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Comment by Arainach | Hacker News Reader

> think they are very self centered and don't want to make sacrifices

How dare they not want to spend decades doing something they don't want at enormous personal and financial cost just to keep your favorite economic pyramid scheme running. So selfish.

Here's an idea: if you want kids so much, pay for them. Provide universal healthcare, childcare, education. Provide food stamps for everyone under 18. Put your money where your mouth is.

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If those people expect to continue to live on after they retire, then all the products and services they rely on in that stage of life will be performed by the children of their peers, the ones who had them at enormous personal and financial cost. They are externalizing the costs of there being people to make the economy work in their old age to others so they can take more trips. In fairness, if you don't have kids you should have to pay higher taxes (enormously higher in fact to get close to making up the difference). Those taxes get re-directed to childcare for those that need it. Fair?

> if you don't have kids you should have to pay higher taxes

We do actually have this today in the US through policies like the earned income tax credit, child/dependent care tax credit, and child tax credit, which primarily reduce taxes for people with children (and therefore put a relatively higher tax burden on childless people).

There’s also a large tax credit for adoption costs. I wonder if GP comment would result in more births, or something like H1B arrangements for personal tax reasons.

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