<story><title>Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?</title><text>Environment, people, technology are changing rapidly. What are some worthwhile problems or ideas that you think would be important to solve or work on by end of the decade.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheFreim</author><text>&amp;gt; We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds&amp;#x2F;payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the other to focus on raising the children.</text></item><item><author>xerxesaa</author><text>We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.&lt;p&gt;Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market&amp;#x27;s expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hayst4ck</author><text>Housing policy is dead simple (not easy): build more homes.&lt;p&gt;The problem is, &lt;i&gt;when you build more homes, the price of homes go down.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Great for people that want homes and people who are just joining the workforce. Not great for grandma and her retirement planning.&lt;p&gt;If you frame your housing policy around anything but building more, then housing is fundamentally zero sum. If it is zero sum, that means those couples with a children are being subsidized at the cost of that 20 year old new grad or people who earn minimum wage without a family. Those people look at their finances or their mental health and make decisions about their future. So if people new to the work force are subsidizing those with children you could be harming their mental health to the point where they don&amp;#x27;t want children.&lt;p&gt;Why would any sane person bring children into a world that is almost guaranteed to be worse for their children than it is for them? I wouldn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;So from a systems thinking point of view, the only cogent housing policy is to build more homes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?</title><text>Environment, people, technology are changing rapidly. What are some worthwhile problems or ideas that you think would be important to solve or work on by end of the decade.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheFreim</author><text>&amp;gt; We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds&amp;#x2F;payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the other to focus on raising the children.</text></item><item><author>xerxesaa</author><text>We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.&lt;p&gt;Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market&amp;#x27;s expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reducesuffering</author><text>&amp;gt; providing financial support so families can buy homes&lt;p&gt;You mean building more homes. If there&amp;#x27;s X homes, and Y families get 10% subsidy, they&amp;#x27;re all still buying the same X homes for 10% more. (roughly)</text></comment>