Higher Earnings No Longer Lead to Marriage: Culture is Changing

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into several studies examining how male earnings impact marriage and fertility rates. They discuss findings from economic shocks like the U.S. fracking boom, which significantly increased wages and job opportunities for non-college-educated men, leading to increased births both within and outside of marriage. Contrary to popular beliefs, the study found no significant increase in marriage rates despite higher earnings. They also compare results with older economic booms and explore the influence of changing social norms. The hosts highlight other relevant studies on job displacement, lottery winnings, and their effects on fertility and marriage, ultimately emphasizing that simple financial solutions alone are insufficient to boost fertility rates significantly without addressing deeper cultural and social issues. The conversation rounds off with humorous anecdotes about their personal lives and parenting experiences, offering a reflective and engaging exploration of these complex topics.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about some studies that recently came out. Well, some recently came out, some came out a while ago. But looking at the topic of how earnings affect marriage rates and fertility rates and that surprisingly. For males, they no longer seem to increase marriage.

Or, I mean, who goes against the narrative that you always hear on the right? Yeah, this

Simone Collins: is important. In fact, we did an episode in which we read one of Arctotherium's articles on Aporia, where he basically posited that The solution to birth rates would be to effectively economically disempower women by sort of removing them from bureaucratic roles or eliminating those roles entirely, and to economically re empower men with a supposition that this will increase marriage rates.

Turns out that's not how it plays out in reality, at least in a post crisis world. Women earning money and having careers era.

Malcolm Collins: [00:01:00] Yeah. All right. So i'll start here with the first study This is a new one that I found really interesting male earnings marriageable men and the non maritable fertility evidence from the fracking boom so this study exploited the economic shock from fracking booms across the U.

S. regions. From 1997 to 2012, fracking created localized economic booms that significantly increased wages for non college educated men. They examined how marriage and birth rates responded to these economic improvements. Key findings, labor market effects. Fracking booms increased earnings for men without college degrees by 4.

4 percent. Per thousand dollars of new production per capital job opportunities also increased for these men with spillover effects beyond the oil and gas industry birth effects, both marital and non marital births increased in response to fracking booms. The increase was statistically significant for both types of births to suggest children are quote unquote normal goods.

People have more when income rises. [00:02:00] So I need to break down that a little bit because another study is going to look at this as well. Which is to say that there are some types of goods that people consume more of as income declines or economic slumps. Oh,

Simone Collins: oh, yeah, like I remember when we used to work in the private equity world more.

One, one period a group of investors were like, Oh yeah, we love nail salons because during recessions, women go to them more because it's like one of those small indulgences that they can still afford. Even if they want to

Malcolm Collins: buy more of like fancy soaps, fancy soaps, fancy soap company people do more on What are some of the other things people do more on?

They do more entertainment. They do more video games. Video games go up in recessions. Movies I think go up in recessions. Other types of entertainment goes up. So kids are not that type of good. And, and, and note what's being said here. Births increase. As money increases for uneducated men, which is great.

This is an area where that is

Simone Collins: really interesting that basically out of [00:03:00] wedlock births are increasing and people are choosing to have kids when they

Malcolm Collins: have more money, just not in wedlock. Is that a similar economic impact from the UBI study did not increase births. So handouts, not so much, but increasing the jobs or economy and male economic

Simone Collins: empowerment does.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But to marriage effects, this is where it gets more interesting. Contrary to the reverse marriageable men hypothesis, there was no evidence that marriage rates increased. The data showed no reduction in never married rates. Or increase in marriageable rates. These findings were consistent across different modal specifications.

Fascinating. Social context comparison. They compared these results to the Appalachian coal boom of the 1970s to 80s. During the earlier coal boom, increased earnings led to more marriages. And marital births was a decrease in non marital births. This contrast suggests social norms may have changed, may have changed, they've definitely [00:04:00] changed.

That's what's changed. Yeah, because I think it's clearly changed. I mean, it reminds

Simone Collins: me a lot of Sweden. How they're, they're There are a lot of parents who just aren't married and it's sort of after that becomes normalized. It's really hard to get people to marry again.

Malcolm Collins: What's interesting here is that areas with high baseline non marital birth rates Showed a similar increase in marital and non marital births But areas with low baseline non marital birth rates only showed an increase in marital births.

Basically, this means if you live in an area where people were already having a lot of kids outside of marriage then you have an increase in the number of kids they're having outside of marriage. If you don't if you live in like a more conservative religious area, then that doesn't increase the non marital births, which is really fascinating.

So, the authors conclude that while improved economic prospects for men might have previously led to more marriages before childbearing in today's context, economic improvements lead to more births, both marital and non marital without necessarily increasing marriage rates and [00:05:00] in great natural experiment, there was the regions where you already have a lot of out of marriage births in the regions where you don't, which shows that in some regions, they've maintained this older culture.

But in the regions where they've maintained the older culture, fascinatingly, it didn't lead to more marriages.

Simone Collins: That's really interesting. It really, it looks at the interplay between economics and culture in a way I haven't seen research do for quite some time. And it's so fun to see that someone looked at this.

Malcolm Collins: Isn't that fascinating? But let's look at other studies so we can, we can drill into what other people have found on this particular subject.

Simone Collins: Well, actually,

Malcolm Collins: I want to pontificate on this more because,

Getting, getting lounge Malcolm here. So what does this mean? It means that anything you could do to increase economic situations is good for fertility rates.

So increasing general economy increases birth rate thus doge Elon amazing for everyone but government employees. [00:06:00] Um, uh, Yeah,

Simone Collins: except so the whole reason I learned about this study was from the researcher's book, the two parent privilege, which is all about the role that marriage plays in. Sustainable, successful birth rate increases, but also human thriving and everything like you're just, it's just so much more optimal across many measures for there to be marriage involved in this process.

And there's a whole book you can read about this. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's nice that increased male economic productivity. Boosted birth rates, but I also would suspect that the lifetime fertility of those non married births or non married women who had kids is not going to be beat by the married women who started having kids.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe. Yeah, I, I would agree with [00:07:00] that, but I'd also point out here. Interesting to me is that yes, you can maintain a traditional culture. So if you maintain a traditional culture, which Shane's like out of wedlock births and stuff like that, you're not going to get the boosting out of wedlock births from increased income.

But these traditional cultures, what they haven't been able to do is fix the marriage market problem. They haven't been able to get these people married. And I think that we already see this, you know, as I point out, like If I think about like Catholic, young Catholic influencers, they're not even that young anymore.

You've got like Nick Fuentes and Pearl Davis. Both of them are fairly conservative Catholics and neither of them are married and they're like 30s now, I think, or like late 20s at this point. They, they, I think they're both in their 30s now. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think she's maybe like 28 now, 29.

Malcolm Collins: But that is a huge market failure right there.

Which shows that it is actually. How does this relate to how I raise my kids? How should I think about this? Well, it means I can't just rely on the old ways. I can't just try to go back to the older system. I need to [00:08:00] focus on creating new systems, new ways of relating to partnership and marriage for them to ensure that they secure a partner while they're still breedable.

Simone Collins: Oh, and also, yeah, a partner that they're invested in longterm. I think that's the thing is you need, we need to raise closers and. We collectively as a society have raised a generation of flakes. They don't commit. They don't even commit to public opinions about things, let alone partners.

Malcolm Collins: I think that a lot of this comes down to teaching your kids that a partner is an investment.

They are not a payout. And they're not

Simone Collins: a courtesan. They're not your best friend. They're not your mother or father.

Malcolm Collins: No, you, you are investing in someone. You want to be that perfect partner in 20 or 30 years. As a recent green text, I mentioned from, from 4chan where the guy found out that his girlfriend at four was wife.

Now they've been married and had kids and he's successful. It was like, I should marry him because [00:09:00] he's nerdy and nerdy men make a lot of money. I mean, that's the way women need to think. And then he's like, Oh yeah, she always pushed me to take and appreciate harder to breathe, to work a bit harder on my grades, to take the, you know, the aggressive and it's like, yeah.

Because she approached him not from a he's rich now perspective, but he's someone that was my support could be rich and influential. And I think the problem is, is that people are looking for the full package in who they're marrying. They are not looking for the outcome. Which is really bad. I agree.

But okay. So to go to some other studies where we might be able to get some other ideas here. Linzo, Jason M. 2010. Are children really inferior goods? Remember we talked about the two types of goods

evidence from

displacement driven income shocks.

This study found that job displacement leads to a significant drop in fertility among women. Specifically, there was a 1. 8 percent decrease in [00:10:00] fertility 11 years after job loss. That's not significant. I mean, that means individually in the year immediately following displacement, there was a 4 percent decrease in fertility.

And this is women. Interestingly the for males, they found no significant impact on fertility when they lost their jobs. It was just in women where it decreased their fertility, which is really fascinating. A woman with a job is having more kids than a woman who lost her job.

Simone Collins: That is interesting, especially considering how you get as, as a woman in the United States, depending on your state, but most states are very generous.

with women who have low incomes who are at or near the poverty line.

Malcolm Collins: I, I doubt women take that into effect when they're having kids. Maybe, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and here I would posit, or note, fantastically that if you go up that study was in 2015. This didn't used to be the case. So another [00:11:00] study effect of job displacement on couples, fertility decisions found wife's job loss impact on fertility.

It found overall no statistically significant effect on fertility. When looking at all women together for highly educated women, job displacement decreases fertility. Significantly in years two to six years after displacement the effect appears to be temporary post opponent as different as a difference in cumulative births, decrease in later years So it's not affecting job, you know fertility overall.

It's affecting it short term, but you know That can have an effect husband's job loss produces significant and persistent decrease fertility has virtually no effect on women's employment Except a small negative effect in year t plus one shows no consistent effect on divorce rates, only slightly negative effects in t plus four to t plus six years.

That's time plus six, like year six. And this, again, if you want to look at this study, is effect of job displacement on couples fertility decisions. Let's see when this study was done.

2010. [00:12:00] So this trend flipped from 2010 to 2015, or one of the studies is just wrong.

Okay,

job displacement. That sounds like what you say when you don't want to tell your parents you were fired. There was a job displacement event at work recently and I've been recently displaced from my profession.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so next year we've got 2019 study, when work disappears, manufacturing decline and falling marriage market value of men. This one trade shocks disproportionately reduce employment and earnings of young males compared to young females. It had a bunch of other studies, but it was all obvious stuff, like What is a trade shock?

Simone Collins: Like an economic recession?

Malcolm Collins: That when you have a removal of an industry in a local area, like, let's say like a

Simone Collins: factory shuts down or something,

Malcolm Collins: unfortunately affects men and not women, which I think is intuitively obvious, but I don't think a lot of people consider how much more vulnerable men [00:13:00] are to economic shocks than women are to economic shocks.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, women have more of a social safety net, typically. I would say both among friends and family, and from the government, so there's that.

Malcolm Collins: All right Taiza et al., 2022. For every 100 individuals who won a large lottery prize, there were 5 more children born within 6 years, compared to those who did not, representing a 15 percent increase.

This was in Taiwan, that the city was done. The primary channel for this increased fertility was through first births among previously childless individuals. Rather than additional children for those who already had children, approximately 25 percent of the total fertility effect was attributable to increased marriage rates following the lottery win.

Very interesting. The fertility effect was stronger for those who received larger windfall gains or having lower pre existing wealth levels. And, and given that this was in Taiwan, I find this all very interesting. It, it, it basically shows a moderate. This basically means even if you gave people lottery level winnings, it would not increase [00:14:00] the fertility rate enough.

Even if we made your average citizen equal to a lottery winner without affecting the rest of the economy, it would not have have a 15 percent increase in fertility rate.

Simone Collins: Payouts don't work. How many times are we

Malcolm Collins: going to say it? Payouts don't work. A study using US tax data and state lottery wins between 2000 and 2019 found that lottery winnings modestly accelerated fertility, but had little effect on total fertility.

So basically they Make people have kids earlier around the time of the lottery, but you know, don't increase total fertility. The study by Sesenari et al. 2023, using Swedish lottery data, reveals significant gender differences in how lottery winnings affect marriage and fertility for men. And we talked about this, right?

Yeah, a 1 million SEK lottery equal to around 100 In 40, 000 increase, the probability of marriage was in five years by 4. 7 percentage points for a total 30 percent increase, i. e. if you get a dump of [00:15:00] 140, 000, you're gonna have a 30 percent increase in getting married. That seems right to me, but it's lower than I'd expect, actually.

I guess a lot of people just don't want to get married from the current cultural perspective. For married men, lottery wins reduce the risk of divorce within 10 years by 6 percentage points. This is per year for a total reduction of 40%. So for men, having more money dramatically decreases the probability of divorce, but I, that makes sense from even an evolutionary perspective.

I'm a woman. Feels she has a partner who is secure and makes money, as she once had said, all women really want is a partner who can make them babies and provide for the babies. She, she used slightly other words, but that's the point of it. Women want to be submissive and breedable. That's the point.

That's how evolution has coded each of us. What's the, the silly face you're making there?

Simone Collins: It goes against everything I was raised to fight for. Submissive inbreedability?

Like, so many, so many little [00:16:00] alarm bells.

Malcolm Collins: What, what, what do you, what do you think today? I mean, what do you think with the data?

Simone Collins: I think the data indicates that women, on average, benefit from being part of a meaningful family. But I don't,

Malcolm Collins: that is such a, that is such a squirrely way of wording it. I'm talking specifically, do women, so when

Simone Collins: people say submissive and breedable, I think they're really thinking about like a stay at home step for trophy wife, which is not what women find meaningful.

And as

Malcolm Collins: we pointed out, when women lose their jobs in a modern context, the fertility is impacted more than when men lose their jobs. But

Simone Collins: even like in the 1950s era Or even like when sort of housewives started sort of losing work to do, I would say, so even maybe around the turn of the century, this is when you start to see.[00:17:00]

them turning to pretty hard drugs to deal with the anxiety and the meaninglessness and the listlessness. And here's where they start. Yeah. Like they're on amphetamines. They're alcohol. I had to do Benzos. Yeah, it's not ideal. I think what women need is, is to be part of a corporate family, to do work, to have meaningful work in addition to rearing children.

Is really important. So that's why I, I, yeah, I do take exception to terms like submissive and breedable because that is not actually what women want and what women benefit from. And when they're put in those positions, they go completely crazy. But

Malcolm Collins: our son recently has become very, we got really worried.

Cause he comes and he's like, I like really women are better mom and dad. And he's saying this, he like, won't do stuff with me now because I'm a man. He's like, well,

Simone Collins: yeah, he'll be like, well, daddy has to pay if he wants me to do this, whereas mommy gets it for free. I like [00:18:00] girls better. And we're like, not

Malcolm Collins: very worried.

Yeah. I was like, what is, what is all of this about? They fill in his head with nonsense. No, what we learned and this has become a persistent issue. I'd argue it's like 20 percent of what he talks about when he's talking about his name. It's not

Simone Collins: 20%.

Malcolm Collins: It's just a daily theme for sure. Well because I'm trying to get him to do things and he always says no because you're a man.

Because you're a man. But, but he will then follow up with, and you can't have babies. And

Simone Collins: specifically men are inferior because they cannot grow a baby in their belly.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And he makes this very clear. This is, this is clearly his thing was women. Women make babies. And I am so glad that however, we did not try to incept him with, I do not know how he became obsessed with this differentiation.

Simone Collins: Well, it came up after I explained to him that. You know, we're trying to get pregnant and showing him ultrasounds and being like, hopefully this is your little brother, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, he's, he was used to the last pregnancy because both the, like me and our nanny were [00:19:00] pregnant at the same time.

So like the kids are very accustomed to pregnancy now. So I think he's just like, this is cool. And he just now sees me as like the cool 3d printer. Of

Malcolm Collins: new siblings of Of new siblings. This video, him talking about wanting a hundred siblings. Yeah. Just said I'm sure to keep going. He's like, I'll help mom, I'll help.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: He'll, he'll feed them a giant glass of milk, so it's fine.

Malcolm Collins: He'll take care of them.

Yeah. Doesn't even worry about it. But I love this 'cause I can so imagine like one of these like trans activists going to his school to try to convert him and he is like. She they're like, yeah, you can be a woman. He'd be like, oh my God, I can be a woman.

Like I can grow a baby in my belly. I love that. I get to grow a baby and they'd be like, well, no, I mean, you can't. And he's like, what the Octavian would so say something super offensive. He's like. Why would you want to be a woman if you can't make babies? Which is so based life destroying life shattering here.

By the way, I've seen some things of like, arguments recently. that trans people should be like breastfeeding their [00:20:00] children. Like measuring like the milk that they produce versus the milk that natal females produce to try to argue. It has similar nutritional properties. I mean, it doesn't, but like they, they want to argue it's close enough that they should be doing breastfeeding as well to help them bond.

No, not bond, affirm their gender. I mean, they don't care about the kids. Be honest here. These are people who are

Simone Collins: The amount of work that a trans person or a gay person has to go through to have a child is heartbreaking. Both financially and logistically. They care about their kids.

Malcolm Collins: Trans people can just have kids naturally.

Not necessarily. No, most of them save sperm and stuff like that. And they're married. Like, yeah. Well, they'd still do IVF. Like, they're still working for it. All in the same bucket. Like, come on. And I actually want to do more pushing against that on this show. This idea of [00:21:00] LGBTQ, trans people f*****g stapled themselves on to a people who are fighting for their lives.

Like that is not they they were not that important in the early game It's weird. Like you look at like the stonewall things and stuff like that They're like, oh, it's all trans women. I was like gay people in crossdressers. Like it wasn't there but no trans people there like they they have inserted themselves into history and taken over the historical narrative of the fight for gay rights.

And continue to attempt to I agree, it is hard for gay people to have kids. No gay person, I know, like no sane gay person is going to try to breastfeed their kids.

Simone Collins: True story. Yeah. They're buying breast milk from other women and doing their very best and not yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're, they're doing their best, but they're not trying to breastfeed the kids themselves.

This is weird stuff. [00:22:00]

Anyway. So, male fertility increased all time horizons. Ten years after winning, men had 0. 056 more children. per million S. E. K. 1, a 13. 5 percent increase in fertility overall. Well, that doesn't sound like that much. Again, you can't fix this with, with lotteries. For women, lottery wins had little effect on marriage rates or longevity in this study.

Again, this is a study Cesarina, 2023. The only significant effect for women was a near doubling of short run probability of divorce. And we've covered this story before, which if you give a woman a lot of money, Like out of the blue, She gets divorced and tries to trade up. She doesn't [00:23:00] have more kids.

And this has been quoted by a lot of progressives who want to attack us. They don't think we should give women money or women shouldn't be allowed to like have money and it's like, no, we were talking about like a lottery winning study, but you know, of course, you know, you having fun tickling.

This is, I think the biggest take away from all of this for me is people were taking away the individual, like, oh, increasing the income here does a little bit for fertility, giving people a lottery doesn't help female fertility, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the biggest thing for me is even huge amounts of money cannot affect fertility meaningfully.

Simone Collins: Well, we say this again and again. Yeah. But like, yeah, beyond little government payouts, beyond 50, 000 to people in South Korea. Yeah. This is like even even lottery amounts. Not gonna do it.

Malcolm Collins: Even lottery amounts. Do they have like a 15%? We're seeing this 13 percent here. We're seeing this across studies.

[00:24:00] They do not. We need 200%. We need 150%. Yeah, but even

Simone Collins: then, especially if everyone got it, I feel like it would still not be effective because then I imagine just everyone would feel relatively poor or the same. And a lot of this comes down to Yeah. If they feel relatively wealthy or well resourced vis a vis other people.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think it shows how deeply indulgent our society has become in a really negative context that, you know, even if you have everything, it's not enough. And that's really scary, you know, because it means that you do need to build alternate cultures. And, and it also shows that you do not, you get a boost in regions where people aren't having out of wedlock merges, but not enough of a boost to be like substantial.

So even in areas that have traditional cultural practices, lottery isn't enough. And again, I say the old ways [00:25:00] won't save you. You can't just love empowering

Simone Collins: men economically again. And I'm all for it. I think that right now men are, are unfairly disadvantaged in labor markets and circumstances. However, just re empowering men or on the inverse, disempowering women is not going to solve the problem.

And people keep just thinking like, Oh, we'll just. Just change this dial and it'll work. No, we have to create Pandora's box has been opened. And this is something that you talked about in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion as well, that you can't, once this box has been opened, once we have the internet and globalization, and we've developed the equivalent, the cultural equivalent of super viruses, you don't get to undo that and just go.

Back to the old ways, unless you choose to air gap your culture and religion and live like the Amish, which still isn't going to work because you are living at the whims of the sovereignty of whoever is allowing you to practice your cultural and religious freedom. Big if, if they continue doing that. So.

we have to just develop a [00:26:00] new way forward. And there are things that can be done. We've been talking a lot internally about policy interventions that would make a big difference for prenatalism, but not really cost anything. And I mean, a big, a big factor that we're talking about this morning is right now, in many ways, it feels economically irresponsible to get married.

And so if at any point filing. jointly, for example, or as a married couple causes some kind of tax disadvantage that should be removed. You shouldn't be penalized by the IRS. If you're married, you're doing, you're doing the United States a service by being married. Yes. Not the. Oh, there was, I, I can't remember what country this was, but I, I learned about this one attempt to address this marriage issue where I think men in this country got a penalty if they weren't married.

But the penalty could be waived if they could prove that a [00:27:00] woman had rejected their proposal. that there became this predatory class of female predatory enterprising. Okay. Okay. Would for a fee, a reasonable fee, I'm sure officially reject your proposal so that you would be exempt from this, this not married penalty.

The government had to stop that policy.

Malcolm Collins: So did it, did it just, it is still tax them? No, they just

Simone Collins: dropped the whole thing.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I wouldn't drop the whole thing. I'd be like, it doesn't matter if you're rejected, like, do better. Yes, try again. Try again, a hole.

Simone Collins: I know, yeah, the, the, the cop out was, that was, that was stupid.

It was unnecessary. But yeah, God let's,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): It was Argentina in the 1900s, early 1900s. , fun, fun, humorous little fact here. In Chad, , now you are fined if you turn down a marriage proposal that's between 23 and 39 for women and [00:28:00] 15 for men. , and hilariously, , of women age 20 to 24 in this country as of 2015, 60 percent were married when they were children.

, so, you know, great country. , if you're wondering what the, motivation behind this law was, the country's leadership says, , it was inspired by the Quran. So, you know, religion of peace. Religion of peace.

Also note here that she is about to find another instance in which this happened in Italy, but the more reported on instance was Argentina.

Simone Collins: oh, really? Who was it? Italy implemented a tax penalty for unmarried men in 1927 under Benito Mussolini's regime. This bachelor tax could be waived if a man could prove that a woman had rejected his marriage proposal. That's like a South American country.

Very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Looks like a couple of countries

Simone Collins: did try though. In 1941, the U. S. S. R. introduced a childlessness tax that applied to men age 25 to 50. So childlessness too. [00:29:00] So just being married. You were supposed

Malcolm Collins: to have a kid by 25. Yeah, if

Simone Collins: you are, if you do not have a kid. How do you, how have you not knocked

Malcolm Collins: someone up by 25?

Oh, and,

Simone Collins: no, no, so in, okay, so 1941 in the U. S. S. R. So this is like pre World War II. This is interesting. This is when they're really trying to increase birth rates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the penalty also applied to women age 20 to 45 who are unmarried and without women. If you

Malcolm Collins: haven't had your first kid by 20 tax here, we need to implement indulgent slut.

How dare you not? How dare you be 20 and not have at least one child. And apparently the norms, this is what we need to be having kids.

Simone Collins: Then in Romania, during Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime, a celibacy tax targeted unmarried adults and childless couples as part of a pronatalist policy. I didn't know about a celibacy tax.

I

Malcolm Collins: love that! What do we call it, like [00:30:00]

Simone Collins: the incel tax now? The incel tax, right? And then post World War Two, Poland, a bachelor tax was Briefly imposed on unmarried men and childless couples to promote population growth. So I like dink tax. Can you imagine? But I, yeah, I think more of it being like a tax break on income for married couples is more fair.

It seems unfair to impose an additional tax and more fair to reward good behavior. Why? Why sticks? Why not carrots? Because it's more fun. I

Malcolm Collins: dig that. Yes! It's more fun. It is your expectation that you contribute to society. Okay? 20 to 45. Ouch. 20 to 45.

Simone Collins: Jeez. That's insane. That's insane. Right, Indy? You don't need to start that early.

Malcolm Collins: Andy, you can start at 20. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pressure you. I mean, if you're not, if you're not a teen, if you don't have teen pregnancies, basically, [00:31:00] you know,

Simone Collins: I, I really was like bullish on this idea that like, by the time I'd had my last kid, then I would immediately be moving on to my next, like my first grandkid.

And I was like, ah, yeah, Octavian is not going to be into that. No, he's into it. You know? Oh yeah. I know

Malcolm Collins: the purpose of women. Women are for breeding.

Simone Collins: There was this one conversation I had with him where he was like well, well, girls like me, like, he's really like, he wants to attract a good partner. He it's really.

I'm like, yeah, I will, I will show you how to get girls to like you. You need to act like a gentleman and take good care of yourself. And

that's really sweet. You get to actually like me.

Yeah, I've saved all of his valentines from kindergarten. He

Malcolm Collins: has his personality. I won't say all of our kids, Torsten. Maybe a difficult partner for somebody.

Simone Collins: No! Torsten is me, and you like me, so I

Malcolm Collins: like you as a female. You as a male might be a little too [00:32:00] autistic.

Simone Collins: No, he's just going to be a visionary CEO, and so he can have a stable of partners.

Malcolm Collins: Torsten is rich. Yeah, I can see him being a rich eccentric. He loves collecting things.

Simone Collins: We can collect. Our

Malcolm Collins: daughter, Titan, I would say, oh my god, she is gonna be the easiest, like, to pair off with somebody high quality.

She is very, very, very happy all the time. So fun. She's so playful. Really affectionate. Yeah. She really likes like affectionate, like aggressively affectionate, I guess I'd say. And really loves, like, playing pranks or breaking rules. And I'm like, this is like the core, like, slightly, aggressively affectionate and loving side of the world.

Simone Collins: You're gonna be Very, like, yeah, a gregarious tomboy. Yeah. It's great. And very tomboyish as

Malcolm Collins: well. Yeah. We'll see about you.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We don't know about you yet. She's a lot like

Simone Collins: her

Malcolm Collins: sister. [00:33:00] Alright, love you to death Simone. We're going taquitos tonight?

Simone Collins: I actually have changed my mind on that. And I think that the, the leftover curry that we have is better for the hash browns.

And then I can use the dang dang ground beef better for taquitos, I think.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and is it that you haven't thawed the dang dang meat? I

Simone Collins: mean, I can do that immediately, but we need to use up the curry that's refrigerated first.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it'll go better on, well, I'm okay with using it on hash browns or taquitos, whatever you want to do.

Simone Collins: Well, I want

Malcolm Collins: to, I'll, I'll do it on hash browns

Simone Collins: because

Malcolm Collins: is it easier for hash browns?

Simone Collins: Yeah, cause if I do taquitos, I have to take it. I have to like thinly slice or kind of mash everything so that you have, because otherwise there are giant chicken chunks in your taquitos.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm okay with either.

Just your taquitos are amazing, so whatever you want to do, I will And tomorrow night

Simone Collins: will be taquito night, if you'll bear with me here. Dandan

Malcolm Collins: would go well with taquitos anyway, I agree with that. I think so.

Simone Collins: With like cheddar sharp cheddar cheese and dandan. Oh, yeah. [00:34:00] Noodle meat. And we gotta use the rest of that

Malcolm Collins: mozzarella.

We could also do

Simone Collins: No, God, what is wrong? You do not understand cheese at all. You think mozzarella goes in taquitos? What is wrong with you? And it's expired anyway. You can't eat expired dairy. You, like, freak out. So I'm eating it slice by slice. Because I can drink expired milk, you can't. You're smelling me like

Malcolm Collins: This is marrying a hardcore, like, Appalachian wife.

Yeah, like, when our food

Simone Collins: expires, that's like, Oh, okay, I'll eat it. And, like, Malcolm smells it and he's like, You're

Malcolm Collins: a b***h. Of this woman is incredible. This is what we need in America. Women who eat the expired meat for the first time. Someone's gotta do it. Her drawing is steak, by the way. Well done.

Don't forget. Okay. I love you to death. I am genuinely satisfied with you as a wife. You're doing a good enough job right now. I won't You won't [00:35:00] defenestrate me. Even though you're not submissive and breedable, you've confirmed this. What does that look like?

Whee!

Sorry, it's a meme. I love it.

Simone Collins: It's a meme made by incels for incels, as you

Malcolm Collins: know. No, no,

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Malcolm Collins: it's

a meme made for incels. Me,

just

Simone Collins: like Facebook was originally made for you so you could watch all of your former classmates.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too. All right.

Simone Collins: I'll see you downstairs in a little bit. You're the best. Oh God.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: So, NatalCon is coming up late March in Austin, Texas, use the [00:36:00] word Collins and you can receive a discount. , again, I know it's expensive, but my understanding is they're still in the red this year, they were huge in the red last year. It just costs a lot to put together a conference like this.

Note that we are not the organizers of this, , but we are friendly with them and it is the, you know, annual pronatalist slash natalist convention, so I feel obligated to do my best to help them out and promote it.