I need kids?

Newsweek as a feature article by Joel Kotkin and Harry Siegel about the slump in the American birth rate and how that isn't good for the country. More Americans, especially since the start of the Great Recession, have decided to not have kids. Many have also decided to not have life partners, preferring the life of "singlism."

Yes, that includes me, though I'm quite a bit older than the 20- and 30-somethings who are in their prime child-bearing age and not bearing children. Without a life partner (and I'm content not to have one) I thought it unfair to any kid I might adopt. In addition, I've long said (at least to myself) with seven billion people in the world, I need kids?

The big reason the authors give for why a falling birthrate is bad is that as the birth rate drops and the population ages the harder it is to sustain the retirement benefits that have been promised. There is also the belief that as the population becomes more doddering the less robust the economy will be.

There is a bit of a debate about the effect of a declining birthrate will have on politics. Those that remain single (or at least childless) tend to become more liberal. The single women's vote was a big part of Obama's win last fall. However, conservatives will tend to keep having children. Will childless singletons shift the country more liberal or will the comparative lack of liberal babies make the country more conservative?

To solve the problem of too few babies the authors suggest ways to tweak tax code and other laws to make having babies less expensive. A commenter replies: Like they did in Germany, which has had no effect? Another notes we can't fix a problem by throwing babies at it.

I found the article frustrating for a very big reason. Nowhere was there a discussion about how the world is already overpopulated, that overpopulation is a big reason why we haven't fix the climate change problem, and that in a global view a declining American birthrate is a good thing. That discussion didn't occur in the first page of comments either.