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People have kids outside of financial consideration. The desire for having children is an enormous natural force for many (not all). That's not even including a
by trgn 11y ago
People have kids outside of financial consideration. The desire for having children is an enormous natural force for many (not all). That's not even including all the children as result of youthful mistakes or just plain happenstance.
Technocrats are quick to frame having children as some sort of result of rational decision making, like buying a car. Since it's obviously not, this viewpoint readily becomes a normative prescription. What not is, instead should. Hence, poor people shouldn't have children because they can't afford them.
But humans aren't robots. It's like saying teenagers shouldn't wreck their dad's car (they will), adults shouldn't fall in love with abusive a-holes (happens all the time), or old Johnny over there should just give up smoking already (he won't).
A just community absorbs this messiness with patience, forgiveness, and empathy. Families generally do. Friends often as well. Tight-knit towns have that capacity. Perhaps even the polis as well. But the higher up we go, the more abstract a human becomes. Right now, humans are widgets, no more than appliances in the cybernetic feedback loop. Not too long ago, we were divinely chosen caretakers with responsibilities to God first&foremost; at some point we were hapless pieces on the game board of disinterest cosmic chess players. Not sure which abstraction to prefer honestly.
- yanilkr 11y agoPeople also don't want to let go of their hard earned money. It is also an enormous natural force. Our society is doing that to productive people forcibly and for your just theory you are picking and choosing which force of nature we should tolerate and which one we shouldn't. Your patience, forgiveness and empathy has any worthiness if it is voluntary and forcing it on certain set of people is no longer a just community.
- aninhumer 11y ago>Our society is doing that to productive people forcibly If they don't like it, they can stop producing. But I'm guessing they're not quite so willing to give up all the other freedoms their money grants them.
- yanilkr 11y agoThey are productive people, they do other things like move to places where there are less taxes mostly out of USA. They hire people outside USA where payroll taxes are less. Or they stash in cyprus and panama. Or buy politicians. Why do you think Steve jobs and other CEOs give them selves 1$ salary because they want to avoid paying income tax and want to pay less capital gains tax.?
- aninhumer 11y ago>They are productive people, they do other things like move to places where there are less taxes mostly out of USA. They still need to sell their goods in the US, so we can tax them then. And as these countries develop, they'll start to implement similar social programs. Eventually there'll be nowhere left to hide. >Or they stash in cyprus and panama. Or buy politicians. These are separate problems, with their own solutions.
- yanilkr 11y agoIf all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. If the only thing you can imagine is taxation then you try to solve every problem with taxation.
- aninhumer 11y agoI can imagine many things, I just think taxation is the most obvious solution to the inevitable inequality that results from allowing people to accumulate capital. And I tend to find that libertarians cling just as hard to the hammer they call "property rights".
- yanilkr 11y agoThere are similar number of people who are raising above their class and similar number of people falling below their economic class. The income inequality will probably exist no matter what we do because not everyone of us are born with same calibre and America is a huge country. In America there is equality of opportunity but you want to give equality of outcomes which is almost impossible to do without crossing moral boundaries. Imagine a class of students, do you think it makes the class more smarter if you take grades from better ranking students to underperforming students? Income tax is exactly that a very regressive idea.