That's because the US is just like the movie Idiocrasy. Do you think I am kidding? I am not. I teach in an impoverished urban school district right now and I used to teach in an impoverished rural district. The dumbest, most special ed, poorest, least prepared, and least intelligent teens know how to do one thing really well: breed like rabbits. In America, smart people don't have kids because they know that they can't afford the kids and the costs. Dumb people, the capricious animals that they are, don't think about any of that stuff. They go, “I'm hungry” and they go to McDonalds and eat a McGriddles. Or they go, “I'm cold,” and then they turn on the oven in their trailer or the space heater that later falls down and makes the 6:00 am news of a house fire in some government subsidized rental community. Or they go, “I'm horny” and then they go somewhere and breed and have capricious little non-thinking jive talking litters that are just as stupid as their parents. Then they come to school where we are expect to save then from their inferior life choices and parents and we can't, but we're expected to do so because because George W. Moron thinks no child should be left behind and he has some strategery to blame all of the problems of America on teachers.

I was wondering how soon a right bent assclown would trot out the tired old “a system that encourages people to have children and not work (welfare)” argument. Well, done, KL.

Since when did our system encourage having children? besides strict conservatives I don't really know how anyone in govt is encouraging more bebehs and less contraception/sex/family education.

K.L., have you somehow got the idea that only the U.S. has a welfare system? Look way to the right on the x axis — there are your countries with more generous welfare systems. All of a sudden welfare looks less like a cause of child poverty and more like the flawed attempt at a solution that it actually is.

…but seriously. This is what you get when you have a system that encourages people to have children and not work (welfare).

That's what we need. More working children. That'll get those kids out of poverty.