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Comment by presidentender | Hacker News Reader

> we had 5 kids and chose to have my wife stay at home for about 7 years

You and your wife chose to have five children, and chose for her to work as a childcare provider, which we know is a low-paid gig.

I'm very impressed that you managed to do that without going into debt, but I have little sympathy for other people who in similar situations find themselves struggling: the rest of us derive a smaller benefit from the continuation of your genetic legacy than you do, so it is appropriate that society should pay a smaller part of the cost of that lifestyle choice.

People who fall into similar situations without your foresight might struggle more, but so too do people who buy expensive cars they can't afford or pursue careers they enjoy instead of careers that pay well.

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Don't forget that 1) the first world birth rate is below replacement, and 2) your retirement savings will be made worthless by inflation if there is no labor pool to support the economy when you are retired. Parent poster is arguably subsidising your retirement by putting in the work to raise the generation that will produce the goods and services you will wish to consume in your retirement.

I benefit just as much from parent's children (heh) as I would from yours, but less than I would from my own, because they'd entertain me.

Parent's enjoyment of those children is an appropriate benefit which both parent and parent's wife have purchased at the cost of parent's wife's career and their retirement savings.

Put another way, parent and I both receive an economic benefit, but parent receives an emotional benefit. You can argue that I should pay for the economic benefit I receive, but I do not think it appropriate that I should subsidize the price of his emotional benefit.

Empirically, seeing that couples in general find child rearing too burdensome to maintain replacement rate, it seems that the current split is not the correct one.

That's only relevant if you restrict immigration from areas where growth is rapid to areas where the locals reproduce below replacement.

That there are willing young immigrants available is a historical accident. As countries develop economically their birth rates consistently drop, eventually to below the replacement rate, as can be seen in almost all first world countries. Taking first world countries as a closed system my argument applies. Allowing for immigration means the system now depends on a pool of readily available people who live in economic misery to supplement the first world population, which is not a particularly ethical arrangement.

Immigration is the answer. That's what's keeping quite a few developed countries in population increases even now. Yes, there are a lot of arguments about "who".

I went for replacement myself: 2 kids.

"hacker news becomes more interesting to people who want to have the sort of ideological conversations that eventually drown out the interesting stuff about tech and startups."

Unless you are the one starting said ideological conversations?

Your criticism is, on the surface of it, very relevant. The superficial hypocrisy of my earlier statement would really serve to hurt my credibility if this were a willfully polarized ideological bubble.

The difference is that an on-topic reply to an on-topic comment on an on-topic post diverges as part of an ultimately topical and natural progression, whereas starting with a polarized and ideological post that has little to do with technology, startups, or spontaneous cleverness only serves as an opportunity to reinforce the poster's ideological outlook as the new normal; that is, to move the Overton window.

I myself have been guilty of this. I told a friend of mine that I'd gotten some traction with a blog post about not getting hired by dropbox, and he asked me to share a really juvenile idea he'd had for protesting the TSA. I did it; the post was poorly received, and the community spanking was enough to remind me of what effective participation in a pseudonymous social news link aggregator looks like.

That being said, neither did I start this conversation, nor was it the sort of ideological shouting that drowns out the interesting stuff. The grandparent has a good anecdote about the poster's experience with retirement planning and raising a lot of children, and it makes a point with which I happen to disagree. I voiced my disagreement without attacking the comment or the person who made it.

Ultimately, I disagree both with your implied disagreement with my original point and with the validity of your rhetorical question, but I don't disagree with the topicality of your attack and therefore I don't think your comment deserves the downvote it has at present.

They're just taking a break from shitting on EBT recipients for buying Doritos.

Reasonably successful people having more children is a good thing, given the ever-growing pyramid-scheme nature of Social Security and other entitlements.

> You and your wife chose to have five children, and chose for her to work as a childcare provider, which we know is a low-paid gig.

They didn't choose to have their saving set back by however long because their child got sick.

Nobody chooses to get fired or to crash a motorcycle either. Children are very sympathetic and charismatic spokespeople for the type of help we can render one another, but choosing to create them does not and should not absolve one of responsibility or provide some free insurance against catastrophes.

Parent poster here. I should have stated we took in 3 children in Foster Care (One was a kid at church that was abused and needed a home and from June to December we had three siblings)

So we certainly choose this for our lives and I am glad we did. Two of them graduated from college and one of them is serving in the Middle East in the National Guard.

Just realize that idiot that pays for a car he can't afford or spends time addicted to a game or a million other lifestyle traps modern corporations have armies of engineers, lawyers, marketing experts and others working tirelessly to ensnare are in fact what keep the economy running. And you and I employed.

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