If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are "fertility-pilled," or at least, certainly, have heard of the arguments and discussions around the ongoing fertility collapse. The arithmetic seems to make it impossible to escape the conclusion that this is a very serious problem; furthermore, the usual rejoinder, that immigration solves these demographics issues, even putting aside questions of cultural cohesion, is now moot, since the fertility collapse is global.

However, in spite of the valiant efforts of Elon Musk and JD Vance and a few others, public awareness of the issue is very low. Which is why we have to appreciate Patrick T Brown of EPPC and the Institute for Family Studies for flagging a new survey (PDF) on this issue.

"To start, it appears that the long-term consequences of falling birth rates have yet to fully permeate the public consciousness. Across the board, less than 1 in 10 Americans proclaim themselves 'very' worried about declining fertility. About one-quarter of adults say they are 'somewhat' worried about falling fertility, with the majority of Americans not finding much to be concerned about. (In 2022, a different YouGov poll found that Americans were more than twice as likely to believe overpopulation would be a bigger problem than underpopulation.) And political differences on the question are scarce; only 8% of self-identified Republican voters are 'very worried' about declining birth rates, though more Republicans than Democrats declared themselves 'somewhat' concerned."

Here's what's more interesting: "Perhaps unsurprisingly, young people—who by definition stand to gain the most from any transfer scheme that prioritizes the fertile over those who can no longer have children—are most likely to support government action to boost birth rates. Gen X and older are decidedly cool on the question."

Also very interesting: "Beyond public opinion towards fertility policies, the Yahoo survey also asked respondents without children why they hadn’t become parents yet. Two things jump out. First, the leading reason respondents give for not having children yet, across various demographic groups, is 'I’m single.' If not for that, about one-third of respondents guessed that they’d have had children by now. Secondly, while the overall rates of childlessness didn’t differ, Democratic adults without children are much more likely to relate politically-relevant reasons for why they are childless, like climate change and career concerns, compared to Republicans. "

Read the whole thing.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Trade #Economics — Interesting paper from Fred Ashton and Jacob Jensen at the American Action Forum on the anticompetitive effects of tariffs. Here's the gist: President Trump is trying to promote American economic dynamism through tariffs, hoping that tariffs will revitalize American manufacturing. Even if that's true, tariffs still reduce competition, which reduces dynamism. "Tariffs – by design – restrict competition from foreign firms while entrenching the market position of existing dominant firms by erecting barriers for new market entrants, thus providing a countervailing pressure to his efforts to reduce anticompetitive regulations." Everything is tradeoffs…

#Nukes — It's Christmas in June over at AAF: Shuting Pomerlau, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy, has a paper out dissecting Trump's nuclear EOs. Tl;dr? It's too early to say.

#Vigilantes — We present this headline from WaPo without commentary: "Wall Street warns Trump aides the GOP tax bill could jolt bond markets." Will the bond vigilantes return?

#Budget #Spending — Speaking of: the fight around impoundment "heats up," warns Douglas Holtz-Eakin. The White House has been "impounding" appropriated funds, and GAO has been screaming bloody murder. "there appear to be another 39 investigations underway." What's next? Writes Holtz-Eakin: "Thus far, however, GAO has not announced any intention to take the administration to court. That seems only to be a matter of time." It seems that the Administration takes the view that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act which bans impoundment is unconstitutional and wants the Supreme Court to rule on it. Stay tuned…

#Reg #NEPA — R Street's Robinson Meyer has a good article at the website Heatmap News on the Supreme Court's NEPA ruling, which he calls "a permitting revolution." Indeed.

#LGBT #VibeShift — Male athletes are still competing in women's sports. In Minnesota, a male is dominating high school softball (softball!), but four women athletes are suing. The Federal government has a role here.

#Crypto — There's a new crypto innovation going around: "crypto airdrops." What are those? The New York Post's Thomas Barrabi has an explainer. Crypto mostly seems to be around reinventing financial products that have always been around but have been made either inconvenient, accessible, or downright impossible because of regulation. We will all find out whether this new Cambrian explosion of financial (re-)innovation works out to the benefit of consumers, investors, and American dynamism.

#OhDear #TheWayWeLiveNow — "The Gen Z sex work boom is fading as earnings dwindle," Morning Brew, a business news website aimed at Zoomers, informs us. Who would have thought that selling pictures of your naked body on the internet, a place which is absolutely full of free pictures of naked bodies, would not be a great money maker? "Facing a difficult job market and economic uncertainty, many Gen Z workers turned to sex work during and after the pandemic as a faster, more flexible route to financial independence. Platforms like OnlyFans and strip clubs offered a promise of good money and autonomy, especially when traditional career paths fell flat. But what once felt like an empowering alternative has since become overcrowded and a lot less lucrative, as an influx of new entrants and tighter client budgets have driven down rates and earnings.⁣ Now, many young sex workers are struggling to sustain their income, with some seeing their monthly earnings drop by 30% since the peak years," they tell us. What's the policy point? The policy point is this: even if you're not a social conservative, it was very obvious that encouraging impressionable young girls to open up OnlyFans accounts with the promise of easy riches was going to end in tears. The libertarian taboo in American politics, that people can do whatever they want, no matter how obviously stupid and self-destructive, because it's "their choice" remains very strong, for better or worse.

#TheWayWeLiveNow #TheMedia — Speaking of only tangentially policy-related stories… If you've been away from social media these past few days (and God bless you if you have) you may have missed the following sequence of events: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department would revoke most student visas issued to Chinese students; some people pointed out that none other than Xi Jinping's daughter attended Harvard; the internet then became full of an alleged photo of the young lady, who looked quite young and fetching, many of them related to memes on arranging her marriage to Barron Trump as a way of reconciling the US and China. All good fun on the internet. Except: was this photo actually of Xi Jinping's daughter? No. How did it become shared that way? The answer is more interesting than you might suspect. The policy angle? There isn't really one, except as a kind of meta-angle: if you're a policy professional in the year of our Lord 2025, especially on the right of center, you must be on social media, because so many invaluable ideas and conversations are found there; but also a lot of slop and disinformation. Nothing new under the sun, we suppose…