It was easiest for me to answer each paragraph. Excuse the long post.
Cbishop wrote:
I don't disagree that it is both unwise and an unfair use of everyone's tax money for adults to choose to have children they know they can't support and don't want to raise well. From a purely economic point of view such children are more likely to become a drain, rather than a boost, to society's net resources. Where I differ from you is that I think that parents who support their children and try to do a good job parenting are producing a net benefit for society.
We don’t disagree on this. I too believe there is a benefit to society when a child is raised to be a productive member. If they aren’t productive then our money to help raise that child could be better spent. Rather than put money where it may not be best utilized perhaps it could be put to better use in schools and libraries. I want to remind you that this thread started with Saletan saying “…and especially tax breaks to parents. I thought to myself, “Oh, forgive me for doing some of society’s work.” Firstly, we are addressing tax breaks specifically. I have stated that I don’t mind my money going to schools, parks, etc because I see the benefit to children and society as a whole. Second, I resent the implication that there is some special sacred charge to having children and therefore I am not even allowed to voice complaint over tax breaks to families with children. I agree that raising productive children is a benefit to society we just disagree on what kind of support from society parents should receive.
You mention in another post that it is a choice to have children, just as it it a choice to join the military, work as a garbageman, etc. True, to a point...but our economic system IS expressly geared to provide the compensation incentive that is required to get the numbers of a given profession that we think we need. So, if there is a shortage of doctor's, soldiers, garbage men, etc...pay rises to the level that would result in increased numbers of people wanting to do those jobs. The best example of this theory in action is the military right now...the last 6 or so years have seen a gradual, but constant, increase of compensation incentives to soldiers to try to incentivize them to join and stay in the armed forces...despite the increased dangers. Regarding the garbage man example you give...true, the job is needed, but that's not the end of the analysis. Being a sanitation engneer, while unappealing in many ways, is a low skill level job that it would be easily to train a replacement from the general labor pool to do.
I really think you are arguing against yourself here. I agree our economic system is geared toward compensation. For humans the compensation for having children was more hands to work, a child to marry off and build alliances, someone to care for you in you old age, continuation of the gene pool. Those compensations have not gone away. Children helped assure the survival of the group. I don’t think anyone needs compensation to be encouraged to have children in this society. I think they will have children anyway. What I hear you saying is that tax breaks provide an incentive to have children just like higher pay is an incentive for more garbage collectors. Isn’t that paying people to have children?
We don't think about "paying" people to have kids in the same way. True, we have a tax credit of about $1,000.00 per child...but this is less an effort to actually encourage people to have kids regulate our population demographics than it is, admitedly, just a politically popular targeted middle class tax cut (similar to the mortgage tax deduction). If society was actually trying to offset the cost of raising a kid and incentive child "production" $1,000.00 a year would not nearly be enough. It costs somewhere between $124,000 and $249,000 to raise a kid (here's where I got that number: <link>) so I think the concern that parents are using their tax credits to take vacations and splurge on themselves is a an unnecessary one. It would be extremely difficult for a person, even a ruthlessly calculating heartless person, to make a "profit" off of having a child by getting $18,000 in tax credits.
I agree that the tax break is not specifically paying people to have children. I say that out of frustration. Frankly, if a large conservative portion of our society is concerned that welfare benefits are misused then I can worry that child tax credits are misused. As you said, $1,000 is hardly a drop in the bucket towards what it really costs to raise a child. But if I also don’t think $3,000, or $5,000 per year (if a family has three or five children) is anything to sneeze at. Perhaps I’m old but that seems like a fairly decent amount of money and it could potentially be misused. The issue is not whether it will be misused but if it is the tax payer's dollar they have a right to be sure it’s being used to raise child just as people have a right to ensure their tax dollars are not being misused by welfare recipients.
For someone making $39,000 to almost $66,000 a year the cost of a child runs from approximately $9,000 to $10,000 a year. That’s a lot of money. Offsetting that by $1,000 per child isn’t much. Even if a person qualified for a $5,000 per year tax credit that hardly makes a dent in the approximately $45,000 a year it would cost to raise those five children. So obviously if it costs that much to raise children there must be some other reason people have children rather than to get a tax credit. Do they do it because it’s a sacred charge or a benefit to society? Probably not. I hope they have children because they want children. The point is people will have children with or without a tax credit. When you start adding up the $1,000 to $5,000 or more per family that’s a lot of tax dollars. As for the ruthlessness of a calculating heartless person, I have heard people for years claim that welfare mothers have children just so they can receive benefits. I have no idea if that is true but there are those who say it is. I do not underestimate the heartlessness of children.
Another point raised against parents is that they are doing bad things by having kids since they are destroying the world through carbon emissions. While I am receptive to the argument that more needs to be done to fight global warming, I'm not at the point where carbon emissions are the sole determining factor of every decision I make in life. This kind of "environmental fundamentalism" is exactly the sort of radical reasoning that tends to scare away moderates like my self from the environmental movement. Give me some options to make it affordable and sensible for me to live greener and I promise to do my part and integrate thse things into my life...but start putting out crazy commandments about how people can't have kids because of carbon dioxide emisions and you've just lost me to you cause because I question your judgment and reasoning at its foundations.
I don’t believe anyone here has raised points “against” parents. We all had parents and are grateful for them. My protest is special treatment for parents. Have I said people should stop having children because of global warming? I believe the world is over-populated and I think it’s not responsible to bring more than two children into the world but that’s hardly fundamentalism. I would like the same options to live greener as you would like but that’s another issue, not what we are discussing here. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that although your post is addressed to me you are not speaking about me in this paragraph because I never advocated people quit having children. I did say that the resources my non-existent children don’t use will benefit other people’s children. That may well cancel out the benefits I receive from their SS payments.
When I speak of the benefit provided by chidlren to society, my level of analysis is focused on the nation-state level. I tend to focus my policy arguments on that level because I am much more likely to be able to have a say at some level in my own society. Do I think that, world-wide, we might be wise to incentivize people to have fewer children so that we might bring overpopulation under control and have a sustainable resource base? ABSOLUTELY! But most of the highest reproduction rates are in countries where I am not a voting member of society. In the developed world birth rates have been consistantly declining. I don't have the stats on this, but most middle class couples I know tend to have only two children...which would no even be enough to maintain current population if you account for people who don't choose to have kids. Three kids per couple that chooses to have them would probably be a replacement level number. I don't see many middle class couples having more kids than that, so I feel as if bashing the couples of middle America for the population explosion is unjust in its entirety. That population demographic is the ne group you NEED to have kids to keep your country functioning.
Worldwide, yes. But we should start here at home before we become over-populated. Just my opinion. We are part of this small world. “No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”
I seriously doubt that people will stop having children. No one NEEDS to have children. What law is there that society must continue? Go forth and be fruitful? I can’t argue with the Bible but I can argue with this idea that we simply must keep society going. We will all die and I am willing to bet that not one of us will really care if society carries on. I think you might do well to be more concerned about society blowing itself up, or killing each other off, or competing for dwindling resources than society fading away through attrition.
One final point, perhaps this is not the case, but I feel an undercurrent in your posts that you believe that people are making moral judgments that you are a bad person or "not doing your part" because you are not having kids. I want to make clear that this is NOT the case from my perspective. I think one area that we have made progress in this country is that a woman should be able to choose if she wants to work or be a stay at home mom, get married or remain single, have kids or not...and won't be punished for making that choice. Maybe there are still foolish people out tehre who think that no woman can be happy without a man and a child in their live, but I don't think it fair to lump everyone into that category or to misdirect anger and a sense of injustice at those who, like you, just want to avoid being punished for the life they have chosen by a society that seems to just want to turn a cold shoulder to the challenges they face.
Thank you for not making a moral judgment. That is something that bothers me. But I am also bothered by the sense of entitlement that many people with children seem to have. We have become a society of entitlement. Everyone wants to feel entitled. DifferentEllen thought I wanted to be entitled because I served in the military. No I don’t. That was my choice. Being childless is my choice. But it would have been nice if Saletan had said, “Thank you America for supporting me in my role as a parent!” instead of whining that he doesn’t get the credit he so richly deserves for doing some of America’s work. If people like him and some of the other posters don’t recognize that we ALL do some of America’s work then we are a pretty sad society.
