Who's gonna want to marry (let alone have kids with) a man who is unemployed and isn't even looking for work?

This betrays your unfamiliarity with the segment of population under question. As it turns out, lots of women will readily have kids with those men. Along with the growth of single-man household, we observe growth of single never married women with children.

See for example "Promises I Can Keep" (https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage...) and "Doing the Best I Can" (https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Best-Can-Fatherhood-Inner/dp/05...) for some sociological view of realities about the lives of people this discussion revolves around.

It's extremely counterproductive to, as the article puts it, "take the question of the moral quality of the poor off the table."

The fact is that a large amount of poverty is directly correlated with "moral quality". Most poor people in the US (maybe Canada is different?) have low "moral quality", which I define as engaging in behaviors that are likely to keep a person poor. These behaviors include not seeking work [1], substance abuse [2], single motherhood [3] and crime [4] (including crimes with no economic motive such as intimate partner violence).

There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc.

Why would we want to take the primary cause of poverty off the table if our goal is to solve it?

It's almost as if this guy's primary goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents rather than reduce poverty.

[1] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...

[2] http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs... https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/adultsmoking/

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage... http://www.economics21.org/html/great-gatsby-curve-revisited...

[4] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf

I think we can keep it going for a while, as you say, by continuously absorbing defectors from more fertile populations. But I think if you admit to any genetic component to this at all, there will definitely be genetic flow, with the more fertile populations eventually taking over.

Being "reasonable" and "planning" are just extremely maladaptive in the current world. For example, reproduction in this population is completely dwarfing reproduction of highly educated, self-controlled, non-criminal groups: http://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/...

You are missing one important qualification to work at McD's: (3) conscientiousness.

When the boss says "someone pooped in the urinal", a McDonald's employee needs to say "yes sir" and go put on gloves. They also need to show up to work on time, take the 6AM shift when asked to, etc. Not all people are willing to do this.

According to many sociologists, a large number of lower class Americans lack conscientiousness. Go read this dead-tree book, for example (sorry, online sources are hard to find):

http://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/...

The focus of the book is on why poor single women choose to become single mothers, but it gives a great look into the work habits of the lower classes as well.