People couldn't have been completely crazy. Anyone taking part would understand that not winning would be hugely burdensome, and winning would mean you have money but a huge number of mouths to feed.
The article seems to suggest that a lot of the families planned on having big families anyways. It wasn't like the decision was between "no kids" and "maximum kids". More like "stop at 6 kids" and "maximum kids".
Germany, in the 1930s, also had a rewards program, where you would get additional rewards for every child you had, plus a special reward every 4 childs.
(Obviously, to create a larger army. One could argue, though, that such a program would be necessary today again, in the time of 2 million more jobs than people, and birth rates of 1.2)
>One could argue, though, that such a program would be necessary today again, in the time of 2 million more jobs than people, and birth rates of 1.2
Or one could argue why the duck (sic), do we have "2 million more jobs than people", when we have all this automation opportunities plus unemployment.
And the answer would be because those jobs are usually highly skilled technical, and we don't give easy (money wise) access to the university to the large masses that could do them.
The German issue has been going from several million jobs to almost being solved in the past 10 years.
At the same time the amount of first-generation university students (people whose parents never graduated) went up, and the amount of female students in engineering rose to almost exactly 50%. Also, many universities which had required tuition went back to tuition-free teaching in 2011.
Obviously, this doesn’t solve all issues yet (and there are still many jobs that don’t require education, and can’t be automated, like nurses), and it doesn’t even solve all high-requirement jobs (as the birth rate is still too low), but it helps.
The concept of "Fachkräftemangel", and how the Association of German Employers warns that until 2020 we’ll need almost 2 million more immigrants to fill all the jobs is known to you?
Actually, the article says his net worth was more than "$10 million (in today’s Canadian dollars)". That's about 7.2 million in today's US dollars. The most any winner got was 2 million CAD (or 1.46 million USD) and the winners each had 9 kids. So that's like getting 162k to have a kid, which isn't that great of a deal.
Only if you never spend any of the capital. I expect having 10 kids there are a number of costs and debts that woukd need to be repaid so the actual interest received would be less.
No, it was $10 million in today's dollars (it's in the article), although your point still stands. Still, being able to pay for, and being able to raise about 10 kids under 10 at the same time is not the same.
