I think that the U.S. tax code should be revised to stop rewarding people for having children, at least for more than one. The country, not to mention the world as a whole, is overpopulated as it is. And it's time that large families start paying for the public resources and services that they consume instead of shoving the costs off on others.
By way of clarification, I'm an American expat living in the Philippines, where big families and overpopulation are an even bigger problem than in America. However, as a foreigner here I have little say about the matter.
I have never understood how, except for the desire for expendable manpower, that a nation in the 21st century would encourage a family to have as many children as possible. The system can't handle the amount of people we have now (arguable; can be seen as an administrative issue instead of overpopulation) and more are encouraged to come in so they'll be supported more. I pray none of these individuals are Republican, because that would be ironic (i hope it's ironic; could just be a coincidence, it really is too early for this debate)
Well people do need to be encouraged to have children because the people they produce are going to be the doctors, scientists, teachers and refuse collectors in 20 years time. it's certainly not a good idea to discourage reproduction. And in reality, the money these families save on taxes will be repaid 100s of times over by thier children. So awarding people who have children with tax breaks is essensially speculating to accumilate.
I disagree. The higher-income families, the ones who can actually afford and should have kids, are not as motivated by the tax breaks as lower income families who would likely have kids just for the money. Families that are able to support children will have kids regardless, it did not take financial incentives to get to the enormous population size we have now (well, the past century maybe, but before that..) The ones motivated by our tax system are the exact people who should not be having kids.
Lower income families also need to reproduce. Unless you think the offspring of lord huffington smythe-Pickford III are going to get jobs on production lines and sanitation plants. We need a lot more lower class people than we do children from "higher income" families. And as lower income families can generally afford less there needs to be am incentive for them to reproduce.
Economically, yeah. Rich guys need dirt cheep labor to keep them rich. If it weren't for the labor that these families do out of necessity, just to make ends meet and to survive, these rich guys couldn't afford their 5 cars with a swimming pool in their mansion. But outside economics, in a humanitarian view, this perpetuates needless suffering. What's ironic is the government claims to be doing everything in its power to end this suffering, but it does just the opposite with the laws we have in place. Getting people to reproduce - to maintain the riches of the elite, without consideration of the misery and hopelessness it contributes, is very immoral IMO. Additionally, we can't sustain this pace forever, it's quite clear that overpopulation will be a problem in the future. It's just like Keynesian economics, everyone wants their short-term comforts without considering what will happen in the end.
It's not about rich guys needing cheap labour, it's about society needing people to do esessential "blue collar" jobs. You are trying to make this an us V them anti-elitist issue when it's obvious that society needs a huge workforce originating from lower class families to do certain jobs. Like I say, unless you are going to claim that children from higher income families are going to do menial jobs we need families from lower income demographics to produce a massive amount of children.
The lower the status, the higher it becomes an incentive to have kids. I'm talking mainly about those around the poverty line.
Well I think one would need a degree of "status" for a tax break to be an incentive. For example they would at least need to be in gainful employment which is subject to taxation and earning enough to make the tax break noticable. We aren't talking crackheads and hookers, they are people with jobs.
People do not need encouragement to have kids. Nature takes care of that. A society can only produce so many engineers, scientists, doctors, architects, programmers , and technicians due to cost (e.g. $2 Million to produce 1 engineer in 25 years). However, the unskilled only need to be fed, so there is no shortage in the world. But, the US consumes an inordinate amount of the world's resources without producing anything remotely to compensate for that. When just a part of the world (say West Africa) decides the US gets no more of their resources, the people in the US will be suffering mightily due to the excess population, that was encouraged by the government. Unless the US gets serious about education and investment in the population, it makes no sense to encourage a large, unskiled workforce the way it is now.
Of course we naturally have an urge to have sex and ultimately have children, but there are going to be some who decide that they can't afford both taxes and children, and they are the ones who would be incentivised to have children through tax breaks and ironically the exact kind of responsible people who should be encouraged to have children.
It costs a lot more to raise the child than any tax break will counter act. I should know I have tried to cause overpopulation all on my own. (This ought to give stox another reason to hate me.) With 6 smart kids - chances are we will have added 6 PRODUCING adults and/or future employers.
Well of course the tax breaks aren't going to entirely subsidise the raising of a child over over a period of 18 years, but it will mean parents have more money than they otherwise would and so would have more money available to go towards the raising of a child
Absolutely. I don't think there should be tax credits for having children. People have too many damn children as it is. That's my knee-jerk reaction. I think it's a bit more of a complicated situation than that... What really concerns me is our priorities. I recently read an article about how in 1980 California spent 17% of it's budget on education and 4% on prisons. In 2009 those numbers had morphed to 9% on education and 10% on prisons. That is just absolutely insane to me. There's two major causes for this increase in prison costs: The war on drugs & privatized prisons. The war on drugs should be ended and privatized prisons should be illegal. Spend that money on education instead.