Right now, first-world birthrates are decreasing. Increasing the proportion of our society that consists of old people. What to do about this is typically framed as an immigration vs. breeding debate; immigration meaning that the effects of a foreign upbringing can affect their role in our society, breeding meaning people pay for the costs associated with OB-GYN care, let alone of baby care. And then there's the nuisance of screaming babies in public...
But what about adoption, the middle ground? Some of their formative years were spent in the third world, but some of them would be spent in the first world, and in so doing, we'd be rescuing them from a life of third-world misery.
And while we're at it, though subsidizing adoption might lead some people to have kids for the wrong reason, if we taxed breeding instead, might that encourage more adoption as an alternative to breeding?
EDIT: Irrelevant sidenote retracted; not worth the risk of derailing the thread over.
