[Maximilian]

So you seem to think the major function of the next generation of Americans is to be the slaves of the retired?

Actually, if you had read my post, I said that this was the least important reason to be concerned about having a next generation of Americans to carry on our nation. However, the fact that every Western nation is facing a fiscal crisis in their retirement systems is a major political and economic reality that must be dealt with.

We're facing a social security crisis because politicians have fostered this idiot Ponzi scheme and it must inevitably fail.

When a population fails to reproduce itself and faces national suicide, failure of the social security system is just one of the effects. Right now it's the one that is the most obvious, and the one that is causing political trauma in Europe and Japan, and increasingly America. Notice that revising Social Security is no longer the "third rail of American politics" the way it used to be.

Blaming responsible child bearing practices of limited family size ( by the way how many kids I have is MY buisness) is ridiculous.

Apparently you don't believe it's your business to carry on the work of America. The Europeans don't believe that it's their business to reproduce their societies either. That's why they're importing millions of Muslims, and why we're importing millions of Hispanics. Your attitude is nihilistic and suicidal.

[Kozak]

Current US fertility rates fall just below the replacement level. That is not national suicide. Its the reasonable and natural reaction of individuals to the fact that children are far less likely to die, and that parents want to provide for their children as good a life as they can. Thats why my wife and I had 2. At some point fertility MUST approximate mortality rates as you cannot grow a national population endlessly. Personally I feel have reached a point where the population of the US is about right. I certainly have no desire to see us continue on to the kind of population density they have in China, India or Bangledesh.

Of course there are adjustments our society must make as we reach a population equilibrium. I just don't believe the answer is to grow ever larger. Thats the blind alley that current social policy is headed down. The train wreck occurs when the Boomers begin to swell the ranks of the retired and the Ponzi scheme fails.