She can take money out of my pocket only if she is required to get my approval before having a child.
Tax the Childless
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Tax the Childless
#32Yeah, 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. Citation needed.
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."
I invite anyone to try to dismiss the fact that 3.1 million children starve to death each year.
Re: Tax the Childless
#33This 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.
Sure, but since were giving money away why not adopt.
Re: Tax the Childless
#34This 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.
Also, wouldn't this unfairly punish those in gay marriages? Adoption is of course an option, but I'd speculate there's a much higher rate of childlessness in gay vs. straight marriages.
Re: Tax the Childless
#35This 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.
> So you'd essentially be taxing someone based on their genetic makeup.
As well as their common sense (for those who choose not to have children). :)
Re: Tax the Childless
#36This 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.
Also, wouldn't this unfairly punish those in gay marriages? Adoption is of course an option, but I'd speculate there's a much higher rate of childlessness in gay vs. straight marriages.
Adoption and surrogates/donors are both options in gay marriages.
Re: Tax the Childless
#37Or 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 cost…
>People are choosing, quite wisely, to not have kids, so our birth rates are sub-replacement
maybe for your chosen social group, but global population growth is about 1.2% per year.
Re: Tax the Childless
#38Genius. I can't think of a better idea than incentivising people to reproduce more and as soon as possible. This is exactly what the world needs.
Some people might say that this is a puritanical and unacceptable meddling of the state in deeply personal choices, but I say fuck them! If we play our cards right we can evolve into being social insects in less than one century.
Re: Tax the Childless
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The single most important world problem we face is overpopulation. Citation needed.
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." I invite anyone to try to dismiss the fact that 3.1 million children starve to death each year.
For the most part, the present problem is not due to a global shortage of food:
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/causes
100 billion seems like it would be a challenge.
Re: Tax the Childless
#40I'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 post…
> I'm still trying to understand why anyone would want to encourage population expansion in a world with nearly 8 billion people.
That's easy to answer. Imagine you own a factory. The factory has two doors. In one door comes customers. In the other door comes workers.
* If you can get more customers competing for limited products in your showroom, you can raise prices and become richer.
* If you can get more workers competing for limited positions on your factory floor, you can reduce wages and become richer.
* In every way, population increase enriches the owners of (a) capital, and (b) means of production.
So, exactly why would you not argue for a higher population? And why would you not fight birth control, contraception and abortion, education, voting rights and gender equality for women, and sex education in the schools?
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the conservative agenda just happens to fight for unlimited population growth, both here and abroad.