

Tax the Childless - grej
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/tax_credits_and_children_parents_should_pay_lower_taxes_and_childless_people.html

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donutdan4114
I'm not sure why government taxes should care whether someone has kids or not,
it is your choice. If you can't afford to have kids, you probably shouldn't
have kids.

It's easy to be in a painful situation and come to a conclusion "Things should
work this way because that would benefit me". There are other things the
government should do, such as tax breaks for students, and people with student
loans - fostering growth and a successful youthful population is very nice.
Tax breaks for people with a highschool education and better grades. Tax
breaks for people who do community service, etc, etc...

~~~
TulliusCicero
"I'm not sure why government taxes should care whether someone has kids or
not, it is your choice. If you can't afford to have kids, you probably
shouldn't have kids."

Because having kids benefits everyone. It's an integral societal good with a
staggeringly high individual cost. There's a reason western European countries
give such generous benefits to parents like lengthy maternity/paternity
leaves.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Whether or not it is an "integral societal good" depends on the child's
upbringing and its eventual contribution to society, neither of which are
guaranteed to be positive. In fact, by doing this, you would be encouraging
more people (including ones who are ill suited) to raise children merely to
pay less taxes, and consequently have more numbers, but less utility.

~~~
sharemywin
no parent would recommend having a child to pay less taxes.

~~~
BrandonMarc
... and no parent would have more kids just to receive more welfare money. Oh,
wait.

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TelmoMenezes
Genius. I can't think of a better idea than incentivising people to reproduce
more and as soon as possible. This is exactly what the world needs.

Some people might say that this is a puritanical and unacceptable meddling of
the state in deeply personal choices, but I say fuck them! If we play our
cards right we can evolve into being social insects in less than one century.

~~~
dingaling
> I can't think of a better idea than incentivising people to reproduce more
> and as soon as possible

And for those who can't...? Just keep penalising them to teach them a lesson?

For 30 years I had no intimate or sexual relations with anyone. Not my choice
by any means, but this proposal would have financially punished me because no-
one else wanted to have a relationship with me. Thanks! A double-whammy of
unhappiness.

And what about the gay community?

What about sterile people?

I am in a relationship now, with children, but strongly oppose this idea.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Of course. I was being sarcastic.

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zwass
I'm still trying to understand why anyone would want to encourage population
expansion in a world with nearly 8 billion people.

Is it tied into the general western notion that growth of any kind is always
good? That more children will raise the GDP?

Are people afraid of what happens when the Social Security pyramid begins to
crumble?

The author only gives us this unsatisfying snippet: > a steady stream of
barely postpubescent brainiacs writes catchy tunes and invents breakthrough
technologies that keep us entertained and make us more productive

~~~
lutusp
> I'm still trying to understand why anyone would want to encourage population
> expansion in a world with nearly 8 billion people.

That's easy to answer. Imagine you own a factory. The factory has two doors.
In one door comes customers. In the other door comes workers.

* If you can get more customers competing for limited products in your showroom, you can raise prices and become richer.

* If you can get more workers competing for limited positions on your factory floor, you can reduce wages and become richer.

* In every way, population increase enriches the owners of (a) capital, and (b) means of production.

So, exactly why would you _not_ argue for a higher population? And why would
you not fight birth control, contraception and abortion, education, voting
rights and gender equality for women, and sex education in the schools?

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the conservative agenda just happens to
fight for unlimited population growth, both here and abroad.

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Aloha
It's not my job to pay for others children, not thru direct taxation. I
already pay a whole bunch of incidental socitial costs, and I'm OK with that -
It's part of being a good citizen.

I chose not to breed - I have bad genetic stock, I don't think its wise for me
to contribute my portion forward.

~~~
cube_yellow
Children are a social benefit.

If not through taxes, then how?

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throwawayaway
is this not already the case? [http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-
Child-Tax-Credit](http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit)
in effect, i don't see any real difference, the author is just asking for more
of the same.

the author also assumes more children are a good thing. i think in the future
people who look at china's one child policy as barbarism will change their
mind.

~~~
greenyoda
The child tax credit is only one of the tax benefits that parents get. Here
are two others:

\- They get a deduction for each child (since they're dependents). This came
to $3800 per child on the 2012 tax form (that amount is exempt from taxes).

\- If your filing status is "head of household" (e.g., you have dependents),
you pay lower tax rates than a single person.

Plus, there are similar benefits on state income taxes.

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Eyalush
I do pay more taxes than those with children. I take the extra cash amassed
that I'm not spending on a family and I invest it or I spend it. Both add tax
revenue. Across my investment properties I pay 35K in property taxes annually,
then I pay income tax on income generated from rents across multiple units.
I'll also pay sales taxes on those buildings when I sell them. Lastly, because
I do not have any dependents, my tax bracket is set squarely in "are you
mad?!?" range. I pay a lot of taxes.

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georgemcbay
(onion.com) would be more appropriate for this nonsense idea.

~~~
anonymoushn
We already tax the single. It would make sense to move that burden to the
childless.

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coin
Or perhaps tax those with children, since they draw more public services.
Having children is (most of the time) a choice. If you don't have the
financial resources to support offspring, the don't have them. Note: I have
(and chose to have) two daughters. My financial situation was one of the
inputs into the decision.

~~~
TulliusCicero
"If you don't have the financial resources to support offspring, the don't
have them."

This is exactly the problem. People are choosing, quite wisely, to not have
kids, so our birth rates are sub-replacement. That's bad, so we need to
incentivize people to have more of them. Raising children is a pretty classic
externality: benefits accrue to society because we all benefit from continued
human existence, but the costs are borne by individual parents.

~~~
notatoad
>People are choosing, quite wisely, to not have kids, so our birth rates are
sub-replacement

maybe for your chosen social group, but global population growth is about 1.2%
per year.

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mullingitover
Dumbest thing I've read this week, and I read the comments on Yahoo News
articles.

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jaunkst
Wow, yeah. Let's give them a living income too, so they can spend more time
with their kids. Might as well give them a free iphone for every child. Who
needs to be educated when you can pop out kids and complain about those who
break their back going to work so we can one day start to pay for an imaginary
retirement. Accountability has become a joke in america. I will be programming
till I'm 100 years old at that rate. which I would want to do anyways but
that's not the point. I work to hard for such nonsense. if were going to adopt
socialism then let's go all the way and enforce Plato's republic. I'll opt in
to be a philosopher and not have kids. We can all raise everyone else's kids
in an equal society.

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ne0codex
Why was this posted here? What's the relevancy?

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Canada
Anyone who says "I and everyone else in my circumstance should be taxed more"
should just shut up unless the post also includes a scan of a big cheque
demonstrating some voluntary contribution to the cause. Otherwise it's nothing
more than demanding others pay.

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fallinghawks
She can take money out of my pocket only if she is required to get my approval
before having a child.

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mavdi
As a parent all I can say is: What a load of shite. Enjoy your childless
freedom, you have made the right choice. A child brings little joy to your
life with eternal stress and worry and pain and sleepless nights and oh did I
mention worry?

~~~
TulliusCicero
...this is exactly why policies like this are a good idea. Just looking at the
costs in terms of time, money, and stress, having kids is a pretty irrational
decision, so it's no surprise that in modern developed nations, birthrates are
pretty low. Sub-replacement birthrates are bad for society. But we can choose
to compensate with government policy.

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lupinglade
Childless couples already pay tax for school and healthcare for the kids of
others.

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bdcravens
This would get crushed under bureaucracy, as there would need to be a ton of
exceptions. Males with Cystic Fibrosis have a 98% infertility rate. So you'd
essentially be taxing someone based on their genetic makeup.

~~~
bdcravens
Also, wouldn't this unfairly punish those in gay marriages? Adoption is of
course an option, but I'd speculate there's a much higher rate of
childlessness in gay vs. straight marriages.

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TulliusCicero
Adoption and surrogates/donors are both options in gay marriages.

~~~
pan69
And so are they in non-gay marriages. What's your point?

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pan69
Here's an idea. Rather than taxing the childless maybe you should get a tax
break from taking care/raising children made by someone else instead? I.e. the
last thing this planet needs is new people.

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randunel
In Europe, this is already implemented. Parents get subsidies and cash money
for every child they have, while childless hard working citizens get nothing.
This idea is not new, it's already in place :P

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lutusp
Yeah, great idea. The single most important world problem we face is
overpopulation. Why not make it easier to have children than it already is?
Why not tax those who made the right choice and give the money to those who
made the wrong one?

The Chinese have the right idea -- they encourage one child per family (an
idea that works better in cities than in the countryside), against substantial
public ignorance and resistance. If we adopted the opposite policy, we would
once again show ourselves to be far behind the times.

~~~
baddox
> The single most important world problem we face is overpopulation.

Citation needed.

~~~
lutusp
[http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats](http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats)

Quote: "Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under
five - 3.1 million children each year."

I invite anyone to try to dismiss the fact that 3.1 million children starve to
death each year.

~~~
maxerickson
For the most part, the present problem is not due to a global shortage of
food:

[http://www.wfp.org/hunger/causes](http://www.wfp.org/hunger/causes)

100 billion seems like it would be a challenge.

~~~
dllthomas
I'd also note, from the earlier link:

 _" 842 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. This number has
fallen by 17 percent since 1990."_

We have 1.9 _billion_ more people today than we had in 1990, and we are
failing to feed _fewer individuals_. We're not just feeding more people. We're
not even just leaving a smaller percentage starving. We have many more people,
and _fewer people are starving_. "There are too many people, relative to how
much food we can produce" is not the dominant effect here.

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ulam2
You telling me that age of having a child should be dictated by the
government?

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dkarapetyan
We already do this.

