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I personally disagree that this should be the rallying cry. Why should someone who invests nothing in their own children get to see their children have equal o

• heartsucker 10y ago
  Because the children have no control over who their parents are, and we shouldn't punish with a lifetime of diminished opportunities because their parents aren't as "good" as others.
  • Jabanga 10y ago
    But we're not punishing them. We're simply not taking, by force, money from one person, to spend it raising the children of another. If we force people to subsidize other people's poor children, we create perverse incentives to have a maximum number of children with minimum personal investment in each. It cannot end well for society.
    • nailer 10y ago
      We force people to pay for roads, firefighters, police, healthcare and ensure all children have the same opportunity. Healthy adults can stand for themselves, children and the ill need protection.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        But that's not a justification. That's just telling me we do this a lot.
        • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
          Look, if you want to drag out the old "taxation is theft" chestnut, I'm going to drag out the "property is theft" chestnut, and everyone else can drag out their old chestnuts, and we can totally derail the thread. Do you want to derail the thread just to vomit out slogans we've all heard a thousand times and found wanting?
          • Jabanga 10y ago
            I don't think that's very constructive. The parent comment said [X] should be the rallying cry. I said in my opinion it shouldn't, and I gave my rationale. By all means bring out your chestnuts. I welcome a rigorous discussion, instead of blind conformity to mainstream political mores.
            • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
              No, you don't welcome a rigorous discussion. You want to repeat discussions we've already had, in which you were not persuaded to others' points of view, and you didn't persuade them either. The likelihood that we'll all see the divine light of von Mises and convert this time is extraordinarily low. Stop trying.
              • Jabanga 10y ago
                I'm expressing my views. It's not constructive to tell people with minority viewpoints to stop expressing them. I did nothing more than what the parent comment did. I also don't think we're in a position to judge the full impact of our words on others, so I don't accept your assessment that no minds were changed by the previous discussions.
                • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
                  > I'm expressing my views. It's not constructive to tell people with minority viewpoints to stop expressing them. Nobody's telling you not to express your view. The obnoxious thing is to snidely pretend everyone else has to justify their own positions in terms of your view. If you want to say, "taxation is theft", just say it, instead of dragging things out from, "Well why should children have equal opportunities to other children anyways?"
    • openasocket 10y ago
      You're talking like we don't do these things already. We've have public schools for over a century, we have various forms of welfare, all kinds of special grant programs to help the poor pay for college, etc. And society hasn't collapsed, the poor aren't popping out a dozen kids because they know they get free primary education. All people are proposing is that we improve these programs. It's not an ideological argument, it's a negotiation over degrees.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        How redistributive were public schools 100 years ago, when they were almost exclusively paid for by local taxes within communities where people had very similar levels of income, and when education spending as a share of GDP was miniscule compared to today? I would argue that the harm of redistribution has historically been more than counterbalanced by the accelerating rate of technological innovation, but that the last 40 years suggests that the growth of the harmful effects of welfarism are starting to outpace the accelerating natural-rate of innovation. That's what GDP and income growth figures would suggest to me. Also the explosion in single parenthood.
        • Rapzid 10y ago
          Only 100 years ago? A lot? It appears the federal government has been involved in public education nearly from the start. Article I Section 8 of the constitution provides impetus; "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;". From the very start the federal government has provided land grants for public schools, and States have been happily applying funds received from the federal government to the costs of education.
          • Jabanga 10y ago
            The federal department of education was only created in 1980. All government spending on education, as a percentage of GDP, was a tiny fraction of what it is today. And the revenue for the education spending was weighted far more towards local sources, making it less redistributive.
    • kefka 10y ago
      Yeah, I know right? Those poor people's kids don't deserve: Clean water, electricity, a home, education, or any of those "rich people" things. If they did deserve it, they'd have them. Since they dont, they deserve a life of misery, suffering, and edging to destitution. ^^^ If you can understand the above, its the reason why youre on the wrong side of history here. You can couch the discussion as "stealing from the rich"... But in the end, we all should have equal access and usage to the essentials of life. We have more than enough resources; there just being hoarded by greedy people who are great at explaining why they deserve it.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        They don't deserve to take someone else's money by force, in order to pay for those things. I don't think opposing forced income redistribution puts me on the side of history.
        • kefka 10y ago
          And you're internalizing "take someone else's money by force". This really goes back to Americans being temporarily embarrassed capitalists, regardless their real financial livelihood. And working-class thinks that we're talking about them when it comes to "We're gonna take their money" - We are, some. But we're also going to provide a baseline for everyone no matter what. > I don't think opposing forced income redistribution puts me on the side of history. And here we go again. This is a matter of "How does the government serve the citizenry". And right now, not very well. Government's current modus operandi is to privatize the gains and socialize the losses. In other words, their gains is on the backs of our losses. And from that, we have a legitimate claim on those gains, as they should be socialized as well. Why? Because people who are rich did not do so themselves in a little bubble. Their successes rest in part on all of us. And it is easy to say, and act, that they need to pay their fair share. And that fair share would be sufficient in providing basic necessities to everyone, regardless of financial need. People can still make profit, and thrive. I'm not advocating traditional communism. I'm advocating a blend, where the minimums are taken care of. People can still thrive and profit - they just won't be able to stand on our backs for them to get ahead.
    • Goronmon 10y ago
      If we force people to subsidize other people's poor children, we create perverse incentives to have a maximum number of children with minimum personal investment in each. It cannot end well for society. You have it reversed. Not providing, say, an education to all children, regardless of parental investment, will leave us with a large number of uneducated citizens languishing to fend for themselves. That sounds pretty bad for society. Not sure how your making the case that educating children ends up poorly for everyone...unless, of course, you mean that it's harder for the wealthy and powerful to control an educated populace compared to an uneducated one. We're simply not taking, by force, money from one person, to spend it raising the children of another. No one is forced to live in a country that provides for it citizens. People can always choose to leave if they feel it's unfair to have basic responsibilities like paying taxes.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        Historically that's not what has happened. Before the era of government education, education was improving rapidly, with literacy rates rising. As government involvement in education has increased, education outcomes have stopped improving: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839935/How-Teachers-Unions-Affect-Education-Production https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839... I'm making the case that forcing people to pay for the costs of raising poor children will create an incentive for people to produce poor children.
        • openasocket 10y ago
          First off, your link explicitly blames teacher's unions, not government involvement, for the lack of increase in education outcomes. You think there are poor people out there thinking: "hey I can have a bunch of kids and they'll all get free educations, let's do it!" Why would they? So that the kid will grow up and get a great job and support them? That's not so much a get-rich-quick scheme as it is a get-rich-in-twenty-to-thirty-years scheme. Plus you'd still have to raise a bunch of kids, which isn't exactly a walk in the park. And the evidence is on my side. Increased access to education is associated with lower fertility rates, not higher: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/completingfertility/RevisedCosio-Zavalapaper.PDF http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/completingfert...
    • AbrahamParangi 10y ago
      I'd argue that Society is literally the business of using force to align incentives towards global optima. In the same way that society taxes you to pay for goods and services that others use, others are taxed to pay for services that you use. Society does this because it has been historically more adaptive to make everyone pay for roads, fire departments, and strategic bombers regardless of whether or not they actually want them. If you don't think people should be forced to pay for things that others use, I challenge you to find a society where this doesn't happen.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        I find that to be an odd definition of society. I think you mean government. And I don't believe redistribution from effective producers of economic resources to less effective producers is societally beneficial.
    • CuriouslyC 10y ago
      What cannot end well for society is an underclass with limited social mobility and access to guns. If justice is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, some degree of equitable income redistribution is a moral imperative. The exact degree needs to be experimentally determined, as income redistribution does reduce individual autonomy (which has the side effect of reducing happiness) and incentive to work (which results in less wealth to redistribute). The exact amount is also probably population specific, with cohesive, homogeneous populations tolerating more redistribution.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        The standard of living of the world's poor is improving faster than ever. I don't see cause to be concerned about a violent revolution. As for the greater good justification: given income redistribution reduces how much wealth is generated, which you acknowledge, it goes to reason that over an infinite timescale, the society without income redistribution will become infinitely wealthier than the one with. A permanent boost to the exponent of economic growth leads, over a long enough time period, to a cumulatively larger gain for the welfare of the poor than any increase in redistribution could provide them, since the benefits of a permanent increase in the growth rate are recurring.
  • radicalbyte 10y ago
    ..and any child with "bad" parents has to work ten times as hard because they've spent their entire life swimming against the current. There's a reason why certain communities have radically different outcomes. The more motivated kind set their offspring up so that the default outcome is, on average, success. They have to try hard to not succeed.
    • djrogers 10y ago
      > They have to try hard to not succeed. That is utter crap. They do have to make some bad decisions, but it's not like success is guaranteed for everyone who grows up in a white middle class neighborhood.
      • eastWestMath 10y ago
        And being tall doesn't mean you'll be a great basketball player, but it makes it way fucking easier.
      • CocaKoala 10y ago
        Just because it's possible to fail doesn't mean that it isn't easier to succeed. Consider the case of Eric Couch, who stole two cases of beer, drove 70 mp/h (30 miles per hour over the speed limit) and crashed, killing four people. Two hours after the crash, his BAC was .24%. He was 18. His lawyer argued that he suffered from 'affluenza', and he was sentenced to probation and therapy; note that Eric was a repeat offender (having been previously cited for Minor in Possession and Minor in Consumption of Alcohol. Eric Couch wasn't sentenced to a jail term until he violated the terms of his probation and fled to Mexico. Success isn't guaranteed, but does everybody get the same leeway as Eric Couch?
      • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        >it's not like success is guaranteed for everyone who grows up in a white middle class neighborhood. You know, if people can grow up in a privileged, middle-class neighborhood, unharmed by want or oppression, work reasonably hard, put in a normal level of effort, make reasonable-in-expectation decisions... and then wind up poor? Something is very wrong.
• ebencooke 10y ago
  I disagree because I think children should not be punished for the quality of their parent(s). I also think you are making a big (and incorrect) assumption that children who do not receive "investment" have parents that are neglecting them, rather than have parents who lack the means to make a substantial "investment".
  • Jabanga 10y ago
    I mean some people are born smarter than others. Maybe low IQ people deserve a monthly stipend, that high-IQ people are forced to pay, to compensate them for how unfair the universe was to them. I'm sorry for the facetiousness, but I just don't see any reasonable case for the government playing this kind of role in society. It all seems very moralizing and controlling.
    • TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      Does it work better when low IQ people "deserve" to be shafted by high IQ people for being stupid? Is that any less moralising and controlling?
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        How are they being shafted? As for whether they deserve to be born rich, poor, smart, dumb, it's not for the government to say who deserves to be born with what.
    • douche 10y ago
      Harrison Bergeron was supposed to be a work of satire, but I'm not sure it won't prove to be prescient, these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        That's frighteningly true.
  • 10y ago
• ikeyany 10y ago
  Quality schooling, basic health care, and a way to pay for college for academic excellence aren't going to take away all the nice things you can afford to treat your child to. A decent minimum line is as much helping you (a functioning, healthy society lasts much longer) as it is others. Every other first world country has those things I mentioned above for its citizens, and it's embarrassing how apathetic the public/Congress seem to be about it.
  • Jabanga 10y ago
    I don't see any basis for that. Substantial taxes could very well reduce how much one can invest into their own children. I also don't see how other countries doing it is a justification.
    • ikeyany 10y ago
      Do you really consider everyone paying their share to be 'substantial taxes'?
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        It depends what their share is.
      • douche 10y ago
        Everyone paying their share would be a flat tax, not the current top-heavy and over-complicated system where nearly half of Americans don't pay any income taxes, and the rest prop up a multi-billion dollar industry of leeches, trying to minimize the amount that they have to pay out.
• Frondo 10y ago
  Because they are all human beings living in the richest country on earth. Why shouldn't they?
• eastWestMath 10y ago
  Jesus fucking christ dude, it's not about giving parents the opportunity to see their children be successful. It's about giving children the chance to be successful.
  • Jabanga 10y ago
    That's a great ideal to strive toward, but I don't see the case for forcing everyone to adopt that ideal.
    • ikeyany 10y ago
      You know, you're welcome to live in one of the hellhole countries that don't care about promoting the general welfare. We have that "ideal" literally written in the constitution.
      • Jabanga 10y ago
        You're also welcome to not respond to me if my views bother you. I'm simply expressing my viewpoint. There is nothing in the Constitution about social welfare programs to provide equality of opportunity. It's all about the "general welfare", which had a distinctly non-redistribitive definition in the 18th century. > it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. - Thomas Jefferson
        • ikeyany 10y ago
          It's clear you're expressing your viewpoint, just know that they seem to be in line with sociopaths. Pulling the rug out from under others is right in line with what white supremacists believe.
          • Jabanga 10y ago
• AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Those kids whose parents don't invest anything in them? Some of them start stealing packages off of my front porch. (Yes, that literally happened to me. I know which kid did it, too. His mom caught him - so maybe I shouldn't list him as a kid whose parents weren't investing anything.) Some of them start breaking into houses. (Hasn't happened to me... yet.) Some of them start mugging people. A few of them get frustrated enough that they decide to kill as many people as they can. At some point there, do you start seeing reasons for us to start caring about what happens to those children? If not for the childrens' benefit, at least for our own?