200 years ago you would have ten children, a few would survive until adulthood, and you needed to have children or nobody would look after you in old age, help you out when they're grown or take over your farm when you became infirm - and besides, everyone else has children, so if you don't you're the odd one out.
Now, you have both parents in the workforce - even with generous parental leave the mother loses a lot of opportunity in the prime of her career.
Then you have to pay for childcare if both are working (or lose out on one income if they aren't), food, clothing, schooling, extracurriculars. And you're competing in the workforce against all couples with less children. And then when you get old you aren't relying on your children to look after you - this is frowned upon, and you get paid out from your investments or the government pays you a pension. Basically most of modern life is set up economically against having children, and the main reason to is purely the biological drive.
I think all these factors need to be taken into account when devising economic incentives for people to have more children, and the current levels in any country are too low to have enough of an effect.
…you get paid out from your investments or the government pays you a pension.
Your investments and the government pension are financed by the active work of someone’s children. If there won’t be enough of them around your retirement will not be as comfortable as you planned.
Retirement is still dependent on children. Before it was your children. Now it’s a collective mass of children.
We say people, but broadly speaking, the global population ballooned because women were not educated and empowered. Now that they are, witness the rapid global total fertility rate decline (educated, empowered women delay childbirth, have less children, or no children). Socioeconomic systems have been freeloading off of uncompensated labor of women in the aggregate. How will they change? That remains to be seen.
>Socioeconomic systems have been freeloading off of uncompensated labor of women
What an extraordinarily perverse view of recent history. Who do you think built and maintained the socioeconomic systems that allowed women to focus on creating and raising children? You could even more easily twist your perceptions such that men have been forced to work hard and short lives serving the whims of women who have enjoyed the luxury of sitting around making babies, singing nursery rhymes, and gossiping over afternoon tea with their friends.
Women have stopped making babies. So men have stopped wanting to make civilisation. We are indeed seeing the consequences of the collapse of this social contract.
> Who do you think built and maintained the socioeconomic systems that allowed women to focus on creating and raising children?
This statement completely ignores how our current world is shaped by white supremacy and the patriarchy. Women were prohibited from taking part in anything expect raising children (which even today is seen as contributing nothing).
Women who dared venture outside the home had their work ignored or credit stolen. Eunice Foote and Rosalind Franklin are two obvious examples.
Later, textiles, telecoms and computing were powered by women labour and they were expected to stay in their lane so the men could take credit and the money.
I think you are getting attached to a "social contract" that never existed, nobody asked you to slave way for no reason and no woman is a walking womb. And in fact, as obvious as it sounds, I have to remind you that you alone have zero capability of civilization building.
It's funny how some men don't see that. And it's funny how that idea changes when they have kids. How many dads are protesting for more paternity leave if it's so easier to spend time raising a child than working? How common is to find a solo father? If it's a "luxury", why women have to take the burden most of the time? If given the option, 99% of men would prefer working outside than being the parent that stays home raising the kids and taking care of the house. It's not a luxury or easier, it's just another type of work. They know it's hard work, they just don't care enough to really think about the topic.
Perhaps there should be a social security deduction for every dependent child you had that tax year? For example, each dependent child that year could be a refund of 3.1% of income up to the social security maximum, such that at 4 children all 12.4% is returned to you?
You want incentives for both having children and raising them well. That's why imo your retirement should depend on % of your children's taxes not yours.
Then you're double-whamming childless people who did not take any public resources for their children and likely paid more taxes throughout their life, declaring infertile people a disposable class, incentivising child abuse and a glut of poor doctors/engineers/MBAs, and not least incentivising financial benefit and self-interest in one of the last places that's still largely about love, truly a capitalism end goal.
I'm childless and I don't see how this parade of horribles makes much sense. The simple facts of the matter is that a sufficient number of children growing up to be adults is required to sustain functioning society (and with it, things like retirement and healthcare systems). People who have children contribute to this fund directly. It is only fair if people who can't or won't do it contribute in some other way, e.g. by financially supporting the former category. It's not "double-whamming" at all unless you don't care about the society (but then you're welcome to go live in the wilds of Alaska or wherever), and it most certainly doesn't declare infertile people a "disposable class".
I'm not sure what the double whammy is here. I proposed a deduction for raising children, and he countered with a payment premium for adult children, but it sounded exclusive. Only one whammy applies.
Raising your child will run you ~300,000 USD, in addition to the massive opportunity cost from time investment. Given that social security is funded entirely through taxes in that tax year, it's a bit much to expect the children of 53% of the population to care for 100% of the elderly when the willfully childless 47% of the population did not put in more upfront in some other way. As birth rates drop, the ratio of workers to retirees will skew worse and worse, and the entire safety net will collapse progressively.
Alternatively, we can encourage and incentivize child rearing. Yes, that means that the willfully childfree will need to pony up resources for those who want children. What would you prefer: pay now for the continuity of the safety net, or the collapse of the safety net?
> Given that social security is funded entirely through taxes in that tax year,
This isn't true, or wasn't true for a long time. SS long had a surplus that it lent to the federal government (a lot of the US debt is debt that is owed to SS). It stopped booking a surplus a few years ago, which means that it is dependent on the government paying back what it is owed, and eventually that will be gone, at which point SS will basically be, as you say, living paycheck to paycheck (or probably be insolvent requiring a cut in benefits or an injection from the general fund).
The rise of AI and automation messes everything up. We don't technically need to have more children, we could even shed a few billion people to a new stable smaller population point. The problem is equitable distributions from AI and automation so that unneeded labor isn't just left to die.
By law, Social Security invests surpluses in US Treasury securities. So the US government "lends" money to itself, where it is spent that year on government programs for the taxpayers in that year. The securities are backed by taxpayers in the future.
For example, in 2005 Social Security had a 172B surplus, but the US government had a deficit of 318B. Social Security's 172B surplus was spent by the US government in the same year for government services on the people of 2005. The money was spent on voters, taxpayers, and citizens in 2005, but the liability was recorded against people who hadn't been born yet.
You've referred to a fiction, but reality is as I've stated. The US government loves creating fictions, but that doesn't mean we visit the Vietnam Police Action Memorial.
I am childless and intend to stay so. I think I am getting a great deal in comparison to my friends who had children. I have more time, more money and my life is significantly cheaper.
I think it's only fair that save for my own retirement.
This just isn't true. How many children my neighbor has impacts my social security payments or other retirement disbursements in no tangible way. It certainly doesn't impact my 401k or other retirement savings unless you are linking population growth to the growth of the asset markets and the structural integrity of the social security system(I can see the point of view here, but I wouldn't call this a "subsidy").
By saving you are in fact betting on your ability to threaten young people with material deprivation to force them to take care of you.
You could make a different bet, e.g. invest into whatever infrastructure they'll need to take care of aging population. But your savings fund likely invests in luxuries for aging big spenders, so...
I am rather curious how this plays out long-term, since there is no investment instrument for "please build train / underground closer to my house".
The whole comment is a bit non-sensical, so I am not sure how to respond. If you are not from the US, you should know that social security is not an option, it is a mandatory program. Things like 401k plans are tax incentivized, and as we know, humans love incentives. Most 401k plans are in index funds, which track a large number of companies, so I am not sure what "luxuries for aging big spenders" means but it sounds like you have it figured out.
> How many children my neighbor has impacts my social security payments or other retirement disbursements in no tangible way.
All the retirement savings you have, whether state-managed or private-managed, are just some coupons for your share in the economy of the future. If the economy of the future shrinks your coupons will be worthless.
The number of kids you and your neighbor have not only have an impact on your retirement, these kids are your retirement.
Holding company shares does nothing. Those shares are used as a medium of exchange with people actually doing some productive investment elsewhere.
The investment happens when somebody sells you the shares in exchange for fiat used to pay off the workers. Who do you buy your shares from? That's where you invest.
As for the first part, holding fiat or assets convertible to fiat when fiat has been issued with interest and must be eventually repaid under threat of confiscation of assets. :shrug: It's basically a game of chicken.
If a pension system is purely based on repartition: yes. But that's not the case in most countries. Pension plans mostly involve pension funds which are rooted in the financial markets. It's the individuals responsibility to max out their pension plan, and fiscal policies are used to incentivize this.
Ownership of assets, like home ownership, also contributes towards the totality of a pension.
In that sense, not owning a home, having to pay rent in old age, is a form of impoverishment. If that rent isn't offset by other sources of income like financial investments.
Financial markets are fueled by growth. Growth in real terms (not merely inflation) requires increases in GDP which requires real output by people at it's core.
I'd be worried about expected financial growth of any retirement fund over the long term if population is flat or declining.
Who will work in these companies that you own? Who will consume the goods they produce and fuel revenues?
The home ownership is real, but you can't feed of that. You can live in your home yourself if you'd like, but if you plan to rent it out for profit you'll need young people to work and pay the rent.
And financial market growth depends in a large part on consumption growth. And consumption growth depends in a large part on population growth (at least in a given market).
There are two ways to get a population to grow. One is have babies at above the replacement rate. The other is immigration.
Never mind help you out when you were old. Children were often put to work both inside and outside the houses at young ages. I'm sure plenty of parents with 10 children saw an ROI on them based off of their work. At some point the older children literally raise the younger children. Cram them all into one room... you get efficiencies of scale.
200 years ago, you also didn’t really have much to do. Now you can have a fairly fulfilling life with 0-2 children, bringing it below the replacement level.
The argument that marriage--actual, traditional, heterosexual bindings that produce fresh generations--is useless stands contradicted by the dwindling of a future generations.
Sure, you can point to other factors, e.g. China's One Child policy; war: but the idea that Really Smart People are going to just wave some policy at the problem is laughable.
What works is boys growing into men, girls into women, and families precipitating from actual marriages between them. Pro tip: parenthood is JOY!
The idea that technology has obviated Biology whistles past its own graveyard, voting down anyone daring to point out anyone daring to point out something as obvious as the sunrise.
(And, hey, if Destiny has had other plans than supporting your direct parenthood, the adoption is an eminently honorable alternative.)
>The argument that marriage--actual, traditional, heterosexual bindings that produce fresh generations--is useless stands contradicted by the dwindling of a future generations.
This only makes sense if you start from the perspective that the lack of a nuclear family is the cause of problems.
That's a very clear bias that isn't really reflected by reality. This is outdated conservative logic.
The problem is you’re proposing a social solution and those largely just don’t work.
We achieved the conservative wet dream of the nuclear family in the past via oppressive policy. We forced women into subservient positions where they can’t gain financial freedom, and we persecuted sexual minorities like homosexuals.
Returning to that is bad. We all decided that that sucks. Not just women, men too. Gender roles suck ass. I don’t want to be a provider, and women largely don’t want to be domestic slaves.
We gave people more freedom, and turns out that means a lot of people don’t want the white picket fence life.
I mean, what’s the actionable policy here? Restrict women from having bank accounts? Criminalize homosexuality? Kill transgender people? Would that… fix anything? I don’t think so.
Even just the foundation is rocky. Were things better in the past? I don’t think so, no. Maybe if you were a successful white man, but even then, you’re probably better off in the modern, progressive world. For everyone else though, you know, the majority, it was a trap.
I don’t want to work in the mines and come home to a depressed wife who made a sad looking depression casserole. That’s not the life I want and, evidently, not the life a lot of people want. So, here we are.
Mom; dad; kids: please explain the failing component?
This is not a top-down policy prescription. It is plain, simple, bottom-up wisdom. Nothing I'm saying here has to do with external law. Rather, internal common sense.
To your point, and as Strother Martin succinctly put it in Cool Hand Luke: "There's some men you just can't reach."
The actionable policy is to pursue the basic truth of "form follows function".
Absolutely. I would add that we put on our Big People Pants and point out that not all paths are fruitful, and encourage people to consider those that are.
200 years ago the average life expectancy was 30, no one was having children to "future proof" their life. Quality of life today is much higher than it was 200 years ago as well. While the cost of having children is undoubtedly going up, there are more factors in play than just the doom and gloom of the world. Even in pronatalist regions like Scandanavia, birth rates are falling. Education and advancements in contraception play a huge part in these declines, and are on the more positive side of the equation.
I agree that economic policy needs to adapt to keep a population growing and healthy, but as of right now I am finding it hard to see any signs of this(in the US at least).
> 200 years ago the average life expectancy was 30, no one was having children to "future proof" their life.
That's misleading because most of the reason life expectancy was so low back then was childhood deaths. If you made it to adulthood at all, you probably would live almost as long as people do today.
Now, you have both parents in the workforce - even with generous parental leave the mother loses a lot of opportunity in the prime of her career.
Then you have to pay for childcare if both are working (or lose out on one income if they aren't), food, clothing, schooling, extracurriculars. And you're competing in the workforce against all couples with less children. And then when you get old you aren't relying on your children to look after you - this is frowned upon, and you get paid out from your investments or the government pays you a pension. Basically most of modern life is set up economically against having children, and the main reason to is purely the biological drive.
I think all these factors need to be taken into account when devising economic incentives for people to have more children, and the current levels in any country are too low to have enough of an effect.