When productive people are having a colossal amount of their production confiscated as taxes, to be redistributed by the government to non-productive people, it's hardly a glowing example of "freedom".
Overpopulation is not a matter of sheer numbers, but of the relationship between numbers and economic activity. Every time somebody has a baby for which they can't afford to independently provide food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and education, socialism takes another step forward, and freedom takes another step backward. When we have such a huge and growing segment of the population that is so dependent on government handouts that eliminating the handouts would clearly lead to massive riots and revolution, we're overpopulated.
Every time I read about another welfare mother whose kid has been beaten to death by her boyfriend, it's accompanied by a mention of the 3, 4, 5, 6 other children she has. And every time I read a leftist MSM sob story about a "hard working" illegal immigrant, the justification given for their illegal activity is the large brood of children they have. But of the hundreds of people I personally know who are paying way more than their share of taxes, most have 0, 1, or 2 children, a few have 3, and a microscopic number have more than 3. Many would like to have more, but aren't willing to dump their kids in the infernal public schools that are filled to the rafters with, and designed to cater to, the offspring of welfare mothers and illegal immigrants -- which they would have to do if they had more children.
Cato needs to do a careful analysis of just what percentage of the US population is actually both free and prosperous. Living on handouts isn't being prosperous, and being forced to fork over hard-earned money for hand-outs isn't being free.
As I recall, the more self-reliant people usually have guns where that's allowed, so I don't think riots over a lack of handouts will spread very far.
Not necessarily. Many of those babies grow up to be productive adults. But that's apparently not good enough for you, since you're putting down hard working immigrants just because they couldn't jump over all the high hurdles to legal immigration.
I had an interesting conversation a few years back with a man in the photocopier servicing industry. He said he couldn't find enough skilled tradesman to service his machines. He knew that there were plenty of them in Germany but the U.S. immigration laws were too restrictive to bring them in. The ridiculous immigration laws you defend are keeping productive people out of the country, and apparently that is fine with you.
Many would like to have more, but aren't willing to dump their kids in the infernal public schools...
Baloney. Most upper middle class Americans could afford to raise many more kids and send them to good schools (moving to a better school district if necessary) but just don't want to spend the time and money required to nurture them properly. They'd rather spend their time and money buying and playing with toys like fancy automobiles and giant screen HD tv's, taking expensive vacations, pursuing another amusements, and/or becoming a bigshot in their field of endeavor.
Most Americans no longer value good parenting much at all. When was the last time anyone was publicly recognized for merely being a great parent?