I think I’d be ok with a lot more of a draconian system than a lot of people! (Then again, I largely see Handmaid’s Tale and Brave New World as utopic, not dystopic, literature!)

I really am curious though, whether some people think having kids is a right and not one of many choices to make about how to spend money, versus traveling or getting more education or buying a house — this ties to the other piece published today https://thebillfold.com/how-we-spend-our-money-is-none-of-your-business-ea650f2dc51e#.v915dsuhr and is why I started thinking about it. I think it would be better to prevent kids from being born to parents in poverty (or for whom the costs of children would push them into poverty) and have the parents wait until they could afford to have children — but I get the sense some people think of having kids as not an economic (i.e., budgeting) decision but just a life stage decision when really it’s both (I think someone mentioned in the comments that people grossly underestimate how expensive kids are).