Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think

by Bryan Caplan

Don’t like congestion at rush hour? An electronically collected toll is a straightforward way to get traffic moving again.

Weve known these things for more than a decade yet here we are...

One last thought: Retirees are often much wealthier than they see themselves. If you own your home outright, you’re semi-rich—and if you think you can’t spend a house, you’re mistaken. Almost any bank will let you cash out some of its value with a home equity loan. Some sell reverse mortgages—you sign your home over to the bank in exchange for a monthly check and free rent. Look before you leap into unfamiliar financial strategies, but keep an open mind. What’s better—the abstract knowledge that you’ve paid off your mortgage or the concrete fact that you have a new grandchild to spoil?

When Apple first announced the iPhone, the world was thrilled. My colleague Russ Roberts named it “the most beautiful toy yet” and enthused, “Apple hits a home run. No, a grand slam. Actually, a fiverun homer, the kind you’re not supposed to try to hit.” Two months after the iPhone’s release, however, users were out for blood. Apple’s crime: cutting the price by $200. This is how we normally greet progress—an exciting honeymoon, followed by constant ingratitude.

Most people find my prediction frightening. Some paint GE as a pointless arms race; it’s individually tempting, but society is better off without it. Others object that GE would increase inequality; the rich will buy alpha babies, and the rest of us will be stuck with betas. But there’s something fishy about these complaints: If better nurture created a generation of wonder kids, we would rejoice. Suppose you naturally conceived an amazingly smart, healthy, and accomplished child. Would it bother you? If your neighbors had such a child, would you forbid your children to play with him? If your neighborhood were full of wonder kids, would you move away? On my office wall, I have a picture of my dad at his high school graduation, towering a foot above his grandparents. Such height differences were common at the time because childhood nutrition improved so rapidly. I doubt that the grandparents who attended that graduation saw height as an “arms race” or griped that rich kids were even taller. They were happy to look up to their descendants—and we’d feel the same way. Deep down, even technophobes want their descendants to surpass them. They just think that picking embryos is a vile way to make it happen.

this misses that the issue is the distribution is not close to uniform...

First, if a good is indivisible—like a car or a baby—a 20 percent price cut might not be enough to make you buy one more. Second, if you dislike a product, the price doesn’t matter. I hate pickles so much that I wouldn’t eat them even if they were free.

A DECADE BEFORE I BECAME A DAD, AN EPISODE OF DENNIS PRAGER’S talk show left a lasting impression on me.

Well that explains alot

As a consumer, how do you change your behavior when a product gets cheaper or better or easier to purchase? You buy more.

Its almost like he doesnt know about elasticity