Phanto, I doubt that the paltry supporting mother's benefit encourages anyone to breed.
Don't you think there are a myriad of other issues involved in having babies?
Some sad people do it just to have someone to love, or someone to call their own, others have them to try and keep a partner with them, and many others have them out of ignorance about sex or contraception.

So what you are saying is, yes give the financial aid to the 'deserving' parents, but not the others? How will we police that? Where do we draw the line?
Do you not think governments already try damned hard to not spend much on this issue?

I agree that paid parental leave for well off parents should not be provided by the government, but only as a perk from businesses who want to keep their good employees,

To Aiden.

Calm down, switch on your critical analysis circuit, and examine your own words objectively.

Your position is a contradiction. You claim that genetics has little bearing on intelligence, and then you claimed that genetic engineering can increase intelligence.

Environmental factors like acute malnutrition, or lead contamination in potable water, does adversely affect the intelligence of entire peoples within entire geographic areas. But for you to claim that intelligence levels within the entire human race is primarily a factor of nutrition, is just plain bonkers. Perhaps you suffered from acute malnutrition in your infancy? If all we have to do to create a race of super smart Einstein's, is to make every kid eat his veggies, then why is it that every kid who has eaten his veggies is not an Einstein?

Intelligence is part of our DNA and it is heritable. Smart parents usually have smart children. Dumb parents almost always have dumb children. Those dumb parents and their dumb children become a huge social problem for advanced societies because the productive are forced to care for the unproductive. This is OK so long as the numbers of dumb people stop rising compared to the numbers of productive people who are forced to keep them. The problem for western societies is that the reverse is happening. Our welfare state is going to end up looking like bankrupt Detroit unless we reverse this trend. 16% of aboriginal children in the Kimberly's are suffering from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. Public schools for aboriginal children have feeding programs because aboriginal parents can't be bothered to feed their own kids. If aboriginal parents are too drunk to produce healthy babies and to feed them, why should the rest of society be footing the bill

LEGO ". If aboriginal parents are too drunk to produce healthy babies and to feed them, why should the rest of society be footing the bill"

What, exactly, do you think we should do with these kids then LEGO?

LEGO, there is no contradiction in what I said. Intelligence, like most traits, is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with the latter usually having a much greater influence. And there's far more to it than just nutrition. Indeed you mentioned fetal alcohol syndrome: one environmental factor that has a huge negative influence, yet you seem to be treating it as a genetic trait!

You're also wrongly assuming that those of low intelligence are unproductive.

Naturally selected genetic factors won't control the way the population's heading because, as I said, we're developing the ability to actively control genes, and even a small amount of this will be enough to counteract the genetic drift you're so worried about.

Our welfare spending is mostly pensions, and is not sending us bust at all.

Does it really matter in this debate whether intelligence is caused by genetic or environmental factors, or a combination of both?
For whatever reason, educated intelligent people usually produce educated, intelligent children, so a licence to breed seems good policy, with the minimum IQ limit at perhaps, 150.

Hi Susioncrack.

Identify those aboriginal and white parents who do not look after their children, "steal" them, and put them into government care where they can be educated, fed correctly, taught basic hygiene, taught some self discipline, and taught how to become productive citizens who work for a living. Oh, that's right. We are already doing that. Aboriginal children are already being removed from their neglectful parents in far greater numbers than during the so called "stolen generations" period.

What our society should seek is to discourage parents with low intelligence from having kids. Perhaps we could link social security payments to those already deemed to be unfit parents with the number of children they have?

To Aiden.

Thank you for clarifying your position. We both agree that nature and nurture are both factors in raising intelligence. We disagree on the degree that nurture is the primary factor in raising intelligence. No amount of education or nutrition can make a child with low intelligence into a mensa. If it could, we could empty our child psychiatric wards by educating them and feeding them right. Human beings have different shapes, different sex appeal, different colours, different physical abilities, and different intelligence levels. And they are born that way.

Most people with low intelligence are unproductive. They fill our welfare queues, fill our hospitals because of their diets and behaviour, and fill our courts and prisons. In 1965, 3 % of the working age population in Australia was on welfare benefits of one sort or another. Now 16 % of adults rely on welfare. . Another take on this – in 1965 there were 22 taxpayers for every one person on welfare; now the number is 5. Extrapolate forward, and you see a vision of Greece, Spain, Cypress, and Ireland, with their own national insolvency problems. The populations of these countries and their elected representatives were acutely aware of their financial insolvency, decades ago. But like irresponsible creditors with a new credit card, they borrowed until they could borrow no more, and they wished away their problems until the bailiffs arrived.