if this were true, it's not working properly.

I'm assuming you'd want to breed as many upper class/higher middle class people, the people who rule, innovate, and generally make lots of money.
In practice however, the ones on the social ladder who are per person on average having the most children, are those in the lower/lower middle classes.
Malthus's ideas included restricting marriage from people suffering poverty or defects; his ideas were clearly aimed at reducing the population of the lower social classes.

How would you explain this phenomenon?

As a sidenote, I must say I agree with the fundaments of Malthusianism (not saying I agree with all sides to it). Malthusianism (and neo-malthusianism) are based on the idea that at one point in time, our population growth will have become too big for the amount of resources we have to support us (although I disagree in several of the tactics they would use to lower the population). In fact, I believe this is already happening: for example areas in Africa suffering starvation due to all their food being used in richer countries/amongst the rich or due to their land being used for different purposes than agriculture. This could  be an example of the "positive checks" Malthus proposed,that would lead to the Malthusian catastrophe, restoring human population to supportable amounts.

there is every reason to think the rising cost of having kids has more to do with the lower levels of society demanding more money for the same job their great-grandparents did, in order to obtain a better lifestyle, than to blame a cabal of the 1%

No that's just restating it.

the act of producing and delivering basic needs is something peopel charge for according to their expectations

who mentioned college?

"Xeno posited the college part"

I did not.

Words from the Human Rights Council:

"Navi Pillay's representative: "Those who order, help or fail to stop attacks on civilians are individually criminally liable for their actions"

LOL

Let's rephrase this, shall we:

"Those who order, help, or fail to stop relative increases in cost of fulfilling basic human needs are individually criminal for their actions."

"Those who advocate taking others possessions for the welfare of society are guilty of theft or grand theft"

Rephrase again:

"Those who conspire to undermine the universal, inalienable, fundamental human rights to the pursuit of liberty, economic opportunity, and happiness; those whose manipulations of the economy profit by perpetually frustrating the majority of humanity in these their aforementioned rightful pursuits; those who by the frustration of these pursuits derive profits, and those who by their mere complicity 'help' or 'fail to stop' the frustration of these pursuits, shall deemed guilty of..., what?"

> Einstein wrote:

> You're a criminal, goto jail

No, Einstein,

The criminals are those who profit from, order, or otherwise fail to stop the frustration of the pursuit of the fulfillment of basic human needs; they are guilty of genocide against the billions of human beings who would otherwise have been born had the pursuit of the fulfillment of basic human needs not been so frustrated.

> Justinian I wrote:

> Xeno,

Life is a zero sum game. Some people play to win.

5000 years from now, our descendants will look back on our era with contempt. For theirs will be an era where all basic human needs are fulfilled, for all 500 trillion of them.

He's talking about self-replicating robot technology from aliens! It's so keyuuuute.

xeno, you still haven't adressed the the idea that at one point in time, our population growth will have become too big for the amount of resources we have to support us.

According to research done in request of the WWF, with population growth rates and worldwide consumption per capita staying the same, in 2050 we'd need almost 3 earths to provide for our consumption.

Of course one could doubt this research to be unbiased (as it was requested by an organization with a stake in bad results), but still I think it corrolates with other scientific publications that show that our earth alone will not be able to keep up with our consumption patterns.