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In my country "middle class" means people that pay a lot of taxes and have little left for their own kids. When the government takes more than half of your inco

In my country "middle class" means people that pay a lot of taxes and have little left for their own kids. When the government takes more than half of your income to give it to others and when the healthcare is free, but kind of missing, having your own kids is sometimes an economic challenge, especially when the fertility age is when people are also juniors and financially lacking; pushing childbirth to later in life is challenged by reduced female fertility rate over 30 years old.

boomlinde 6y ago
> In my country "middle class" means people that pay a lot of taxes and have little left for their own kids. If that's anywhere like where I live, "lower class" means people that don't pay as much taxes but on the other hand end up having even less money left. Yet, lower class people tend to have more children and fertility has a negative correlation to income. Perhaps it's a matter of education and ambition rather than the economic challenge.
- quantified 6y ago
  Maybe it’s that offspring are a form of survival wealth that become less necessary when you have more material wealth in your house and your community? Pure speculation as I read this.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    What is "survival wealth"? Is that "savings and investments for future"?
    - quantified 6y ago
      Essentially. I just coined that while writing it, glad someone made sense of it. “How do I survive when I’m unable to fully provide or do for myself?” If my children are likely to be successful I don’t need to spread my luck out among 12 of them. As others have pointed out, they are labor-intensive and if you buy into certain socio-economic structures they’re fairly capital-intensive too. I wonder if some if it is also the capital intensity of children, the higher the monetary investment you bring (clothes, gear, schools, activities) the harder it is to have lots unless you have the money.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  Again in my country (this is where I know the situation best) "lower class" means you get money from the government to have kids, as a percentage of total income it can be quite significant, up to 100%. The government is practically killing the population in a Darwinian sense, discouraging intelligent and educated people to have kids and encouraging the others to. It is the way to the movie Idiocracy.
  - boomlinde 6y ago
    Well, here everyone gets the same child benefits per child. Everyone gets the same generous amount of child leave. If you're poor you can get different kinds of benefits like for housing, but hardly enough to leave me with less money than someone who can't otherwise afford rent. Yet we see the same tendency here. Lower income families tend to have more children despite earning less in net. So I think you have to at least consider the possibility that it has less to do with the financial hardships, at least in absolute terms of income, than with some correlated factors in your home country. For example, the low income population here are generally less educated. Perhaps people end up more aware of the consequences of having children through education. Maybe there's an underlying factor that leaves people with both a propensity for academic achievement and an inclination towards having less children, like time consuming dedication to an interest or a career. Perhaps higher income parents have higher and more costly standards for their children. I don't know what country you live in that the middle class generally ends up with less disposable money than the lower class through wealth redistribution programs, but it's not the case here or in many other countries where the negative income-children correlation can be observed. I won't comment on darwinism or the idea of Idiocracy as a realistic outcome of any kind of selection process other than to say that it's stupid. If you are able to have children but won't, you have yourself to blame for nature selecting against you, if that's at all an issue to you.
    - AdrianB1 6y ago
      I am not saying that people in low income class earn more than middle class through redistribution; I am saying that for low income class having kids can be the main income source, more kids means more money, in some cases the money received for the kids are the only income for the entire family. Regarding to "If you are able to have children but won't", that applies to uneducated people; if you can have kids and you won't because you have not enough money to raise them properly, pay for education and health care (state health care it is free and almost worthless) then people decide not to have kids in such conditions. If you are uneducated, with drinking problems and you don't care about kids, you have as many as you can so you can drink all the money that you get. Not kidding and not exaggerating at all.
fierarul 6y ago
> healthcare is free, but kind of missing Reading this part made me think "which other country is like Romania?" Sure enough, the author is from Bucharest, Romania.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  Interesting, I have always associated Romania (and most of post-Soviet Europe) with low taxes. Does it really have Scandinavian-level taxation?
  - fierarul 6y ago
    We pay 10% of our pre-tax salary for "health care"; which you pray to God not to need and most good companies offer private healthcare subscription to compensate/entice. We pay 25% for a pension that may never come. The state also computes pensions in magical "points" which means they can arbitrarily tweak in the far future how much of your current money you see back. We pay "only" 10% in income taxes and some/many IT positions are exempt (so far). Once we have our salary in hand, we pay 19% in VAT.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      That's still much lower than most European countries like Germany and Scandinavia.
      - elygre 6y ago
        It sounded like 10+10+25=45%. That matches Norway, with a highest tax on salary of 46.4%.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Funny, to hear a complaint from Romania about high taxes when Romanian devs enjoy some of the lowest taxes in Europe. I'm guessing you haven't lived in Belgium, Germany or Scandinavia.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  Funny, living in Romania have getting almost nothing back for the taxes is a reason for complaints. About 60% of the tax money goes to various forms of welfare (my wife is one of the best government experts in this stuff), but when you need to go to a hospital and they tell you they don't have drugs or even bandages and you need to buy it with your own money in order to get a surgery, then these "lowest taxes in Europe" have a different meaning. One year ago I got an offer to work in France, so I made a comparison: tax rate is a lot lower there for a similar income. At the same time inflation rate is higher in Romania, credit is a lot more expensive, corruption a lot higher, so the taxes are too high for what you get.

boomlinde 6y ago

> In my country "middle class" means people that pay a lot of taxes and have little left for their own kids. If that's anywhere like where I live, "lower class" means people that don't pay as much taxes but on the other hand end up having even less money left. Yet, lower class people tend to have more children and fertility has a negative correlation to income. Perhaps it's a matter of education and ambition rather than the economic challenge.

quantified 6y ago
Maybe it’s that offspring are a form of survival wealth that become less necessary when you have more material wealth in your house and your community? Pure speculation as I read this.
- sukilot 6y ago
  What is "survival wealth"? Is that "savings and investments for future"?
  - quantified 6y ago
    Essentially. I just coined that while writing it, glad someone made sense of it. “How do I survive when I’m unable to fully provide or do for myself?” If my children are likely to be successful I don’t need to spread my luck out among 12 of them. As others have pointed out, they are labor-intensive and if you buy into certain socio-economic structures they’re fairly capital-intensive too. I wonder if some if it is also the capital intensity of children, the higher the monetary investment you bring (clothes, gear, schools, activities) the harder it is to have lots unless you have the money.
AdrianB1 6y ago
Again in my country (this is where I know the situation best) "lower class" means you get money from the government to have kids, as a percentage of total income it can be quite significant, up to 100%. The government is practically killing the population in a Darwinian sense, discouraging intelligent and educated people to have kids and encouraging the others to. It is the way to the movie Idiocracy.
- boomlinde 6y ago
  Well, here everyone gets the same child benefits per child. Everyone gets the same generous amount of child leave. If you're poor you can get different kinds of benefits like for housing, but hardly enough to leave me with less money than someone who can't otherwise afford rent. Yet we see the same tendency here. Lower income families tend to have more children despite earning less in net. So I think you have to at least consider the possibility that it has less to do with the financial hardships, at least in absolute terms of income, than with some correlated factors in your home country. For example, the low income population here are generally less educated. Perhaps people end up more aware of the consequences of having children through education. Maybe there's an underlying factor that leaves people with both a propensity for academic achievement and an inclination towards having less children, like time consuming dedication to an interest or a career. Perhaps higher income parents have higher and more costly standards for their children. I don't know what country you live in that the middle class generally ends up with less disposable money than the lower class through wealth redistribution programs, but it's not the case here or in many other countries where the negative income-children correlation can be observed. I won't comment on darwinism or the idea of Idiocracy as a realistic outcome of any kind of selection process other than to say that it's stupid. If you are able to have children but won't, you have yourself to blame for nature selecting against you, if that's at all an issue to you.
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    I am not saying that people in low income class earn more than middle class through redistribution; I am saying that for low income class having kids can be the main income source, more kids means more money, in some cases the money received for the kids are the only income for the entire family. Regarding to "If you are able to have children but won't", that applies to uneducated people; if you can have kids and you won't because you have not enough money to raise them properly, pay for education and health care (state health care it is free and almost worthless) then people decide not to have kids in such conditions. If you are uneducated, with drinking problems and you don't care about kids, you have as many as you can so you can drink all the money that you get. Not kidding and not exaggerating at all.

fierarul 6y ago

> healthcare is free, but kind of missing Reading this part made me think "which other country is like Romania?" Sure enough, the author is from Bucharest, Romania.

burntoutfire 6y ago
Interesting, I have always associated Romania (and most of post-Soviet Europe) with low taxes. Does it really have Scandinavian-level taxation?
- fierarul 6y ago
  We pay 10% of our pre-tax salary for "health care"; which you pray to God not to need and most good companies offer private healthcare subscription to compensate/entice. We pay 25% for a pension that may never come. The state also computes pensions in magical "points" which means they can arbitrarily tweak in the far future how much of your current money you see back. We pay "only" 10% in income taxes and some/many IT positions are exempt (so far). Once we have our salary in hand, we pay 19% in VAT.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    That's still much lower than most European countries like Germany and Scandinavia.
    - elygre 6y ago
      It sounded like 10+10+25=45%. That matches Norway, with a highest tax on salary of 46.4%.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

Funny, to hear a complaint from Romania about high taxes when Romanian devs enjoy some of the lowest taxes in Europe. I'm guessing you haven't lived in Belgium, Germany or Scandinavia.

AdrianB1 6y ago
Funny, living in Romania have getting almost nothing back for the taxes is a reason for complaints. About 60% of the tax money goes to various forms of welfare (my wife is one of the best government experts in this stuff), but when you need to go to a hospital and they tell you they don't have drugs or even bandages and you need to buy it with your own money in order to get a surgery, then these "lowest taxes in Europe" have a different meaning. One year ago I got an offer to work in France, so I made a comparison: tax rate is a lot lower there for a similar income. At the same time inflation rate is higher in Romania, credit is a lot more expensive, corruption a lot higher, so the taxes are too high for what you get.