111–120 of 216 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want to incentivize people to have kids, hand out $500K-1M to anyone who wants to have kids. Don't penalize those who don't. Where does the money come from?
Same place it always does, just print it. Of course, that still effectively penalizes those who don't want children, but the penalty is less legible to the public so there are fewer objections.
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Society pays a lot for children as well. Including members without children.
Yes, but not commensurately. A child might cost its parents somewhere beyond $200k, the parents only get a tiny fraction of this from the state. And the public paying for education is not a subsidy for parents in my view, but an investment into the children , i.e. future taxpayers (=> the parents don't really gain from that).
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…
The approach is completely backwards. You incentivise having kids, not punish those who do not have kids or worse, those who can't get kids.
The full details are: this is an additional 2.5% non-progressive income tax, two thirds paid by employers, one third by employees.
Other "currently proposed" changes:
Active aging: the elderly need to keep working longer.
Elderly care is pushed onto families.
Elderly care is now much less a right that an individual can enforce. This changes the situation to that the state must put in efforts to care for elderly rather than giving individuals the right to elderly care. Right now an elderly person can sue the government if they fail to provide.
Other various rights are being curtailed. Such as the right to "digital inclusion". The state's obligation to provide access to care offline is dropped.
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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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Also, a lot of the education around avoiding pregnancy is about the financial future of the child (eg getting present in high school will ruin your life). For that to have an impact, the child has to think they have some kind of future.
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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.
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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.
By the time you start collecting pension, you have effectively ousted yourself from economic production. And unlike a 20yo still in college and not contributing to the economy yet, you don't have 50 more years of your life to worry about. This effectively means it is safe for you to support any short term extractive policies without ever worrying about the longer term consequences.
And demonstrably, this is how pensioners vote — I get to keep my pension, you get to pay more tax. And no we won't let you build any more housing for your beautiful children, we want this town to stay the way it was in 1970. Please come wipe my ass for $15 an hour. And no, don't let people who are actually willing to work that job for that pay immigrate into the country. It's a bunch of feel good policies with insolvable contradictions. Buy because they will not live long enough to feel the backlash, they vote on.
This is a challenging topic to discuss because (rightly) it's very personal. Sadly the fact of the matter is this: we need more children and young people to keep society functioning (and continually improve our quality of life). There is no other known way. So unfortunately the "free rider" problem needs to be addressed somehow. Of course, the "cruel" part is how it affects those who either can't have children, are g…
If you want to incentivize people to have kids, hand out $500K-1M to anyone who wants to have kids. Don't penalize those who don't. And yes, kids cost that much. I'm a senior level software engineer in the bay area. I don't have kids. I don't think I can afford them. I'm tired of people telling me I can afford them. The world works differently today. In the 1980's, if you had a stable job that let you leave at 5pm, y…
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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Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to incentivize people to have kids, hand out $500K-1M to anyone who wants to have kids. Don't penalize those who don't. And yes, kids cost that much. I'm a senior level software engineer in the bay area. I don't have kids. I don't think I can afford them. I'm tired of people telling me I can afford them. The world works differently today. In the 1980's, if you had a stable job that let you leave at 5pm, y…
I have 4 kids and can say that they absolutely do not have to cost that much. Child care is legitimately costly until they reach school age (age 5), but if you use public schools, cook modest meals at home, recognize that kids will survive and even thrive without costly extra-curricular activities, and avoid cities with outrageous costs of living like San Francisco or New York City, then having children is quite affo…
Look, my electricity bill doubled. Will the landlord pay for efficiency upgrades? Nope. Will the landlord still increase rent? Hell yes. My water bill doubled. Extrapolate those numbers.
Taco Bell used to cost $5 for a meal, and now costs $14.
My $5 sandwich now costs $15.
50%+ of my income is lost to taxes of sorts. Before you lecture me on tax, I know my taxes better than you know me. Sales taxes, self-employment taxes, tariffs are all taxes.
I get hit with $5-7K of medical bills a year. With insurance. I have a rare idiopathic heart condition, so that's my cost (systematic tax) to stay alive, and probably would be the cost for a potential genetically-infected kid to stay alive as well. I also pay $3K/year in orthodontics last and this year, and another $2-3K in preventative care out of pocket. After my orthodontics is over, I'm sure some other $4K/year shit will come up. I'm stashing up cash for all of this.
"Live in the Midwestern United States" and "avoid San Francisco", you say. But there are no jobs there. None that I could get. Everything I could get wanted me to be 3 days/week on site in silicon valley. Jobs that I found in even LA or Boston were literally half the salary or less. Jobs elsewhere were less than 1/3 the salary. Considering more than half my salary goes to taxes, tariffs, and more taxes of sorts, my partner and I really need that cash.
I don't have time to cook every meal at home. I don't have time to see kids. I'd get PIP from my job if I did that. Today's jobs don't let you work 40 hours a week; you need to work closer to 80. At my last job I worked 70 hours a week and still got PIPed. My coworkers took my ideas, finished them on weekends, worked 100 hour weeks, presented to leadership on Monday without my name. I didn't meet the "bar". My work is making millions for a big corp as I write this. Just not in my name.
Public schools are expensive. Because you pay for it in housing costs. Wherever housing is cheap, public schools are shitty. I live where housing is cheap, relatively speaking, for the bay. But I don't have kids, so it works out.
My financial planning model works like this.
For every $1 I need to support myself and my partner, I need to earn about $8. $4 goes to taxes government laundering, $4 left. For the $4 left, $2 goes to retirement (base assumption is the economy is now irreparably broken and S&P500 isn't necessarily going to grow in the next 40 years like it did the past 40), $1 goes to my catastrophe fund (in case of very realistic war or AI unemployment), $1 goes towards spending now.
My partner and I barely meet that 8x bar. That is my bar to feel safe. I couldn't meet it with kids. Without kids, we have a sane and happy life. Everything is covered, from the taxes to the whopping medical bills to housing. End of story.