Well, actually if all poor people followed this logic, then all children would grow up in more affluent households. Then the next generation could afford college, and all of the nice things that come with having parents that have money.
But of course, it seems that only the poor people want to reproduce anyway.
Except college is a negative sum game, an expenditure of resources to boost one's relative status at somebody else's expense; it was a ticket to money when few people had a college degree, but the more people who have one, the more find you can have a degree and still end up poor.
And as you say, affluent people typically behave as though they don't want to reproduce anyway. In some cases that's actual lack of desire, and in others it's because by the time they finish climbing academic and career ladders and jumping through all the hoops, they're too old, but the end result is the same.
Except not really because there ARE literally thousands of companies who want software engineers right now, but there are not enough of them to go around in the United States.
This is only going to get worse as everything moves from manual labor to software. We will need more and more developers and less janitors, less cashiers, etc.
In 50 years there will be very few unskilled jobs. And they'll probably be something stupid like clicking ads or filling out surveys full time.
> This is only going to get worse as everything moves from manual labor to software.
True, but there's an interesting twist. As more people are hired to write software and build computers, some of those people create robots, the robots take over more of the unskilled jobs, which further accelerates the process.
Maybe, but isn't programming pretty much the only job where there is such a shortage these days? It's also a job where the product is pure information, so I'm still of the opinion the solution to the problem is to drop the requirement for physical presence and start hiring remotely.
It's less than "only the poor people want to reproduce" and more than "people wanna reproduce" and "so many people are becoming poor these days".
The middle class is GONE, and the lower class has grown immensely. So as a proportion, sure, they reproduce more. But that's just because we've grown so many of them.
This isn't entirely accurate. The shrinking of the middle class is accounted for entirely by movement into the upper-middle (and higher) income classes, and what you say about the lower class ignores per capita data.
But of course, it seems that only the poor people want to reproduce anyway.