people who can't work for other reasons.

But as Belgian, I know a lot of people that try and take advantage of our social safety nets. For a lot of people it's not because they need it, but view it as an extra passive income while doing nothing.

That's damaging to the social democrats. We need to get rid of the abuse, the corruption. We need to motivate people to do effort and reward that. And we have. Minimum wage in Belgium is quite high. Income inequality is 0,26 gini. Median net wealth is 250k euros.

Motivating people to have kids is also a necessity. To live more together in the same household. To use fewer resources. Be economically sustainable in the long term.

People are scared in Belgium, everyone is retiring. We've been accepting a lot of immigrants to help us out with this. Luckily, second generation immigrants are tremendously helpful.

To have a meaningful social net, we do need a good amount of people that can work. That can be parents.

We need to motivate people. And everyone that really cannot help society with this, they are exempted of course.

My friend her parents never worked a day in their lives. It's absolutely normal. Her dad's disabled and her mom takes care of him.

But another guy "didn't work for 10 years cuz his knees hurt" while he randomly showed up at our hospital working, magically, when he'd lose his free passive income. He's doing a desk job. Like everyone else.

Believe it or not, but I also am a leftist. Social democrat.

I say a lot of bad stuff though. Like: old people that did not have kids, should have less pension and use the money they have been saving up by not having kids.

This is seen as insane, but.. old people are the wealthiest class in most societies.

Yes there are exceptions and these people need help. High minimum pension for sure. They need a decent life.

But why would I want someone who didn't even have a kid to replace themselves as productive entity to gain a fantastic passive income on top of their already passive income generating assets?

a compromise would be something as simple as: retired person above age 65 gets +amount of euros per working child in insert home country.

It would incentivise having kids.

The reaction I get usually is that it's inhumane, that people are seen as production houses only, that people don't wanna be born... A lot of doomer stuff to be honest.

It would be fun if there's a place where you can only deny an idea if you can replace it with your own solution to the issue. In this case "aging population" (popular issue in Belgium right now)

Tankies go to .ml while liberals go to the other spaces. You don't really interact with eachother, there's several types of leftists etc.

I'm banned on several ml's and several liberal's.

They do not like people to talk back.

They moderate the places so that it works as an echo chamber. Mainly for leftists. Not many right wing people are coming towards Lemmy.

It's pretty silly, Lemmy is at one hand designed so that everyone can see eachother's content and opinions.

But at the other side, the spaces are moderated so that only their own opinions are allowed.

So there's a lot of polarisation instead of compromise.

Then you end up with extremists having power that wrecks havoc.

Compromise is the enemy of extremists. They love it that we separate ourselves so easily.

Liberals Vs tankies

Leftist infighting is what happens here.

Anon goes berserk during the monthly period and sometimes gives himself the silent treatment

Shoulda just killed him to be honest, but oh well

Your husband could try and get a job in Europe. Here in flanders there's quite a lot of walkability. They are creating bike lanes. I'm lucky that I can bike to work 15 km without interacting much with cars.

I could suggest Indonesia, for 100k euros you have a nice apartment with access to a gym and swimming pool. But I don't know about the needs of your child. They don't really speak English there either, but Bahasa is pretty easy to learn.

Personally I'd go to Batam, Indonesia. Right under Singapore. Live in the center.

For walkability it's bad there kinda. And hot. Be careful of things like construction work. Can't really know if it's all safe.

Bought my wife a home bike so that she could do some cardio while I worked. It's good for the winter, it gets pretty cold here for her. She's used to Indonesia and in Belgium it gets to 0 to minus 10 degrees in the winter months.

It's a good option because you can read something while doing that. Basically you can be on the internet.

When you're more fit, I'd suggest rope skipping. However it can be hard on the joints. It's very good cardio though. Boxers do it all the time.

You also can buy some kettlebells. I have one of 16 and 20 kg at home, it takes no space at all. I use them for shoulder raises. They can be used for swings which is great cardio.

You can do bodyweight squats. I do 5 sets of 50 on a Sunday when I'm "too lazy" to fix up the weight for deadlift.

In all these years of working out, I quickly made the investment to have a home gym. Not because it's cheaper in the long term, but because it's far easier to actually do the workout.

The most difficult part about working out at a gym is getting to the gym. It feels like a drag. Sure, once at the gym it's all great, but getting there the next time is once again a drag.

About food I don't know shit though. I consume a lot of calories. Me working out and stuff like that is what I call damage control. I'm a stereotypical Belgian. I eat a lot of fries with mayo and drink strong beer.

Working out, and likely food, is all about mental stuff. Truly it's half the battle. Need to figure out how to do a routine and keep to it. Like right now I'm going to do barbell rows because it's Thursday. I don't even view it as an option, it's just what my Thursday looks like.

Good luck, getting back into shape is always difficult. But you know that after 2 months you'll have a lot of energy. Then the trick is to keep working out just to keep that amount of energy.

You're unemployed

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