At least until we get our stuff together, we need to lock down the borders, not open them up. . . it's almost impossible to count jellybeans when someone is dumping another truckload on top of the those you are counting – and you can't fix the unemployment problem by dumping truckloads of new people into the job market to compete for jobs that don't exist. Do you people ever actually spend a few minutes to actually *think*?

Actually, in this situation the family with the fat kids is the wealthiest.

Just sayin'. Pennies are hard t' chew. But fat kids is good eatin'!

WHERE DOES THIS NOTION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY COME INTO THE PICTURE WHEN IT COMES TO BIRTH CONTROL….or am I too just go along with the idea that anyone and everyone can have as many kids as they want whether they can afford them or not. I THINK NOT.

As long as all the village idiots believe that we must accept chronic world population growth, i.e. Roman catholic church, then the future is really bleak. I for one, feel that we have achieved a new point in history, where quality is far more important that quantity.

Speaking as a woman, I find the answer simple…it is women who carry only around 400 eggs in their bodies, whereas men have zillions of sperm, thereby making those zillions rather redundant. As well, we know that when quantity prevails, then quality suffers, so take a clue from women's bodies you profs, monks and other nonthinking neanderthals. Further, any thinking individual knows in their deepest heart of hearts, giving birth to oneself is far more important than filling the earth with creatures never having the ability to improve their lot in life.

At least until we get our stuff together, we need to lock down the borders, not open them up. . . it's almost impossible to count jellybeans when someone is dumping another truckload on top of the those you are counting – and you can't fix the unemployment problem by dumping truckloads of new people into the job market to compete for jobs that don't exist. Do you people ever actually spend a few minutes to actually *think*?

Actually, in this situation the family with the fat kids is the wealthiest.

Just sayin'. Pennies are hard t' chew. But fat kids is good eatin'!

WHERE DOES THIS NOTION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY COME INTO THE PICTURE WHEN IT COMES TO BIRTH CONTROL….or am I too just go along with the idea that anyone and everyone can have as many kids as they want whether they can afford them or not. I THINK NOT.

As long as all the village idiots believe that we must accept chronic world population growth, i.e. Roman catholic church, then the future is really bleak. I for one, feel that we have achieved a new point in history, where quality is far more important that quantity.

Speaking as a woman, I find the answer simple…it is women who carry only around 400 eggs in their bodies, whereas men have zillions of sperm, thereby making those zillions rather redundant. As well, we know that when quantity prevails, then quality suffers, so take a clue from women's bodies you profs, monks and other nonthinking neanderthals. Further, any thinking individual knows in their deepest heart of hearts, giving birth to oneself is far more important than filling the earth with creatures never having the ability to improve their lot in life.

If the idiot in Harvard figures what he has, then WHY HASN'T HE donated his ENTIRE salary to the effort which he so ~loftily~ says the rest of us should engage?

He hasn't and neither should we.

POINT: Precisely ~WHAT~ is 'poverty?'

That question needs to be answered before =ANY= money is spent, anywhere.

If I possess just one penny, yet everyone else around me possesses NOT A THING, then I am wealthy.

Should I toss my penny to the rest? And for what reason, and with for what good cause should I?

Poverty and poor living conditions in the developing world are due mainly to bad government. If, for example, the tens of millions of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. illegally had stayed in Mexico, they might have exerted some political pressure on their government to improve the economic situation there.

Very true, but the corollary here is that greater certainty may arrive only after optimal inflection points for action. Accepting lower returns for the sake of hedging risk is common practice in finance but it's apparently heresy to apply the same logic to these kinds of questions.

To be clear, I'm all for improving the plight of the global poor right now because all evidence indicates that desperate people make decisions strictly weighted, understandably, toward short term results. The negative correlation between wealth/education and population growth speaks to this. The accelerated depletion rates that raising the living standards of the poor implies, however, could be substantially mitigated through redistribution, but, y'know, crazy talk and all that.

But I do agree with the general argument. Liberalized immigration is an ideal situation.

So, showing there is an injustice due to migration controls (short-term phenomenon) is easier than showing there is an injustice because of sustainability problems (long-term prediction).

Of course there is always a risk that what looks good in the short term (relaxing migration restrictions, putting $$$ in people's wallet to increase world consumption) may have bad long term effects. But it's harder to show.

The seeming fishiness of limitless exponential growth given finite resources should give people pause, however. Certainly there is no iron law that says that has to go on forever.