Mace Posey

Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

Look at South Korea, because it's the preview. The fertility rate there fell to 0.72, the lowest on earth, and the consequences aren't theoretical: schools closing by the hundreds, rural towns offering cash to anyone who will move in, a military struggling to fill ranks, and an elderly population with no one to care for them. This is what a society looks like twenty years into mass childlessness. Americans discussing this as a lifestyle preference sound like people debating whether to pay the electric bill as a self-expression choice.

Should tipping be abolished in favor of higher base wages for service workers?

I make $68,000 a year serving at a mid-range steakhouse, and no higher base wage proposal comes close to replacing that. The activists pushing tip abolition keep talking about the $2.13 wage as if anyone actually takes home $2.13 an hour; with tips I clear $30-plus most nights. When DC started phasing in Initiative 82, plenty of servers opposed it because they did the math. A flat $20 an hour is a pay cut for every good server in a busy restaurant, and the best of us will leave for sales or bartending gigs where performance still pays. You want to help struggling servers? Raise the tipped minimum, enforce wage theft laws, keep the credit. Do not rescue me into a $25,000 pay cut. One DC server wrote about living through the phase-in and reaching the same conclusion. [The 51st](https://51st.news/opinion-initiative-82-was-supposed-to-help-d-c-s-tipped-workers-it-did-the-opposite/).

Should digital well-being support be treated like a routine public-health service?

Access should not depend on a parent knowing which specialist to call. A 43-country analysis covering more than 330,000 young people linked problematic use with poorer well-being, according to the [World Happiness Report summary](https://dig.watch/updates/social-media-linked-to-declining-well-being-among-young-people). Public-health programs can offer evidence-based literacy and counseling while researchers keep refining who benefits most.