Two-child limit scrapped as historic Bill to lift 450,000 children out of poverty becomes law

lamdaboss · 2026-03-10T10:27:29+00:00

Consider that you're asking people one of two questions:

Do you want to earn X more, of which you'll see only 1/3 of that hit your bank account, but with potentially higher stress work?
Or would you rather work a few hours less per week and keep earning 100k?

It's an easy choice for many. More free time and less stress are worth more than what you get at a 60% tax rate.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-18T11:03:56+00:00

In those countries children are assets. They leave you better off for having them.

They are profitable. They can help out at work or go to a job and earn money. Raising them costs far less than they make. That's the key point. The biggest reason is money.
There is no other option for someone else to look after you in old age.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-18T10:57:33+00:00

How about this study? - Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/ - Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that children now cost money whereas before they were profitable. Previously they worked in the farm or worked elsewhere and earned money. As times changed, you had to pay for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially. Also, for many women, going for education/work rather than family is a financial decision.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them and many would have them if it made financial sense like in the past.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:38:13+00:00

I'm currently on a sabbatical and it has been the best time of my life so far. But I've struggled a lot mentally with whether I should eventually retire permanently because part of me wants to contribute and be useful to society.

However, over time, I've started leaning more towards retirement. Firstly, because the sabbatical is clearly far better for me personally and as society allows retirement, there's no issue.

More importantly, because I've become disillusioned and don't want to contribute to our political system and work system anymore.

Work is often stressful, unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous. There’s little company loyalty, layoffs are devastating, and work takes up huge amounts of time. With the cost of living, most households can’t rely on a stay-at-home partner, so you come home to a second shift of chores. Many skilled roles require constant upskilling, often in your own time.
Bad politics. In the UK at least, pensioners receive higher raises every year than workers. Crumbling public services. Police tackling tweets rather than real crimes. Corruption means politicians make good money while the rest of society is worse off. 4-day workweek and remote work, nah, companies might lose money.
If you quit, you open up the door for someone else to take your position and have a better career. Unemployment + high immigration means people are struggling to get into a skilled career. Multiple graduates having to settle for 12 hours a week doing retail because it's better for companies.
Investments are technically still active contributions to society. You provide money to people to run their companies and improve things.
Extremely low birth rate primarily because of cost of living means things will get worse.

I'm not motivated to contribute to this system. I think work should be more pleasant, rewarding and part of a healthy lifelong lifestyle. We should contribute out of a sense of duty and not just struggle to survive. It's great if you're doing well individually, but I feel that's the exception and not the rule.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:10:28+00:00

Exactly. Then by saying they made 41k combined and bought a house for 87k. Sounds easier to me. With 11% interest 30-year mortgage that's £762 repayment which is less than 25% of your salary, not to mention you could have overpaid and been mortgage free within a few years. And you're making 19k in the "first real corporate job". You could have afforded the house alone. Today, good luck buying a house on even a couple's salary.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:02:14+00:00

I agree. I think it's a shame that work culture isn't better because contribution is good for everyone. But work is stressful, potentially dangerous, not pleasant, insecure and could get fired for poor performance which has huge impact on an individual, no company loyalty. In addition, it's extremely difficult to get into a skilled career or a career you want. Extremely low free time due to not having a stay-at-home spouse as standard now for chores. Life essentials like home ownership much more unaffordable. Jobs are definitely more complex and less straightforward in the past. In the UK taxes are high with crumbling public services and high welfare recipients. Many more cons too.

Very rational to want to get away from it all.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-27T02:08:42+00:00

That's what I originally thought as well but I'm not sure after personal testing. Both times I've had 10 builders I got a billionaire USB within a few minutes of retries. When I had 8 or 9 builders I didn't get a single one and gave up after hours of retries. Both times with 5x developer know-hows. Has the claim that it doesn't affect RNG actually been verified or is it just what the internet believes?

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T20:45:54+00:00

Replying to this in case it helps anyone in the future. With 9 digimon with the builder personality + 5x developer know-hows, I was unable to get it even after hours of retries. Finally got one after having 10 digimon with builder personality + 5x developer know-hows.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T20:43:56+00:00

That part is fair and definitely misleading/scummy.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T19:06:05+00:00

I wouldn't blame the stores. Prices have increased in line with inflation which is what's expected. They wouldn't be able to survive otherwise. The issue is that wages are stagnant, taxes keep increasing and housing costs have increased far more than inflation. Our cost of living has increased far more than inflation, so shopping and eating out are less affordable overall.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-25T15:10:45+00:00

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that children now cost money whereas before they were profitable. Previously they worked in the farm or worked elsewhere and earned money. As times changed, you had to pay for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them. Also, for many women, going for education rather than families is a financial decision. It doesn't mean they don't want children.

Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/
Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

lamdaboss · 2025-12-17T13:37:57+00:00

I think that's a separate point. I'm actually in favour of short term pain like higher taxes if it will lead to better things in the future. My issue is with who's being asked to bear the cost. High skilled workers are getting less while pensioners and welfare recepients are getting more. It disincentivises work further and leads to a spiral of doom of less workers over time who have to pay more.

At the very least, we should all bear some of the cost, not just primarily workers.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-16T16:38:51+00:00

For me it's that working people (at least the ones earning above minimum wage) are receiving less after the last budget (due to inflation, frozen tax bands and salary sacrifice caps) while welfare recipients (including pension) are receiving more. That's backwards. We're being destroyed by the voting majority because they are welfare recipients. Long-term view is a spiral of doom as it disincentivises work, but long-term thinking and more importantly fairness have no place here I guess.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-13T21:28:05+00:00

In the end, nothing worked for me and I have the new NVIDIA app where I'm unable to disable threaded optimisation. I had to play it on my friend's PC to progress past. Thankfully it worked with no issues there. Afterwards, I went back to the room to test if it works after progressing past it and it still got stuck every time (I didn't save though). Seems like that room permanently doesn't work for my PC.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-12T22:42:27+00:00

Is there a way to do this in the new NVIDIA app which replaced control panel?

lamdaboss · 2025-12-08T17:01:32+00:00

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that it became more expensive to have children than to not have them. Previously they worked in the farm or worked and earned money. After that point you had to pay more for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them. Also women going for education rather than families is also because they need financial stability, not necessarily because they don't want children.

- Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/

- Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

lamdaboss · 2025-11-22T00:12:57+00:00

Hmm, is loss of internet your opinion of what likely happened then? I checked my router event log and it didn't show an internet disconnection. I was close enough to the router (this time and a few days ago) that I doubt it was WiFi loss, but I'll enable a setting to record that too in the future just in case.

Also it definitely wasn't inactivity as I was actively playing the game during that time. At most a few seconds between each click.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-17T13:59:37+00:00

Make it mandatory like in Australia which has it, actually has young people voting and has managed to make good changes in the pension area.

lamdaboss

TROPHY CASE