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Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

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Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#101

Post by condis »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #29
utilize1808 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that birth rate is so low in countries with good social security safe net suggests that the society isn't paying enough.

Not necessarily. It's possible that no amount of money would solve this problem. Birth control inherently broke the previously built evolutionary mechanism that insured that the extremely strong built in desire for sex would result in kids. That's no longer the case, and a lot of people would decide to not have kids even if money were no object. As you point out, Finland famously has incredible family support, and al…

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Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#102

Post by cindyllm »

condis wrote: post #101
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. It's possible that no amount of money would solve this problem. Birth control inherently broke the previously built evolutionary mechanism that insured that the extremely strong built in desire for sex would result in kids. That's no longer the case, and a lot of people would decide to not have kids even if money were no object. As you point out, Finland famously has incredible family support, and al…

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Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#103

Post by matchbok3 »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #95
matchbok3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the cost, but also the higher expectations of living nowadays. Social media, phones, computers, trips, etc. The actual monetary cost of a child is high, for sure. But many people put that number higher due to lifestyle choices, not need. Social media certainly doesn't help.

right, its the phones and computers driving the high cost of raising a human being for 18 years + /s

It... literally is? How much money did families spend on computers and phones in 1980?

The snarky nonsense is not helpful, or appropriate, for this forum. Do better.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#104

Post by jespinel »

bigballsbjorn wrote: post #48
ahtihn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people can't afford to have kids Wrong. Poor people have 0 problems having kids. People can afford kids, they don't want to compromise on lifestyle.

almost always the case especially in germany where you are already incentivised with super low income taxes, free kindergarten and a shit load of other payments from the goverment. its basically impossible to be poor enough not to afford children unless you are doing it intentionally.

Super low income taxes?

The general income tax brackets break down in Germany is as follows:

- Up to €12,348: 0% (Tax-free allowance)

- €12,349 – €69,878: 14% to 42% (Progressive increase)

- €69,879 – €277,825: 42% (Proportional rate)

- Over €277,826: 45% (Reichensteuer or "rich tax")

Source: https://www.expatrio.com/about-germany/german-tax-system

IMO: that doesn't look "super low".

A better tax system is the one used by Estonia: a flat tax rate of 22%

Source: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/estonia/individual/taxes-on-per...

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#105

Post by myrmidon »

theragra wrote: post #83
utilize1808 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that birth rate is so low in countries with good social security safe net suggests that the society isn't paying enough.

Afaik according to research, the only thing that helps is 1. Lump sum, pretty big (like year worth of salary or close) payment on birth 2. Works for first child only. That's it. So, it kinda works, but very limited. Increasing sum did not increase birthrates, if I remember correctly.

This sounds extremely plausible to me, but I would be very careful about conclusions from such studies, because I believe the general expectations of society as a whole regarding child-raising matter a lot and you can't easily quantify that.

Anecdotally, when my grandmother did not birth a child for two consecutive years in her thirties the village priest came to investigate (!!). Expectations have shifted massively since, and the single/dink lifestyle is way more "acceptable" now.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#106

Post by myrmidon »

djoldman wrote: post #94
myrmidon wrote: post #6

There's a bunch of criticism, but this is in my view the only general approach that makes sense (globally) and should have been done 50 years ago already. IMO a big factor for the whole sub-replacement fertility in developed nations (and resulting demographic problems) is that the state has invalidated/replaced all the economical gain that families got from children (cheap "workers" and elder care), but the chld-rela…

> Society gains massively from future workers/tax payers It seems to me that, all other things equal, future workers/tax payers will lead to economic increases proportional to their costs. A reasonable forward looking plan / budget scales with the population size. Therefore there would be no need for these special one off exceptions and nudges. All these little bandaids add up to complexity that necessitates more ban…

This only applies in a steady state.

If your populations shrinks quickly, you end up needing to run the infrastructure (and elder care!) for a whole country with too few working-age people.

This is a massive problem, and some incentive complexity to avoid it is certainly worth it.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#107

Post by bwestergard »

recurseP wrote: post #84

This is very unfair for people that cannot have children. On one side we have the people that can't for biology reasons, on the other those who don't have the economic stability to support a functional family. Also, adopting costs can be very high so it is not an option for many. I won't definitely be voting political parties promoting these measures. There must be other ways.

Thanks for drawing attention to cases of involuntary childlessness.

I'm not sure I agree that it is unfair, I'd need to give it more thought. My initial reaction is that there are all sorts of burdens that we want to incentivize people to take on that not everyone can take on, through no fault of their own. For example, we want people to serve in the military, and we provide all sorts of benefits to people who do, but some people are unable to join the military through no fault of their own (e.g. they are blind).

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#108

Post by bpodgursky »

azan_ wrote: post #58
bpodgursky wrote: post #4

Every rapidly aging country (most of them) will need to either do something like this, or deal with a total collapse of social services.

No, the solution is increasing pension age. Funneling money from young to elderly is the opposite of solution.

I mean sure, but that's even less likely to happen.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#109

Post by robocat »

hobofan wrote: post #15
myrmidon wrote: post #6

There's a bunch of criticism, but this is in my view the only general approach that makes sense (globally) and should have been done 50 years ago already. IMO a big factor for the whole sub-replacement fertility in developed nations (and resulting demographic problems) is that the state has invalidated/replaced all the economical gain that families got from children (cheap "workers" and elder care), but the chld-rela…

You are not wrong. But the reality of this government in Germany is that they are also cutting down on the assistance that parents receive. With both of those combined they are currently just redistributing wealth to the elderly that have created this mess.

> the elderly that have created this mess

Unbalanced... The elderly also created most of the infrastructure everyone depends upon.

When you get to be elderly, it will be your turn to be blamed.

Re: Germany news: Childfree adults to pay more for elder care

#110

Post by pibaker »

matchbok3 wrote: post #103
turtlesdown11 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, its the phones and computers driving the high cost of raising a human being for 18 years + /s

It... literally is? How much money did families spend on computers and phones in 1980? The snarky nonsense is not helpful, or appropriate, for this forum. Do better.

The median family did not have a computer in the 1980s. I can't find good data but the ones a quick google search returned suggests by 1990 computer ownership was around 20%.

Computers also became ridiculously cheap in real dollars over the years, in the meanwhile education, healthcare, housing all shot up faster than overall inflation.

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