Headscratchers / The Thinning

Headscratchers for The Thinning include:

• It makes sense that teens who fail their yearly test would be ostensibly killed for failing, and then sent underground to become a laborer for the test-making company. But, can the younger kids who failed their tests actually be expected to labor efficiently? Unless that kind of thing is taught in school—which would then ruin the entire plan—wouldn't the younger kids somehow mess up the system?
  • Not every child who fails the test is kept alive for slave labor. Only a few dozen teenagers are shown being taken to the factory to be put to work. This includes some high IQ teenagers, who were probably rigged to fail. The other failing students, including younger ones, are killed.
• Why aren't more adults getting sterilized to avoid having children? It seems that if you knew your children would go through the Thinning and potentially be euthanized, you would do everything to spare yourself and future children that pain. So why, in a world that is trying so hard to control the population, don't more people take that into their own hands?
  • The State of Texas is a very conservative state. Meaning that state government officials are against anything that would reduce the number of pregnancies other than abstinence education. Sexual education, contraception, and aborting unwanted pregnancies (even due to rape or incest) are either restricted or outlawed. It's possible that it's up to each State Government on how to tackle this problem and this is how Texas is handling it. Recent events with the Texas GOP passing what is the most restrictive (not to mention unconstitutional and batshit) abortion law in the US makes this Harsher in Hindsight. It's also the same state government whose officials (at least some of them) are in a conspiracy with a corporation to use slave labor (fictional, mind you).
  • That said, it's very possible that there are people who are in fact not planning on having children at all and the Thinning is fairly recent. Or they think they can play the odds and their children will get through this alive.
• Assuming an adult passes all his or her first through twelfth grade Thinning tests, is he or she perpetually safe? Is there a "cap" on how long people can live, and if yes, why is the Thinning still in effect?
  • According to the Governor, people are safe if they pass the twelfth grade. Since 5% of students in a grade are eliminated each year for twelve years, just under 46% won't survive their education. In terms of numbers, it's probably roughly as effective as a one-child rule.
• If the world is suffering an overpopulation problem and strain on resources, then why are the people who failed the Thinning being kept alive and used as slaves in the first place? Whether or not it's more merciful, they still need to be fed and receive medical care, equating to minimal change in resource strain from the United States. Assuming someone from the U.N. is keeping track to make sure each country is meeting the quota in the first place, then only the voting public is being fooled... into believing they're murdering children, which shows some Skewed Priorities.
  • They can easily be fed on scraps and refuse from the "great society". As to medical care, they absolutely don't need to have that. They can be worked to death, or simply disposed of in case of crippling injury. No need to keep a resource being renewed every year healthy.
    • That depends on the nature of the work they're doing though and the rate of fatality and casualty. To be sustainable, they would need enough incoming people to replace the infirmed or the dead. But not only that, but if the work they're doing is high skilled, there's then the ramp up time which is not insignificant if they're working in tech. And even if someone isn't, say, killed or crippled, then injuries would still abound and so either they would need medical care, ignored and then disposed, or whatever. There's also the matter of infrastructure, space, maintenance of the space, waste products, etc. Which means either you have the company employing people to fix these things - increasing people who know the secret - or the slaves themselves fixing their own home which further increases cost and training. And oh look... we've just created a closed society that's now short on resources except now it's also short on PEOPLE and skilled labor.
    • According to the sequel, they are being fed military rations, and the company laid off half of its normal labor force, so those resources can be used to support the slave labor.