Having a baby in the US costs over 30 thousand dollars (average) — if nothing goes wrong. When there is a problem, it often costs hundreds of thousands.

For one family, care for their premature twins cost millions of dollars, and did bankrupt them. They lost all their possessions. At least 50,000 US families a year go bankrupt this way.

This is what Republicanism stands for.

A Tory politician called, 5-6 years ago, for pressuring unemployed males to get vasectomies by denying welfare for their "excess" children.

By calling the unemployed people "wasters", he asserted the standard right-wing claim that if you're poor, it's your own fault.

The children of the unemployed are likely to be unemployed, due to forces beyond their control:

• Growing up in poverty causes stress that will stunt their bodies and minds.
• The stingy right-wing state won't offer them a good education.
• Therefore, they will be first in line for unemployment. Meanwhile, due to automation, probably more and more people will be unemployed. You might need to be brilliant or resourceful, 30 years from now, to wangle gainful employment if you are not wealthy.

It is both cruel and futile to try to reduce people's birth rate by imposing poverty on their children. But there are legitimate methods, not cruel, for encouraging people not to have children, and we should use them.

Computerized face recognition threatens to leave us with not a smithering of human rights.

The rest of the article is so sadly shallow. It's as if the author felt ashamed of having said something serious and important, and felt obliged to cancel it out. I wish I could link to the first part only.

What Happens When the Jobs Dry Up in the New World? The Left Must Have an Answer.

Part of the answer, in the short term, is banning technology that eliminates lots of jobs. We don't have to allow driverless taxis. We don't have to allow automated sales counters in stores. We can permit them when and if people don't need employment.

We must stop equating progress with technical advance.

Potato farms in Jersey are having trouble hiring workers from Poland.

Maybe these farms need to (shudder!) pay a higher wage to attract some Britons off their zero-hours contracts.