Anyone who says "I and everyone else in my circumstance should be taxed more" should just shut up unless the post also includes a scan of a big cheque demonstrating some voluntary contribution to the cause. Otherwise it's nothing more than demanding others pay.
Tax the Childless
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: Tax the Childless
#22I'm not sure why government taxes should care whether someone has kids or not, it is your choice. If you can't afford to have kids, you probably shouldn't have kids. It's easy to be in a painful situation and come to a conclusion "Things should work this way because that would benefit me". There are other things the government should do, such as tax breaks for students, and people with student loans - fostering growt…
> it is your choice
It's my choice to remain a student, and to do well. It's my choice to do community service, etc. etc... what's your point?
There are few things, if any, as existentially important as creating the next generation.
Re: Tax the Childless
#23Yeah, great idea. The single most important world problem we face is overpopulation. Why not make it easier to have children than it already is? Why not tax those who made the right choice and give the money to those who made the wrong one? The Chinese have the right idea -- they encourage one child per family (an idea that works better in cities than in the countryside), against substantial public ignorance and resi…
> they encourage one child per family (an idea that works better in cities than in the countryside) it is my impression that the specific form that "works better" takes is that it's extremely difficult to enforce in the countryside.
Yes, that's right. It's a matter of enforcement as well as a long, difficult-to-break tradition of large families among farm owners/workers.
Re: Tax the Childless
#24It's not my job to pay for others children, not thru direct taxation. I already pay a whole bunch of incidental socitial costs, and I'm OK with that - It's part of being a good citizen. I chose not to breed - I have bad genetic stock, I don't think its wise for me to contribute my portion forward.
Children are a social benefit.
If not through taxes, then how?
Re: Tax the Childless
#25Wow, yeah. Let's give them a living income too, so they can spend more time with their kids. Might as well give them a free iphone for every child. Who needs to be educated when you can pop out kids and complain about those who break their back going to work so we can one day start to pay for an imaginary retirement. Accountability has become a joke in america. I will be programming till I'm 100 years old at that rate. which I would want to do anyways but that's not the point. I work to hard for such nonsense. if were going to adopt socialism then let's go all the way and enforce Plato's republic. I'll opt in to be a philosopher and not have kids. We can all raise everyone else's kids in an equal society.
Re: Tax the Childless
#26We already do this.
Re: Tax the Childless
#27Or perhaps tax those with children, since they draw more public services. Having children is (most of the time) a choice. If you don't have the financial resources to support offspring, the don't have them. Note: I have (and chose to have) two daughters. My financial situation was one of the inputs into the decision.
"If you don't have the financial resources to support offspring, the don't have them."
This is exactly the problem. People are choosing, quite wisely, to not have kids, so our birth rates are sub-replacement. That's bad, so we need to incentivize people to have more of them. Raising children is a pretty classic externality: benefits accrue to society because we all benefit from continued human existence, but the costs are borne by individual parents.
Re: Tax the Childless
#28Yeah, great idea. The single most important world problem we face is overpopulation. Why not make it easier to have children than it already is? Why not tax those who made the right choice and give the money to those who made the wrong one? The Chinese have the right idea -- they encourage one child per family (an idea that works better in cities than in the countryside), against substantial public ignorance and resi…
> The single most important world problem we face is overpopulation. Bullshit. We'd need over 100 billion people on Earth for that to be anywhere near a sane thought. See, e.g.: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2006/09/overp...
> We'd need over 100 billion people on Earth for that to be anywhere near a sane thought.
You know, it can't hurt to get in touch with reality from time to time:
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
Quote: "Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five - 3.1 million children each year."
We have seven billion people on the planet, and according to the UN, almost one billion of those people aren't being fed adequately. So we should have 100 billion people? By what cockeyed reasoning?
Re: Tax the Childless
#29I'm still trying to understand why anyone would want to encourage population expansion in a world with nearly 8 billion people.
Is it tied into the general western notion that growth of any kind is always good? That more children will raise the GDP?
Are people afraid of what happens when the Social Security pyramid begins to crumble?
The author only gives us this unsatisfying snippet: > a steady stream of barely postpubescent brainiacs writes catchy tunes and invents breakthrough technologies that keep us entertained and make us more productive
Re: Tax the Childless
#30This would get crushed under bureaucracy, as there would need to be a ton of exceptions. Males with Cystic Fibrosis have a 98% infertility rate. So you'd essentially be taxing someone based on their genetic makeup.