well that explains why I felt like I was barely above water with what I thought was a higher-than-average salary before I GTFO

Pretty sure anyone with half a brain would ensure that they're already making a sufficient amount of money BEFORE deciding to shit out one kid, let alone two or three.

@4, if the State pays you to shit out a kid why not? Dump your job, become a sperm bank and live in public housing. It's the Socialist Way!

Nice sexist slant there, @5 - what about sperm donors?

And seriously, try living sometime at a subsistence level for a few weeks or months - it's hardly the idyllic Cockaigne conservatives imagine it to be.

@4,

Incomes haven't increased for decades while inflation keeps marching along steadily raising prices.

Maybe families could get in time machines and find out how much they'll need 10 years from now so they can get a job that pays that much today.

@7, if you're at all uncertain about paying for children, perhaps don't have them? Yes, I know we want things and we want them now, but maybe let's be, ya know, smart about things like shitting out unnecessary children.

@8,

So what you're saying is only the rich should reproduce?

I'm cool with that. Actually I'd prefer everyone stop reproducing altogether and let this miserable human race die out for good but that's not gonna happen.

Really though, we should pass laws that only the rich can reproduce. That'd surely start a revolution in this fucked up country.

Won't ever happen though. The rich and powerful want... no, NEED, the poor and powerless to keep breeding worker drones and soldiers for them and then complain about how the poor mooch all their hard earned* wealth from them and should stop shitting out kids they can't afford.

Great country we live in, eh?

* Hard earned = Inherited from Daddy

@8:

"Shitting out unnecessary children..."

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen: a prime example of the current state of reproductive education in the United States of America - from someone who literally doesn't know the difference between a vagina and an asshole...

@9, I'm good with just people who can care for their pets/children having pets/children. You know, it's better for the fucking world, and everything.

Not sure how "people who can't provide for their children should still have children" can actually be a position, unless you've had a recent traumatic brain injury.

@13:

Maybe at the time they had the children they COULD provide for them, but their circumstances changed for the worse and NOW they can't. Happens every day - just ask anyone who got massively burned during the 2008 Recession. But, I guess it's just their fault for not accurately predicting they might be affected years in the future by economic forces over which they have no control, because a SMART person surely would have taken that into consideration, yes?

Why do I come here any more. Crosscut writes better articles and attracts better readers - I want to bathe after reading th discourse here.