04/05/2004: "China here we come"

This article/opinion about having lots of children and no longer giving tax credits for all but the first couple made me blow a fuse or two. My favorite line, now having a chance to cool down, is the most telling one:

"After all, with all due respect to Chairman Mao, we can't randomly assign parents to have different numbers of offspring for the purposes of social experimentation—that is, to find out if additional kids handicap offspring."

Why again do we need to give 'all due respect' to Chairman Mao? Oh, because you want to reduce the number of children we have. We're not allowed to do the social experimentation like Chairman Mao, but we are allowed to change the tax code to encourage it. Did I get that right?