An Ethical Solution To Population Control That Saves Money, Improves Society, That No One Has EVER Thought Of Given that it's needed One: the assumption that the population needs to be controlled is for the purposes of this essay a given.  If you disagree with this, that is fine, this post isn't for you.  But for the sake of arguing with the left, that the population needs to be controlled, let's assume it does (I personally think it does because I don't like being in standstill traffic in a town that didn't have traffic 10 yrs ago--which one could argue has to do with centralization of resources more than actual overpopulation, and that would be fair) Pay People To stop Reproducing If you paid each person ONE MILLION DOLLARS to disable their reproductive capacity, they would be able to have a happy life and it would save the country in the long run, given that US GOV projections have that the burden of adding a new person to our population from cradle to grave is well OVER 1 million dollars, this represents a cost savings If you don't take the money, nothing changes and no one is stopping anyone from having their own children. If you made the procedure reversible, then in order to get a certificate to have a child, they would have to pay back the 1 million dollars.   If they have a child illegally, the child is immediately fostered and taken away forever and given a good life--that's a deterrent from having illegal children. With this one million, there are ways to invest it and the gov helps people not become spendthrifts and blow it all, but these are optional and hopefully these programs are wealth-building and attractive enough (as in successful enough) that they become very popular with people.   One of these investment programs could be an education incentive program--creating an tuition-matching programs where the government invests 1:1 or some other ratio where every dollar you spend on education it's matched by a gov education fund that is paid back to the student upon completion of their degree.  That way the gov gets to train people to help the economy but doesn't waste its money on students that don't take the process seriously There can be other 'incentives' programs that are run by private industry and then recompensated by the US gov so that the gov doesn' thave to run it There's a lot of benefit in having the gov NOT run things and let private industry do it.  This is the market concept where the users of the market decide which companies should stay and which should go.  The gov could simply manage the incentives programs and then outsource to the 'best' by letting the people decide in a democratic way (I know you're all laughing now..."share power with the people"  haha!  not likely.  Yeah I get that) The gov could offer foster and adoption incentives for people that opt to take the lump sum no grow package, so they could have the experience of raising a child while getting the benefit of having a nice stable life that gives the child the best opportunities and experience while also serving to fulfill the goal of reducing or stabilizing the population But actually accomplishing goals is not what the Governments of the world are about.  They are about always NOT solving problems in order to extort you.  That is why this very easy and common sense idea will never take off or be implemented.  Ever.