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The government should financially incentivize people making >$100k (or some number at which the social security revenue for that individual is greater than outf

by jmpman 5y ago

The government should financially incentivize people making >$100k (or some number at which the social security revenue for that individual is greater than outflow) to have more children. Currently, the incentives are for low income individuals to have children. In my situation, the cost to feed/clothe additional children isn’t preventing me from having more kids. It’s the cost of childcare, and the cost of college. Assuming it’s $10k/year per child for childcare from the age 0-12, and you have multiple children in the age bracket, your income needs to be extremely high to afford. Even a state college at $20k/year, with multiple students, is going to strain parents anywhere in the bottom 99%. As unfortunate as the lack of economic mobility between bottom 20% and top 20% - it exists. So, children born to the top 20% are more likely to have future incomes in the top 20% - and more likely to be net contributors to Social Security. It’s hard for politicians to fix the mobility between income brackets, but it’s easy for them to alter the tax code to incentivize higher income families to have more children.

sul_tasto 5y ago
this makes a lot of sense to me, but I think it is politically impossible in the current political environment in the US.
souprock 5y ago
Places that provide childcare seem to have fewer children. There is a reasonable mechanism of action: without that childcare, families with children quickly give up on having two incomes, and thus the extra children are less of a burden. Once you entirely give up on a career, the problem of career impact for an additional child is gone. It's not as expensive as you think. I'm no 1%er, yet I have a dozen kids. Dual enrollment provides a nearly-free AA degree, knocking 2 years of a BS degree and eliminating all the general education requirements. With a spacing of 2 years from kid to kid, it's usually only one kid in college at a time. That assumes no scholarships.
- watwut 5y ago
  Basically, when women dont have option of going to work after kids, they end up at home whether they want it or not. I mean, that is literally what it is.
ishjoh 5y ago
I am always in favor of raising the child tax credit, which benefits higher earners and has a mechanism for folks who don't pay net taxes to receive a check. For tax year 2021 the credit will be $3,600 for children under 6. Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. Now on the other side of the coin, expenses. Some expenses grow linearly with each child. College education funds, pre-school, diapers. Most expenses, however, don't grow much or at all. With a 1st child everything needs to be bought. Car seat, crib, changing table, clothes, toys, etc. The good news is though, if you plan on having multiple children, the 2nd child can reuse most of those same items. I am a younger sibling, and constantly got hand-me-downs from my older brother, and sometimes I wasn't too happy about that, but as a parent it is crystal clear to my why my parents did that, and they did buy me enough new things that I never had any resentment over it. Now 2 to 3 has been a lot more expensive for us since we had to buy a bigger car to fit 3 car seats, but we're expecting everything else to be reused.
- curryst 5y ago
  > Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. That money has to come from somewhere. Given that a $100k salary is above the median, I would be unsurprised if you end up paying somewhere close to $5k in taxes to get your $5k benefit. It goes down a little bit because not everyone has kids and they subsidize you, and then up a little bit so you can subsidize people who don't earn enough to have contributed $5k. That's the problem with trying to subsidize things for the higher end of the earning spectrum. Those subsidies have to come from somewhere; either the even higher earning side of the spectrum, or the poorer side of the spectrum. We might recoup those costs in time through a more productive economy, but someone has to pay today for the benefits later.

by jmpman 5y ago

sul_tasto 5y ago

this makes a lot of sense to me, but I think it is politically impossible in the current political environment in the US.

souprock 5y ago

Places that provide childcare seem to have fewer children. There is a reasonable mechanism of action: without that childcare, families with children quickly give up on having two incomes, and thus the extra children are less of a burden. Once you entirely give up on a career, the problem of career impact for an additional child is gone. It's not as expensive as you think. I'm no 1%er, yet I have a dozen kids. Dual enrollment provides a nearly-free AA degree, knocking 2 years of a BS degree and eliminating all the general education requirements. With a spacing of 2 years from kid to kid, it's usually only one kid in college at a time. That assumes no scholarships.

watwut 5y ago
Basically, when women dont have option of going to work after kids, they end up at home whether they want it or not. I mean, that is literally what it is.

ishjoh 5y ago

I am always in favor of raising the child tax credit, which benefits higher earners and has a mechanism for folks who don't pay net taxes to receive a check. For tax year 2021 the credit will be $3,600 for children under 6. Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. Now on the other side of the coin, expenses. Some expenses grow linearly with each child. College education funds, pre-school, diapers. Most expenses, however, don't grow much or at all. With a 1st child everything needs to be bought. Car seat, crib, changing table, clothes, toys, etc. The good news is though, if you plan on having multiple children, the 2nd child can reuse most of those same items. I am a younger sibling, and constantly got hand-me-downs from my older brother, and sometimes I wasn't too happy about that, but as a parent it is crystal clear to my why my parents did that, and they did buy me enough new things that I never had any resentment over it. Now 2 to 3 has been a lot more expensive for us since we had to buy a bigger car to fit 3 car seats, but we're expecting everything else to be reused.

curryst 5y ago
> Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. That money has to come from somewhere. Given that a $100k salary is above the median, I would be unsurprised if you end up paying somewhere close to $5k in taxes to get your $5k benefit. It goes down a little bit because not everyone has kids and they subsidize you, and then up a little bit so you can subsidize people who don't earn enough to have contributed $5k. That's the problem with trying to subsidize things for the higher end of the earning spectrum. Those subsidies have to come from somewhere; either the even higher earning side of the spectrum, or the poorer side of the spectrum. We might recoup those costs in time through a more productive economy, but someone has to pay today for the benefits later.