Hi Reader,

If you want a life that is full of growth and improvement, foster hope. Guard it like your life depends on it. And take actions that create the emotion of hope in your own mind and in the people around you.

This is an article I wrote to speak to the birthrate problem in the United States. And I've laid out my reasoning for why this has been occurring, what broader effects it's having on culture, and what lessons can be pulled from it to create a better life for yourself.

If you'd like me to work with you one-on-one, please get in touch with me here.

I'm hosting an entrepreneur dinner in Austin, Texas. If your business is doing 1m+ in revenue, and you'd like to attend, respond to this email with a hello, and I'll reply personally to coordinate.

And if you'd like the most comprehensive starting place to improve your life that I can produce, click this link here to check it out.

Article continued below...

Babies, Economies, and Why Hope Matters

Right now, the birthrate in America is dropping.

One group says that it’s because children are becoming too expensive.

Another group says that people today have become obsessed with living the high-class modern lifestyle and are too selfish to have children.

They’re both wrong.

Let me explain why.

Americans aren't avoiding having babies because they are poor. They aren't having babies because they feel poor.

A very big difference.

It is an emotion created by very real problems.

But the feeling matters.

They feel poor

1. because they live in a debt economy,
2. because they’re having their futures stolen from them by a corrupt government,
3. and because of a hundred years' worth of propaganda that took decades to fully take effect.

It’s complicated.

Feeling Poor

Feeling poor is different from being poor. While America is wealthy, it has become a debt economy, where a lot of people start their adult lives already in debt that could take them thirty years to pay off.

They fall for the college marketing scam and get saddled with student debt they can’t legally ever escape from.

This is a burden, one that a twenty-year-old child out of college doesn’t understand.

Burdens make people create the emotional desire to "escape" when they happen without explanation and make people unwilling to take on more.

They make people feel trapped.

On top of that, historically, children added to the wealth of the family when most people had farms. The kids would help collect the eggs from the chicken coop, milk the cows, or do any number of other small tasks that were an integral part of farm life. Unfortunately, children don’t do a lot to increase the profitability of a family unit in our current era, so a child feels like an additional burden to a household, not a benefit.

And when someone has already been saddled with debt before starting adulthood and are presented with the possibility of another burden to go along with it, they get panicky.

So, a person is more likely to fall for some other bit of marketing and go into further debt on a vacation to escape for a moment from an unpleasant first position in a new career as a young indebted adult than voluntarily take on the responsibility of a child.

It’s not that they’re selfish. It’s that they’re ignorant of what debt makes them feel like.

And they don't realize how much it will make them avoid the possibility of children even if in their hearts they know they'd like to have some, despite the challenge.

And also put more simply, people with more debt make fewer babies. Specifically, the kind of debt that controls a person's

Put more simply, people with more debt make fewer babies. Specifically, bad debt—like high-interest credit card debt or student loans.

Theft

And then, while America is still wealthy, the inflation rate is a monster under the bed that affects people unconsciously.

Inflation is so insidious because it's a complexity scam pulled on the entire population.

It's so hard to understand that it’s a method of stealing from everyone in a society without them knowing it. It takes eight solid hours of education and explanation for a person to even understand how they’re being stolen from.

However, on an unconscious level, everyone in the society feels their resources slowly being siphoned away without visible cause or explanation.

They can feel the danger they’re in as they slowly and mysteriously become less able to afford the same things they once could. And this creates extreme insecurity, the kind that makes people a little bit crazy because they know something bad is happening but they don’t know what it is.

(It's essentially the gaslighting of an entire population, stealing money and then saying "everything is fine it's not a problem.")

And while yes, poor people have babies all the time, scared people usually don’t. And the American populace hasn’t been poor for the last couple of decades. They’ve been scared.

Lies

And then lastly, the propaganda. Paul Ehrlich wrote a book in 1968 that claimed that overpopulation would cause famines and untold destruction, all of which has been debunked.

We’ve since proven that as populations increase in combination with the freedom of trade, food and resources become less expensive and more plentiful.

But the beliefs around saving the world by raging against the darkness of humanity stuck. Because it's compelling.

It’s extremely tempting to dislike yourself.

Religion, art, and all sorts of cultural beliefs throughout the centuries have fallen into this trap over and over again. First, advising a population to be cautious and aware of the darker nature of humanity, how it can be harmful and "sinful." But then playing on the narrative until everyone believes that humanity is dark and evil and then through that belief destroys itself.

That happened around the concept of population.

And now, there is a cultural tendency to look down on people who want babies.

In conclusion, people don't make babies because

1. they don't feel like it's economically possible
2. and because they feel like it's a bad decision.

They aren't doing it because they think things will get worse if they have babies.

And so, people aren’t making babies because they don’t feel hope.

A couple in the middle of a war zone with a loaf of bread and three cans of beans to their name will make babies if they feel hope. They will walk with their heads held high and do their best. But if they don’t, they’ll wear a condom and bang for a couple of minutes, swipe on Tinder, and look for the next two-minute escape from reality.

If you want to save the world, cultivate hope; nothing else is strong enough.

Hope

Growing up, I heard the phrase "The American Dream" a lot. And I always wondered what it was.

Was it a stable job, a wife, two and a half kids, and a white picket fence?

A family and a minivan?

Was it the chance to become president or the founder of a tech company?

Was it the freedom to pursue happiness?

Well, it is all of those things (and more!).

But now that I've learned a bit more, I believe the American Dream can be defined by this simple phrase.

"If you do better, you do better."

Meaning, simply, if you work to get a result in life and you earn it by your own hard work and brilliance, no one will take it away from you.

And if you work harder and work smarter you'll get better results, and you have the right to enjoy those results without them being taken away.

It means, if you give something a try, you have a shot at success, without interference from a government, king, religious leader, or other oppressive force.

It won't be taken through inflation, seizure, debt engineering, or any other means.

At it's best, I think this is what the American Dream is all about.

And that, is hope.

The chance that things could be better.

I believe, that at every level of life, hope must be available in some way, or eventually the system will fail.

And I don't like to write sad articles, and some people who write this might feel sad, because inflation stealing from a population, debt tearing people down, and less babies in the world is definitely sad.

But to make this positive and actionable, I want to say this: Hope can always be engineered. And hope is always within your power.

And so, no matter where you are in life, you must engineer hope. You must create a way for things to get better. Even if it seems like there are forces in the world that make things feel hopeless.

Your first battle is within your own mind, to strive for better and to prove to yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can in fact make things better.

And if you learn to do that consistently, you will become unstoppable.

And your next battle will be to create hope in the people around you.

It is a battle that can be fought and won. A country, business, family, and individual can all reignite hope at any moment.

It is one of those few magical things that is always available.

And so, while some of these problems are big, I thought it was worthwhile to speak to them. And it creates the opportunity to say how truly important hope is.

And if you can create a world of hope for yourself and the people around you, your life will improve beyond your wildest dreams.

Live a life of hope backed by competence, and you will become an indomitable force of nature.

If you'd like my services as a consultant, please get in touch with me here.

If your business is doing 1m+ in revenue, and you'd like to attend a private entrepreneur dinner in Austin, Texas, respond to this email with a hello, and I'll reply personally to coordinate.

If you'd like the most best starting place to improve your life that I can produce, click this link here to check it out.

Best,

Josh Terry