aflanigan wrote: 


I encourage my daughter to do what makes her happy

 aflanigan wrote: 
Seriously? You're wise enough to get all up in people's very private choices like this?

 hippiechick wrote: 

Eugenics involved, inter alia, promoting the breeding of "superior" genetic canditates and suppressing the breeding/reproduction of "inferior" genetic candidates.

Why not encourage your daughter to simply adopt an orphan?

 pigtail wrote: 
They lied to us, they told us we would all have hovercraft by now. 

Took me two hours in the fog soup to get 15 miles.  Too many people are commuting!
When do I get my hovercraft dammit??

 aflanigan wrote: 
I wasn't talking about killing the poor babies, give me a break

 hippiechick wrote: 
You should be careful about making those sorts of statements.  They make you sound like a eugenicist.

 aflanigan wrote: 
Not at all. I would just like to see my daughter have a baby, dammit!

 hippiechick wrote: 

So you agree with Ross Douthat?

 aflanigan wrote: 
I would like to see more smart educated women having babies.

An interesting, and, I think, persuasive counterargument to Ross Douthat's "Make More Babies" argument.

More Babies Won't Save the Economy

 aflanigan wrote: 
Remove the social nets, which will get rid off the 'decadence', stimulate those individual choices, and produce more (white) babies.

Overpopulation is often a NIMBY problem. Or linked to the perception by some that the 'enemy du jour' is outbreeding us.

Another interesting take on Douthat's hand-wringing over US population/birth rate declines:

Ladies, Uncle Sam Needs Your Uterus!

 Lazy8 wrote: 

I guess we just take different messages away from this.  If the hed "More Babies, Please" was inconsistent with what he was arguing, he hasn't given an indication to that effect.  It seems to me the main concern he raises is not decadence but reducted birth rates.  Like many of his other fellow conservative pundits like Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh, he probably would be happy with a reduction in decadence, but suppose this resulted in a reduction in whisky consumption and not an increase in birth rates?  Seems to me he would still be upset since we would still be on the road to losing our geopolitical dominance.

ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Mexico and Latin America aren't the only places immigrants come from, just where most of ours come from now. And "in decline" doesn't mean "below the replacement rate"—Latin American populations will be rising for some time.

aflanigan wrote:
You mean this one?


He's criticizing what he sees as decadence, lower birthrate being a consequence. I disagree with him on that point to some extent, but he's not saying that all those decadent people should start making babies. If anything he's arguing that people should be less decadent, and that that would raise the birthrate.

 aflanigan wrote: 
All the words...They changed....

 Lazy8 wrote: 

Then what exactly is he advocating in his last paragraph?  Seems to me his "slow accumulation of individual choices" is an argument for us to get busy (in the figurative as well as literal sense).  I don't think he's talking about what type of birth control couples decide on.

 Lazy8 wrote: 

• but with fertility in decline across Mexico and Latin America, it isn’t clear that the United States can continue to rely heavily on immigrant birthrates to help drive population growth.

aflanigan wrote:
I think you're misreading the point of the article. He's pointing out a demographic trend and its consequences, not advocating for people to make different choices.

He's also missing the impact of immigration on our population. Birthrate isn't the only way a population grows.