> 2. Adding value

Don’t you think that a PhD in their thirties would add more value if they instead focused on their studies subject?

No. It's not exponential.

Caring for her own children, she would instill her values as they grow. Her children would most likely get a love of knowledge and a determination to accomplish long-term tasks. Since she can produce many children, the number of people with these values experiences exponential growth from generation to generation.

If she instead outsources love to an immigrant from the third world, that other person will instill third-world values in the children. The likelihood of the children taking after their mother is greatly reduced, down only to any influence of DNA. The culture is not passed on. When fewer than two of the children take after the mother, there is an exponential decline.

In general, your direct impact on the world in nothing compared to the impact that your children can have. This likely applies even to the greatest scientists, and without question it applies to a random ordinary PhD.

>third-world values

What does this even mean? Please elaborate your hierarchy of cultures and their “values.” What about all the wildly successful and educated children of immigrants from these countries who are in the US now?

What's more valuable than raising happy kids? Submitting some paper to arxiv?

If you think nothing is more valuable than "raising happy kids", have you committed to that position? Do you have a job, or are you a full-time stay-at-home parent? If not, why?

Yes. I was a full-time-home-parent, and now I'm just remoting from home. That being said, there are many valuable things I'm not doing - they don't become less valuable by that, only I do. (for example, it would have been valuable to complete my code now instead of writing this reply)

If you're doing anything right now other than eating, you don't really believe it's necessary for survival.

I appreciate the trolling, thanks. That was answered above.

It depends. As we know intelligence is highly heritable and an extremely large component of one's productivity, it may make more sense, in terms of having an impact, for extremely high-IQ people to focus on have a large number of children, especially considering how rare having a large number of children is among those with high IQs.

I think the “intelligence” we are talking it is more a mix between nature and _nurture_.

So it is not enough just for people with high IQ to have many children.

The adult needs to follow their passion/dream/work to develop the intelligence and contribute back to the society.

If intelligence is a mix between nature and nurture, why not support both? Good child care and good education...

Smart people having more kids is not the full solution, but it is a part of the solution, and a neglected one. People already talk about improving education a lot. But it seems that education can only go so far -- some children get better results unschooled than other children get in schools.

If the marginal income tax rates were lower sure, but once you add in how much gets taken off the top by the government and how much child care costs, it really doesn't justify most jobs that make less than 6 figures.

What % of people is this? Vast majority this isn't the case. Many degrees are worthless so don't lump them in.

A lot of people are terrible at looking after their own children.

At the same time, they're not earning income. They're also losing out on experience in their field, putting them at a disadvantage when they do go back to the workforce.