Did you hear that? 150,000 jobs a month JUST to keep up with population growth. How insane is that goal? Never mind trying to balance the budget or encourage companies to offer health benefits and a livable wage -- never mind trying to get those who've recently been laid off back to work quickly or help folks pay off the massive amounts of consumer debt they've accumulated while existing without a paycheck. At a time when 14 million Americans are currently unemployed, people are losing their houses because they can't afford the mortgage, and our economy has stagnated to the point that we managed to create exactly ZERO new jobs last month -- it turns out that we need to come up with 150,000 extra positions in order to keep pace with the population growth?

It's pretty clear at least in my mind -- continuing to add to the population is worsening our economic situation, not helping it. In fact, it's become kind of a vicious cycle, especially for the lower income tiers. A typical family can't earn enough to live off of with just two people working, so they send their kids out to find jobs, as well -- reducing the pool of available employment for other adults. In a challenging economy, those jobs that always belonged to high-schoolers (like flipping burgers and bagging groceries) are now needed to support heads of household. I know some folks claim that "the children are our future" -- they're going to be the ones to end global famine, bring peace to warring nations, come up with a renewable alternative energy source, repair the hole in the ozone layer, and cure cancer. My response? Not if they can't even find a basic minimum wage job when they grow up, they're not!

So why is anyone allowed to continuing reproducing during this time of crisis? If our society stayed at zero population growth (or even managed a brief foray into negative growth) until those already on the planet had found jobs, we could at least stabilize things, possibly get out of the mess that we're in now. But as long as people keep having kids, we're just digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole. Matt and I are already doing our part to help out by not having children -- but I'm going on record today, officially blaming our current economic situation on those breeders who have an excessive number of children our society is clearly incapable of supporting. Don't you feel just the least bit guilty?

Ramona Lays Down The Law

A Blessing From Father George