“Americans aren’t having enough babies,” Catherine Rampell writes at the Washington Post. “Ironically, pro-life politicians might be making the problem worse.”

Her suggestion for addressing the supposed problem: “Slash the tax burden for families with young kids, a traditionally bipartisan policy that a few Republican senators are currently blocking.”

I’ve got a few problems with that suggestion.

One is that most “child tax credit” proposals of the type implied are actually subsidies — that is, they are “refundable,” such that beneficiaries can actually receive a net payment FROM the government (in other words, from the taxpayers), rather than paying any taxes at all TO the government.

Another is that I don’t like social engineering by government.

Using tax policy to influence how much beer people drink, what kind of cars people drive, or how many babies people have is just a way of imposing some people’s social preferences (and the costs of exercising those preferences) on other people.

Americans, Rampell tells us (citing polling data), are “having fewer kids than they say they want.”

She doesn’t cite any polling data on how many kids those same people want to pay the costs of conceiving, delivering, and raising. I suspect the latter number would be lower.

I want one more Tesla than I currently own (the latter number is zero), but I don’t want to pay the advertised sticker price. Nor do I support taxing you, or Ms. Rampell, more to buy me one (or to give me a tax credit to reduce my cost of buying one).

Ms. Rampell does posit substantive “problems” arising from “a population that fails to replace itself” — a smaller work force that doesn’t pay as much in taxes, for example.

And to her credit, she notices that there’s also a ready “solution”: More immigration.

A healthy economy attracts people from elsewhere to fulfill demand for goods and services.

As it happens, those people tend to come from cultures where having babies hasn’t gone quite so out of fashion as it seems to be getting here.

And instead of demanding subsidies for having those babies, they’d be paying the taxes that the “missing” babies would have eventually been paying. “Problem” solved.

[Note: I don’t consider taxes, or paying them, a good thing, but I guess I’m a sort of “moderate” — if we’re forced to pay them, I consider using them to engineer desired social outcomes worse than using them to fill potholes, but better than using them to murder poor brown people in the Middle East and Central Asia.]

How many babies are “enough?” As many as people choose to have in the expectation of covering the costs without subsidies. Any other number is just damaging political interference.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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I’m too young to remember the campus convulsions of the 1960s, but older friends who were there tell me that the growing campus protest movement against US support for Israel’s war in Palestine bears a striking resemblance to those days.

I happen to support that movement’s goals, at least to the extent of wanting to see the US government butt out of other people’s arguments.

I’m told by some “pro-Israel” friends that the student protesters  are all “anti-semites” and “supporters of Hamas,” and that if I support them I must also hate a particular ethnic group and support terrorism as a tactic.

But I don’t hate any ethnic groups, nor do I support Hamas any more than I support the Israeli Defence Forces.

I don’t doubt that SOME of the student protesters fall into the “hater” category, simply because the protests are a convenient bandwagon for “haters” to ride on. The next large political event I attend that doesn’t have a least a few weirdos hanging around, trying to grab a little unearned credibility by association, will be the first.

I just want a government that claims it works for me to stop handing out weapons and cash to other governments. Especially, though not only, to crybully regimes that constantly play the victim while also occupying territory outside their borders for decades on end, imposing apartheid regimes on the inhabitants of those occupied territories, murdering anyone who resists (along with many who don’t), etc.

To the extent that the kids on campus are seeking the same thing, they’re doing God’s work and have my full support.

Heck, I may even make myself a sign, see if I can find my old gas mask (just in case), and go hang out at the university campus nearest me this weekend if I’m feeling nostalgic (I’ve attended protests on and off for about 40 years, but not lately).

I consider the protests a positive sign to the extent that campus movements tend to be bellwethers.

The protests against the US war in Vietnam didn’t end the war, but they did presage wider popular opposition to the war, and 15 years or so of a general “well, let’s not do THAT again” temperament in America after it ended.

The campus movement to end US support for apartheid South Africa was also broadly successful and contributed to the fall of that vile regime.

Whatever your opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement, those protests (on and off campus) put cops on notice that they might finally be held accountable when they murder citizens.

These protests are probably the beginning of the end for a US foreign policy offering unconditional support to Israel. That’s a good thing.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On April 23, National Public Radio reports, the US Federal Trade Commission voted “to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.” The ban is largely retroactive, but does exclude existing agreements for the high-salary “senior executives” most people associate with the idea of noncompete agreements.

It’s a terrible idea, and not just because it’s likely unconstitutional in at least two ways (the Constitution forbids ex post facto legislation and only allows the federal government to control interstate, not local, commerce).

Yes, we’ve all heard the horror stories about low-wage retail workers being told they can’t leave one coffee shop or restaurant to draw espresso shots or make sandwiches for another. In that context, noncompete clauses look less like a way to keep key leadership personnel away from competitors, and more like a tool that lets vengeful, authoritarian managers/owners continue abusing former employees who don’t like working for vengeful, authoritarian managers/owners.

But the existence of vengeful, authoritarian managers/owners is a terrible reason for letting a vengeful, authoritarian Federal Trade Commission seize even more control over how American businesses operate.

If you have a problem with a prospective employer’s demand that you accept a noncompete clause, there’s a simple solution: Don’t accept the job.

Yes, that might make it harder for you to find the job you want or even need.

MANY things can make it harder for you to find the job you want or even need.

Maybe the workplace is 30 miles from your home, and you don’t own a car, and can’t afford one. Should the FTC mandate that all employers buy cars for all their employees? If you answer “yes” to that one, we’re simply not on the same political page and you can probably give up on this column now.

The “problem” of noncompete clauses for low-wage workers is in the process of “solving” itself right now. Unemployment rates are low — it’s a worker’s, not an employer’s, market. When vengeful, authoritarian managers/owners end up working double shifts because nobody wants to hire on, they’ll tone down the vengeful authoritarianism or they’ll go out of business.

Standing up for yourself instead of settling for whatever you’re offered may be hard, but it’s a better solution than turning more control of the American economy over to Lina Khan and Company. Your interests and theirs are not the same.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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