Hacker News Reader

There are certainly people doing a poor job of raising children that are creating net losses, there are also others doing great jobs.

The other thing is, the single people are the very product of this subsidy, so I'm not sure how it creates any sort of moral high ground.

That's kind of the point about this holier than thou attitude I detest in the article.

actually, looking at this graph from the article, it appears that families with kids are not majority - http://static.nautil.us/8546_2f4059ce1227f021edc5d9c6f0f17dc...

There's a bit of a problem with that graph: it doesn't show what proportion of the population has children.

All this graph does is capture a point in time. It groups people into "single", "other family", "married w/o kids", and "married w/ kids". The problem is that, for instance, someone who has kids likely is a member of 3, if not all 4, of these groups at some point in his or her life. Most people start out in the "single" group, then go to the "married w/o kids" group, and then finally to the "married w/ kids" group, and then they go back to "single" or "married w/o kids", depending on whether they divorce or stay married but the kids move out. They they might end up in the "other" group in their old age.

The point is, this graph doesn't give you any idea at all what percentage of the population is having children. Not only that, it seems to be incomplete: where are the people who are divorce with either full or partial custody? They don't seem to be accounted for in any group here. That's a huge portion of the population these days! Maybe that's supposed to be covered by the "other" category, but that's such an important grouping that it really should not be relegated to "other", especially since this "other" group doesn't indicate whether there's kids there or not; it could just be cohabitors, people living in poly households, old people living together for convenience, who knows.

Presumably most of those children will be productive members of society whose contributions support your retirement... And let's not forget the benefit you [if born or raised in G20] would have received as a child. So, in essence you are as a single, paying back the benefits you enjoyed as a youth, presuming averages.

Every time there is a discussion about people without children versus people with, a bunch of childless people will make the statement about having to pay taxes for these kids. It is like they have read that statement elsewhere and then repeats it without actually thinking about it at all. I don't bother responding anymore.

I agree with you and the person you're responding to, but I also understand where the anti-child-tax people are coming from. I think they come from a good place, which is "I shouldn't pay for optional activities of others" and probably some amount of "why pay for THOSE people's kids who are just a drain on society's resources (and mine personally!)".

But if "those people" (trailer park folk, the uneducated, or whoever else somebody dislikes) are going to have kids, wouldn't we all prefer that they at least get a minimum education, basic nutrition etc. so that we don't push them into being an un-educated, malnourished mob that resents the rest of society?

Public education, welfare, etc. might be broken, but that's a whole other argument.

A lot of these populations of undereducated are in areas that culturally oppose outside influences. See: cults, extremely rural Appalachia, pockets of immigrant groups opposing assimilation violently in European urban areas. Education = indoctrination to them and a loss of their cultural values. How do you teach people that may need it most when they don't want it?

This is not the case by and large but it puts a ceiling on the efforts to educate away problems with the Idiocracy trends of the world.

It's not about being right or wrong, it's about making up grievances to make themselves feel not-guilty about their life choices. Intellectual honesty had nothing to do with it

That's a matter of tax reform, not social ethics.

If it wasn't a matter of social ethics it wouldn't be a matter for tax reform...?

However, consider that in order to continue a society needs to reproduce. Children are incredibly expensive in terms of both time and money, more so in terms of time. If anything I think in its own interest society should further subsidize having children, especially if it is somehow weighted toward parents who are raising highly productive members of society. The German method of paying the mother's wages for up to 2 years seems like a good way to do that. If it's a fixed amount it encourages growth at the low end and discourages having kids at the high end, where it actually helps to disperse inheritances if people have more kids and equalize opportunities in the society.

As frustrating as other humans are (seriously, you lot ;) ), most of the best things about my life either are other humans or come from other humans.

If my relative effective tax rates are any indication, I'm heavily subsidizing the children of my siblings (not to mention their mortgages). I'm more or less okay with that. My nieces and nephews are fun people, who seem to like their weird single uncle.

One could argue those children are the very people childless single people are expecting to be paying their social security payments on retirement, as well as the people who serve as the cashiers and waiters and waitresses when they're retired and going out to eat.

Raising your children to provide services to ungrateful childless single people, spending tens of thousands of dollars worth of time, and money, and only get back a fraction of it, seems more like doing a duty than self-gratification to me.

It's strange to see childless single people claim raising children as a selfish act, and they're being martyrs performing a selfless act relying on everyone else to serve them when they're old.