Why? Who in their right mind would have children in 2026? Everything is burning, gone to shit, and projected to get worse. Having children is insanely irresponsible.

HackerNews' neuroticism is unmatched

Your dramatization of society's ills are not tethered to reality

It's not? Have your seen climate change forecast? Have you seen the cost of diesel? Eeosion of democracy in the US?

Have you lived long enough to see it go up and down?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surface_temperature

You can see this is not a cyclic issue.

Or atleast not a cycle shorter than couple thousand years.

Please. Every single age of humanity, there have been hardships. It was actually much worse before: Diseases galore, famine, pests, wars. You're severely negatively biased as is a lot of other people I've seen.

I don't care how hard it was to live in Abyssinia. This is absolutely the worst time to try to make a life in the United States since WWII ended 80 years ago, and there's every reason to believe it is going to continue to get worse for a long time. I have no idea why you are dismissive of people saying this is a difficult time.

The standard of living/real GDP per capita or per hour of work is about as high as it's ever been.

What's funny about this attitude is that people were having a lot of children when half of them died in their childhood and for those left there were famines, pestilences, wars, no painkillers or anesthesia and no medicines for anything.

The reality is that we don't make many children because our life is way too comfortable for that.

Spoken like someone terminally online & without children. If this is your view of reality (I believe it is an utter fiction but nonetheless), then I don't know how you propose things to be improved without smart people procreating.