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Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is the real problem. Low-skill high-ferti

by jl2718 5y ago

Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is the real problem. Low-skill high-fertility immigration will not solve it. Child tax credits will not solve it. Welfare programs will not solve it. These problems all exacerbate the problem by growing the population below the net-income line. You may say that these people are more necessary or useful than those above, but that is a different debate. Net-income-positive Americans are choosing not to be parents because the law is openly hostile to it. Some examples: Child support: The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. US/CA taxes take ~55%, so that leaves 12%. If you have a great tech salary of $150k, that leaves you with a living budget of $1500/mo. The only way to survive here on that is in your car. (I have done this. Not a career enhancer.) Meanwhile, nobody needs $4000/mo extra to raise a child, unless they are paying somebody else to do it. This is why women have a hard time finding mates. The only men that are willing to take that risk of relationship breakup are those with nothing to lose. It’s horribly dysgenic, and frankly awful for the kids it is trying to protect, because now they end up with a working mother and a deadbeat father, by design. And by the way, this is not a gendered issue. The first I became aware of it was by a woman that was forced to both give up her kids and pay her ex. Child care: The licensing, certification, and insurance requirements have turned this into a human farming business. When I was growing up, kids just sort of roamed, and then the police started notifying parents that they had to send them to certified daycare, so my mom got the certification until some professional daycare moved in and started calling the inspectors any time we went outside to play in the woods. Now it’s much worse; daycare costs more than most jobs pay, and those with nothing to lose just ignore the law anyway. The only way it makes legal sense to have children is if both parents are either on welfare, or part of an immigrant community that operates outside of the rules. My recommendation to my children will be to move out of the country immediately after graduation to a place that is more financially and legally family-friendly, then start finding a partner and having children right away. The opportunities for this decline much faster than any goals other than professional athletics.

crateless 5y ago
I have been recently picturing a dystopia (utopia?) wherein women sell their eggs to some kind of govt. agency which in turn hires women who are willing to carry babies to term. These babies are then raised in child group homes by state employees all the way from infancy. Meanwhile the state pays for their education until they either graduate or until some kind of arbitrary deadline. Thus the problem could become cost effective due to economies of scale thereby partially mitigating the cost problem. However, it is still unclear whether to then make childbirth opt-in or something along those lines. If we are going to farm kids, then why not do it properly? /s
- klipt 5y ago
  That would probably result in 99% of the population effectively being genocided. If the government is farming kids they'd probably only want eggs/sperm from the people most likely to produce high earners who can pay lots of tax. Healthy, tall, high IQ etc. 99% of men and women wouldn't qualify and their genes would go extinct.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    Logic says one thing but experience says another. Clearly they are currently providing reproduction incentives for the opposite. I think there is a common delusion that government is some kind of unified thoughtful entity with logic and foresight. In fact, it’s really just a very short-sighted fight over budget dollars, votes, and campaign contributions. So in reality, they would probably just replicate more of their most loyal voters. And then there are the agencies. SSA would try to increase the numbers of disabled so they can increase their budget. The FBI would try to increase the number of criminals. Senators would take contributions from industry to produce humans with specialized features like tiny hands and high tolerance for boredom. DOD…who knows. You get the point.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  > hires women who are willing to carry babies to term. We could probably use pigs as surrogates within the next 10 years if we really wanted to. We'd probably also be too squeamish to do it, though.
uejfiweun 5y ago
Yeah, there is simply just too much risk involved in marriage and children these days if you aren't above a certain financial line. In our current environment, where you can't afford a house and rent rapidly increases each year, the prospect of losing 50% or more of your income is simply too much to bear. I'd guess that in the next 10 years, these problems come to a head, and we end up with significant deregulation of some of these anachronistic policies. But it will get a lot more dire before this happens.
- jl2718 5y ago
  Actually my point is the opposite. That the risk is greater if you are above that line. I know many many people that are quite happy raising very large families with no job at all.
gruez 5y ago
Your numbers do not check out. >Child support: The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. Where are you getting the 33% figure from? Using the figures from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_raising_a_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_raising_a_child, see that for the $59,410 to $102,870 before tax income group (Average = $79,940), the average spent per year is 13,050, or 16.3% pre-tax. The percentages for the Less than $59,410 and More than $102,870 groups are 24.7% and 12.0% respectively, which suggests that as your income goes up, the percentage devoted to rasing a child goes down. > US/CA taxes take ~55%, so that leaves 12%. If you have a great tech salary of $150k, How are you getting 55%? According to https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator, at $150k salary, your effective rate is 32.3% and your marginal rate is 34.75%. This includes FICA. Playing around with the numbers, even a salary of $500k, your marginal rate is only 48.65%. >that leaves you with a living budget of $1500/mo. Using the numbers from the sources I've mentioned, you actually have a budget of $6287, and that's with 2 children. gross income: $150,000 take home (includes federal, FICA, state): $101,545 cost of 2 children: (234,900 / 18) * 2 = 26100 remaining: $75,445/yr, or $6287/month
- jl2718 5y ago
  That’s my point actually. Court-ordered child support payment minimums are massively greater than actual costs. Any by the way, even those USDA costs are ridiculously inflated. It’s based on survey data, not actual expenditures, and the people they ask have every reason to inflate the numbers (child support, welfare, tax credits, deductions, etc.). It’s mostly childcare and housing costs, but even the other categories are ridiculous, like hundreds a month per child on clothing and books. Come on. So far, I’ve gotten almost everything second-hand for almost nothing, and my son does just fine in a garage apartment with me.
- dionidium 5y ago
  Regarding your first rebuttal: you're agree with the person you're responding to that it costs far less than 33% of a middle- or upper-middle-class salary to raise a child. The argument is that the courts demand child support payments from non-custodial parents far in excess of the actual cost of raising the child.
medium_burrito 5y ago
Strong agreement here. For the net-contributor class, it's absolutely brutal. 1) Incomes are lower than they used to be in the US and Europe than they used to be. Lots of talk about Europe's social saftey net, but less about the lack of well paying jobs (especially compared to the US). 2) Instability of work- our generation does not expect to have one job their whole life. We face being laid off without warning even from very well paying jobs. Unless you are financially independent, this makes it scary to plan for the future. 3) Living far away from parents + family that provide free childcare. 4) Several massive recessions that have severely damaged the professional prospects of the younger generations, to the point where they have significantly less wealth than previous generations did at the same age.
lalaland1125 5y ago
> The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. US/CA taxes take ~55%, so that leaves 12%. This is flat out wrong. California child support payments are done out of "disposable income", not total income. So you would pay 15% in child support and be left with 30% of your income (actually you would pay less as California allows you to deduct things like health insurance and other necessary expenses in addition to deducting taxes).
tomjen3 5y ago
>Low-skill high-fertility Are coming the to US with the hope of parents everywhere: that their children will live a better life than they had the chance to do. Most of those immigrants dream is to see their children graduate university and to be safely middle class.
- jl2718 5y ago
  >>Low-skill high-fertility >Are coming the to US with the hope of parents everywhere: that their children will live a better life than they had the chance to do. (In their native country) > Most of those immigrants dream is to see their children graduate university and to be safely middle class. Versus US parents, who obviously don’t believe this is realistic with a large family. Same ‘dreams’, different standards. Frankly, the data show that there is not a lot of space at the top.

by jl2718 5y ago

crateless 5y ago

I have been recently picturing a dystopia (utopia?) wherein women sell their eggs to some kind of govt. agency which in turn hires women who are willing to carry babies to term. These babies are then raised in child group homes by state employees all the way from infancy. Meanwhile the state pays for their education until they either graduate or until some kind of arbitrary deadline. Thus the problem could become cost effective due to economies of scale thereby partially mitigating the cost problem. However, it is still unclear whether to then make childbirth opt-in or something along those lines. If we are going to farm kids, then why not do it properly? /s

klipt 5y ago
That would probably result in 99% of the population effectively being genocided. If the government is farming kids they'd probably only want eggs/sperm from the people most likely to produce high earners who can pay lots of tax. Healthy, tall, high IQ etc. 99% of men and women wouldn't qualify and their genes would go extinct.
- jl2718 5y ago
  Logic says one thing but experience says another. Clearly they are currently providing reproduction incentives for the opposite. I think there is a common delusion that government is some kind of unified thoughtful entity with logic and foresight. In fact, it’s really just a very short-sighted fight over budget dollars, votes, and campaign contributions. So in reality, they would probably just replicate more of their most loyal voters. And then there are the agencies. SSA would try to increase the numbers of disabled so they can increase their budget. The FBI would try to increase the number of criminals. Senators would take contributions from industry to produce humans with specialized features like tiny hands and high tolerance for boredom. DOD…who knows. You get the point.
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
> hires women who are willing to carry babies to term. We could probably use pigs as surrogates within the next 10 years if we really wanted to. We'd probably also be too squeamish to do it, though.

uejfiweun 5y ago

Yeah, there is simply just too much risk involved in marriage and children these days if you aren't above a certain financial line. In our current environment, where you can't afford a house and rent rapidly increases each year, the prospect of losing 50% or more of your income is simply too much to bear. I'd guess that in the next 10 years, these problems come to a head, and we end up with significant deregulation of some of these anachronistic policies. But it will get a lot more dire before this happens.

jl2718 5y ago
Actually my point is the opposite. That the risk is greater if you are above that line. I know many many people that are quite happy raising very large families with no job at all.

gruez 5y ago

Your numbers do not check out. >Child support: The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. Where are you getting the 33% figure from? Using the figures from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_raising_a_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_raising_a_child, see that for the $59,410 to $102,870 before tax income group (Average = $79,940), the average spent per year is 13,050, or 16.3% pre-tax. The percentages for the Less than $59,410 and More than $102,870 groups are 24.7% and 12.0% respectively, which suggests that as your income goes up, the percentage devoted to rasing a child goes down. > US/CA taxes take ~55%, so that leaves 12%. If you have a great tech salary of $150k, How are you getting 55%? According to https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator, at $150k salary, your effective rate is 32.3% and your marginal rate is 34.75%. This includes FICA. Playing around with the numbers, even a salary of $500k, your marginal rate is only 48.65%. >that leaves you with a living budget of $1500/mo. Using the numbers from the sources I've mentioned, you actually have a budget of $6287, and that's with 2 children. gross income: $150,000 take home (includes federal, FICA, state): $101,545 cost of 2 children: (234,900 / 18) * 2 = 26100 remaining: $75,445/yr, or $6287/month

jl2718 5y ago
That’s my point actually. Court-ordered child support payment minimums are massively greater than actual costs. Any by the way, even those USDA costs are ridiculously inflated. It’s based on survey data, not actual expenditures, and the people they ask have every reason to inflate the numbers (child support, welfare, tax credits, deductions, etc.). It’s mostly childcare and housing costs, but even the other categories are ridiculous, like hundreds a month per child on clothing and books. Come on. So far, I’ve gotten almost everything second-hand for almost nothing, and my son does just fine in a garage apartment with me.
dionidium 5y ago
Regarding your first rebuttal: you're agree with the person you're responding to that it costs far less than 33% of a middle- or upper-middle-class salary to raise a child. The argument is that the courts demand child support payments from non-custodial parents far in excess of the actual cost of raising the child.

medium_burrito 5y ago

Strong agreement here. For the net-contributor class, it's absolutely brutal. 1) Incomes are lower than they used to be in the US and Europe than they used to be. Lots of talk about Europe's social saftey net, but less about the lack of well paying jobs (especially compared to the US). 2) Instability of work- our generation does not expect to have one job their whole life. We face being laid off without warning even from very well paying jobs. Unless you are financially independent, this makes it scary to plan for the future. 3) Living far away from parents + family that provide free childcare. 4) Several massive recessions that have severely damaged the professional prospects of the younger generations, to the point where they have significantly less wealth than previous generations did at the same age.

lalaland1125 5y ago

> The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. US/CA taxes take ~55%, so that leaves 12%. This is flat out wrong. California child support payments are done out of "disposable income", not total income. So you would pay 15% in child support and be left with 30% of your income (actually you would pay less as California allows you to deduct things like health insurance and other necessary expenses in addition to deducting taxes).

tomjen3 5y ago

>Low-skill high-fertility Are coming the to US with the hope of parents everywhere: that their children will live a better life than they had the chance to do. Most of those immigrants dream is to see their children graduate university and to be safely middle class.

jl2718 5y ago
>>Low-skill high-fertility >Are coming the to US with the hope of parents everywhere: that their children will live a better life than they had the chance to do. (In their native country) > Most of those immigrants dream is to see their children graduate university and to be safely middle class. Versus US parents, who obviously don’t believe this is realistic with a large family. Same ‘dreams’, different standards. Frankly, the data show that there is not a lot of space at the top.