How did you get from there to here?

[Gobirds66]

I have noticed that career minded / ambitious people do not procreate until later in life often bearing less children or maybe none at all. Are these folks smarter?....Not necessarily. However, more often than not they are in fact more educated. ie. I know zero female doctors with 3 different baby's daddy's.

Next question.

This is pretty goddam far from "only stupid people are breeding".

But if that is the basis for the comment, that somehow people who choose not to have kids are in someway superior to those that do. I would have to disagree. Of course you don't have doctors with 3 baby daddys.

The sequence is supposed to go like this. You secure a spouse, than you "breed" and raise the children as a joint venture.

So people who do this are stupid? I'll compare my Curriculum Vitae‎ with anyone here!

Sorry to derail the thread. I just thought the comment was a bit thoughtless and felt the need to defend those of us who have taken advantage of the greatest privilege life affords us.

I forget who it was, maybe Allan Bloom or someone of that genre, but he wrote that kids are an investment in the future if nothing else and progeny should not be viewed as unwanted, unneeded, or the opposite of a miracle. (In a nutshell, if you like modern society, it has to be kept up. For some, if you hate people or hate politics or hate life in general, kids probably do not factor into your scope of what should be, as they are the next generation.)

The movie 'Idiocracy' does a plain and simple job of showing us the absurd automation/lack of thinking world we create if we let it get that far. The beginning shows an affluent couple putting off having kids because they do not feel like they can support them. Meanwhile, a trailer park romeo is having kids with different baby mommas in another sequence. Pretty much sums up the JerrySpringer talk show mentality that pervades our conscience.

It is easy to avoid having kids. Most guys understand that already as you gotta find someone who wants to mate with you, and that alone is a personal choice.

Hate to go Malthusian, but if we get too much of anything, a famine, drought, war, disease, etc. will thin us out and let the more smart/able to survive.

I have a slightly different take. In full disclosure....No kids and married but my wife insists I am the child too. No intention of having kids. I have a well paid job, consider myself relatively smart? Maybe? I have learned how to wipe my own backside at least so that has to qualify for something

Now, you have to look at the personal background when someone says "only stupid people are breeding". Provincial4nstar apparently deals in a crazy world on a daily basis. It makes you numb. Just like a mortician who makes jokes over a corpse. It is their way. I do not think it was meant to be offensive towards the folks that follow a more traditional path for having children.

More importantly, I think the differentiator here is the word "breeding." We have children, are expecting, decided to get pregnant, etc. We "breed" rabbits, dogs, cats, etc for the purpose of making babies to continue a species for one reason or another. Many times it is to make money from selling the offspring. Well, I can see where some people may "breed" as well. The father is a tool to obtain a child that is used to gain more money from the system. In that sense, it is stupid to breed because it really does not "get you ahead," despite what one believes.

Now, if Provincial4nstar said only stupid people have babies 9meaning that carrying on the human race is pointless and stupid).....then I would take issue, because it is false. But given his occupation and the world he sees every single day, this very well may be a true statement in his eyes.

[Thogey]

Only stupid people are breeding.

What does this mean?

I reread the post and I think you are right.

I think this can be construed as follows. "from what I can see, only [the] stupid people are breeding"

Not "if you have kids you must be stupid"

I just don't think anyone would post something that means the latter on this forum.

[Sanford02]

I am a relatively new parent....I noticed recently while doing my taxes that there is a child tax credit of $3900 per child per year. With 2 kids that's almost 8 grand per year. And its a credit, not a deduction, so its real money in your pocket. That's good money. If your boss gave you an 8000 per year raise, that would be a big deal....so my point is that the dollar amount is large enough for people to take notice. The problem....and in my mind it is a HUGE problem, is that after a certain income threshold (and the threshold is not actually very large for a two income household), a person or household does not qualify for the child tax credit. What does this mean? it means that the fricking tax code, of all things, encourages people with fewer resources to have more kids....WTH? As a society, if we are going to reward someone for having kids, shouldn't they be the people who have the resources and commitment to raise those kids to be productive and contributing citizens? It just seems so profoundly backwards that my head hurts to even think about it. So, I have to ignore it most of the time.... But yeah, anyways, I read the "only stupid people are breeding" post as "only [the] stupid people are breeding" and I think there is a lot of truth to that, and in some ways at least, our society encourages and rewards that....

[Engineer]

The problem....and in my mind it is a HUGE problem, is that after a certain income threshold (and the threshold is not actually very large for a two income household), a person or household does not qualify for the child tax credit. What does this mean? it means that the fricking tax code, of all things, encourages people with fewer resources to have more kids....WTH? As a society, if we are going to reward someone for having kids, shouldn't they be the people who have the resources and commitment to raise those kids to be productive and contributing citizens? It just seems so profoundly backwards that my head hurts to even think about it. So, I have to ignore it most of the time.... But yeah, anyways, I read the "only stupid people are breeding" post as "only [the] stupid people are breeding" and I think there is a lot of truth to that, and in some ways at least, our society encourages and rewards that....

You hit the nail on the head.

Stupid people aren't the only ones breeding, but we're certainly encouraging them to do so. The tax code also encourages people to have children at a younger age rather than waiting until they're financially secure enough to support a child on their own.