[Turing_Machine]

That philosophy is directly responsible for overpopulation. If you need to have children to keep from starving to death when you're old, you'll want to have a lot of them.

Note that the areas where this is true are precisely the ones with catastrophically high birth rates, and the areas where there are pensions, social programs, etc. are precisely the ones where population is stable, or even falling.

[lmz]

> Note that the areas where this is true are precisely the ones with catastrophically high birth rates, and the areas where there are pensions, social programs, etc. are precisely the ones where population is stable, or even falling.

And then those countries with pensions and falling population are mentioned as ones who need to import immigrants in order to keep their pension pyramid scheme working...

[Turing_Machine]

Well, you could do other things to encourage more births. It's been done before, with significant success.

[tsotha]

Where? Every country I'm aware of that dipped below replacement fertility has not been able to recover.

[Turing_Machine]

Israel, for one.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/children-of-isr...

[pmalynin]

A la Mussolini-esque pro-family propaganda?

[Turing_Machine]

Propaganda, increased tax credits (or even outright subsidies) for having children, tax penalties for not having children...

[Turing_Machine]

Are any of the people who keep modding this down able to provide a counterexample (i.e., a country where the "social safety net" consists of having lots of children that doesn't have a big population problem)?

Facts are facts, whether you like them or not.