children

According to the BBC, a number of European nations may start offering free fertility treatment. Fertility rates are dropping, and Europe is afraid there will be too small a workforce to care for its pensioners in the near future. The proposed answer is for Europeans to have more babies.

Here's one reason why this is stupid:

A shrinking workforce and growing elderly population is a public policy problem. It can be solved with policies, for example: cut pension payments, or raise retirement ages, or increase legal immigration of working age singles, or decrease other social spending to make up the gap, or increase a tax to make up the gap, or better socialize global pharamceutical companies to decrease costs, or change land and property tax policies on nursing homes to cut costs there... and that's just off the top of my head.

There are enough working people in the world to support all the elderly and then some. Though the economy is global, political boundaries persist. Why not open the borders if you need more people?

I suspect those promoting free fertility treatment are racist.

(With Jac in Las Vegas, i have no one to vent to when i'm listening to the BBC on the radio.)