Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2 | Hacker News Reader

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Eddy_Viscosity2

Alright I'll make the case then.

People who have kids have to put a bunch of their resources towards those kids: money, time, lost sleep, lost interactions with friends, and so on on. Nothing controversial here so far. Some view this as a choice of those people because they simply want to have kids, raise a family, and so on. But regardless of their intentions, there is a positive outcome for society in that there now exists a next generation that will keep society functioning. Those kids will grow up to be the doctors and farmers and so on that do all the things that need doing. These kids really are an investment in the future. People who don't have kids, but still grow old and live in society, say retired on purpose, or simply because their bodies and minds degraded to the point they can no longer work (happens to everybody), then those people are living in society that is functioning because of the time/money/resource investments of the people who had kids. The people who didn't have kids got a free ride because they didn't have to do any of that, but still get to see food in the grocery store that go there because other people had kids who then grew up and made that happen.

It's fine if you don't want to have kids, but if you plan on being alive and in society in 20-30 years, then you are living off the investments of others. So why not let them have a bit more salary then you?

> So why not let them have a bit more salary then you?

One can agree that child-rearing and domestic work are productive activities while still disagreeing with your proposal to inflate salaries.

For instance, instead of what you're proposing, the state can treat these activities as an actual job and pay accordingly. This no longer conflates the issue by making other entities (private employers, tax code, etc) fill in the gaps on what society at large claims it values. Now, I'm not saying I endorse this solution, but rather that there's more to the discussion than how you're framing it.

I don't agree with your logic that childless adults are free riders, and you omit many of the upsides to raising kids that childless adults willingly forgo, or the fact that childless adults often play vital roles in their families and communities that regular parents often don't have the bandwidth for.

You also haven't really talked about the ecological impact of first-world nations having more kids and whether that's wise or sustainable. You act as if it's a priori a net good.

Last, I'd argue that one of the benefits to having a sufficiently advanced society is that people are granted more agency to live as they see fit.

These are thoughtful points and what I hear is agreement that child rearing (and I'd also add care for elderly parents and other activities) are beneficial and those that undertake should indeed be, for a lack of a better term, subsidized for that work. The disagreement is the source of that subsidy and that government should step in to fill the gap rather than the employer having to cover it. I'd be satisfied with that solution. I'd suggest health care should equally be covered by government and paid with taxes rather than the employer. The problem in the US is that there is a strong belief that government should not do any of these things. Since it has to come from somewhere, that leaves the only source of income of most people -- the employer to meet these needs.

The points about ecology and population are a whole other thing, interesting, but out of scope of the pay issue which is why I didn't mention them.

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