Children shoudnt be a risk. Everyone should be encouraged to have at least two and getting help from the government to raise them.
We would be better served by loss-of-income insurance, where people who made reasonable choices based on their income and then lost it would be able to continue supporting their families.
Why?
It's collectivist ideology turned into dogmatic religion.
(In Finland, by definition of "everyman's right", everyone has a right to hike and to respectfully pick berries and mushrooms on claimed and unclaimed property -- in essence, all of society has limited rights on your land.)
In this comment I further explain why I don't believe these national legal rights, and their subsequent abolishment, in any way justify a tax on private income:
How is the right to forage a tax on private income? That's a non sequitur.
The OP argues that a tax on private income is justified by us no longer having a right to forage the now privatized land. I thought you were supporting the OP's position, which is why I made that argument.
> The Inclosure Acts (or "Enclosure Acts" in modern spelling[1]) were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country, creating legal property rights to land that was previously considered common. Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual Enclosure Acts were put into place, enclosing 6.8 million acres (2,800,000 ha; 28,000 km2).[2]
> Prior to the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under some kind of collective control.[3] Called the open field system, a single plot of land was divided among groups, often a lord and employed or participating peasants.[4] This facilitated common grazing and crop rotation.[4] "Waste" was the only land not officially claimed by any group, often cultivated by landless peasants.[3]
B. That's what the Malthusians said.
C. Google: [demographic crisis europe].
We don't need more people without jobs.
C. We improved living standards and decreased mortality in early years, so a pyramid shaped population structure is a thing of the past. And countering this with continued population growth is not an option because it is not sustainable. Some countries could nonetheless use a few more babies to get back to 2.1 children and avoid an inverted pyramid due to a shrinking population.
¹ There is certainly some theoretical upper limit but that is also certainly not relevant here.
That's significantly lower than most estimates I've seen. Jared Diamond for example says that the first world versus developing world resource consumption ratio is 32, with the majority of the world's population being much closer to the developing world:
The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.
He goes on to say that if China was to increase to match US consumption levels --- with no change in population or change in consumption elsewhere --- that alone would double the worlds consumption:
Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.
A factor of 32 is a lot but that is also the extreme. China at 11, that leaves 5 billion people. If they were all at 1 that would drag the average down to 2.7. So maybe between 3 and 5 in the end? That still means a 5 to 10 fold increase in their resource consumption and matches my expectation. Suddenly needing twice as much of everything is probably already way harder than it first sounds, but up to 10 times...
There is no crisis, and there is not going to be a crisis. That premise is identical in concept, funny enough, to why the malthusians were wrong.
Robotics / greater automation + basic AI will more than dramatically take the place of the lost productivity from declining populations. Declining populations are not going to be a threat over the next century, not at all.
Japan and Germany should be cheering peak population. The inbound robotic boom is going to provide an extraordinary bounty for the remaining population, as productivity and GDP per capita soars in advanced nations. The absolute last thing any nation should want at this inflection point is more people.
There are plenty of people who would love to live in Europe. If Europe needs more people, let in more immigrants instead of adding even more humans to the world.
Yes, but in this situation is it wrong? For example genetic diversity appears to be a benefit to the species, allowing that to reduce may be a net loss even if there is a period of over-population (nations apparently reduce their birth rates as they develop which suggests we should be able to get a handle on population; hopefully before we ruin things too much!).
I also don't think it's a "right" to have as many children as you want and to expect state support for those children.