Waking up to the baby bust

Waking up to the baby bust

and-let-live has always been part of the American ethos, but in recent decades, this laissez-faire individualism has become a prime directive in elite ethics. This is one reason the United States didn’t start wrestling with the baby bust until the past couple of years, a decade after Europe started facing the reality of low and falling birth rates. If people aren’t having children, that’s their choice, the thinking went. It’s logical in a way: T…