At least, paying the staff to have more babies so that there will then be more customers for the business at some future date doesn’t work:

The Chinese company behind Skyscanner and Trip.com will hand its employees £5,000 if they have more children in an effort to turn around the country’s plummeting birth rate.

James Liang, Trip.com group company’s founder and chairman, announced that staff will receive an annual cash bonus of RMB 10,000 (£1,090) for every newborn until they reach the age of five.

It’s possible to view this the same way many view Ford’s introduction of the $5 a day wage. That - incorrect - view is that the wage meant that the workers could buy the products they made. As we’ve pointed out before (and elsewhere) this doesn’t work even as a piece of basic arithmetic, let alone a business proposition.

Where this might well work is that it reduces the turnover of staff - as with Ford - or even attracts more and better staff to the company.

As long as everyone understands what’s going on here of course we think it’s fine. Not for any other reason than that markets work. Folk get to try out stuff. That which works others will copy and we’ll all get richer. That which doesn’t dies on the vine and again we all get richer by not making that mistake.

We’ve absolutely no idea whether staff bonuses for ‘avin’ a babbie is a good idea or not. We are absolutely certain that the decision making system on the subject is already in place - markets.