5 ms·
There's a bunch of criticism, but this is in my view the only general approach that makes sense (globally) and should have been done 50 years ago already. IMO
by myrmidon 5mo ago
There's a bunch of criticism, but this is in my view the only general approach that makes sense (globally) and should have been done 50 years ago already.
IMO a big factor for the whole sub-replacement fertility in developed nations (and resulting demographic problems) is that the state has invalidated/replaced all the economical gain that families got from children (cheap "workers" and elder care), but the chld-related costs to families have only increased.
Society gains massively from future workers/tax payers, but economical incentives are not aligned at all; children cost their parents a lot, society reaps all the benefits, but does not compensate parents enough economically.
- lokar 5mo agoSociety pays a lot for children as well. Including members without children.
- dude250711 5mo agoE.g. they have "free" higher education in Germany isn't it? Maybe not even just for domestic students?
- lokar 5mo agoI know a big factor in Korea is social relationships between the genders (expectations about housework, childcare, etc). The current arrangements are not attractive to many women. How is it in Germany? I would guess better
- em-bee 5mo agonot much. the reality is that women still take a hit on their potential careers and income, and are expected to do most of the childcare work. another problem that i see not only in germany is that men are not trusted with children or being capable of doing housework. also on the attractiveness for women, germany being less traditional means that more women are willing to break traditions, so even if the situation there is better for them, women are still less interested, which means the effect in the end is the same.
- lokar 5mo agoA mismatch between expectations (of women) and the current status (of men, and society).
- utilize1808 5mo agoThe fact that birth rate is so low in countries with good social security safe net suggests that the society isn't paying enough.
- hn_throwaway_99 5mo agoNot necessarily. It's possible that no amount of money would solve this problem. Birth control inherently broke the previously built evolutionary mechanism that insured that the extremely strong built in desire for sex would result in kids. That's no longer the case, and a lot of people would decide to not have kids even if money were no object. As you point out, Finland famously has incredible family support, and also a birth rate under 1.3.
- condis 5mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- lokar 5mo agoOne possibility is that wealthy people with few (often just 1) child, a stable home life, fewer financial pressures, etc spend a lot more time on the child. And this keeps them out of trouble more often. Also, a lot of the education around avoiding pregnancy is about the financial future of the child (eg getting present in high school will ruin your life). For that to have an impact, the child has to think they have some kind of future.
- _DeadFred_ 5mo ago'having a child removes your future opportunity so don't have a child until you are ready' resonates more with people with future opportunity.
- condis 5mo ago
- myrmidon 5mo agoYes, but not commensurately. A child might cost its parents somewhere beyond $200k, the parents only get a tiny fraction of this from the state. And the public paying for education is not a subsidy for parents in my view, but an investment into the children, i.e. future taxpayers (=> the parents don't really gain from that).
- lokar 5mo agoI think you are arguing inconsistently here. You can't claim at the same time that we should recognize all of the benefits of children (in their adulthood) and at the same time not recognize the cost to society to educate them. It's a subsidy, a wise subsidy and money well spent, but it's still a cost.
- myrmidon 5mo agoMy point is: Society itself recoups the investment into education very easily (from competent taxpaying workers some years later), but the main cost of raising children is paid by parents, and they don't get back anything (economically). All the benefits that used to be there (adolescents helping with farm/work, children taking care of aging parents) became more and more irrelevant, but general costs of raising children (to parents) have not decreased at all (and "reputational" cost of just skipping parenthood is at rock bottom, too, so that is no longer pushing prospective parents towards economically irrational decisions, either).
- thefz 5mo ago> A child might cost its parents somewhere beyond $200k, the parents only get a tiny fraction of this from the state. Yet another reason for others not to chip in your bad ROI decisions then
- djvdq 5mo agoPeople who don't ride trains also pay taxes for rail. People who are not flying are also financing airports from taxes. This is why butthurt "childless pay taxes for schools but not using them" is super stupid
- hobofan 5mo agoYou are not wrong. But the reality of this government in Germany is that they are also cutting down on the assistance that parents receive. With both of those combined they are currently just redistributing wealth to the elderly that have created this mess.
- Projectiboga 5mo agoSome couples are infertile so this discriminates against them.
- medvezhenok 5mo agoSoviet Union had childlessness tax, but you were exempt if you could prove infertility
- ghusto 5mo agoAdoption.
- myrmidon 5mo agoIMO Germany is in a pretty tough spot, and lots of countries will run into similar problems because of demographics. It is very difficult to diminish pension benefits that were promised 30 years ago (when the worker/retiree ration was 4:1 instead of like 2:1) and almost half your voters would be affected (>40% of voters are over 60). Any "solution" is going to hurt and feel unfair to a bunch of people and it is very difficult to make "young-people-politics" when most of your voters are old (problems probably need to escalate more to achieve approval for anything that financially hurts retirees). People sometimes like to point at wealth disparity as a real root cause for the floundering pension/elder care system, but even completely disowning the richest 10% of Germans would fund the pension system for less than a decade, so no easy solution from that direction, either.
- triceratops 5mo ago> even completely disowning the richest 10% of Germans would fund the pension system for less than a decade This is a very naive take that assumes wealth gets turned into pallets of cash and those pallets get fed into a furnace when the cash is spent. None of that is true. Disowning the richest 10% of Germans would be economically disastrous. Levying a 1% wealth tax, payable in the form of assets rather than cash, would produce a very different outcome. The assets should go into a sovereign wealth fund run by some passive algorithm, and its returns must be used solely to reduce income taxes.
- 7bit 5mo agoThe approach is completely backwards. You incentivise having kids, not punish those who do not have kids or worse, those who can't get kids.
- spwa4 5mo agoYou forget the problem that's being solved here. It's not how to incentivize having kids. It's how to increase taxes while reducing pensions. Increasing the obligations of everyone currently working while decreasing what the state provides at the same time. The full details are: this is an additional 2.5% non-progressive income tax, two thirds paid by employers, one third by employees. Other "currently proposed" changes: Active aging: the elderly need to keep working longer. Elderly care is pushed onto families. Elderly care is now much less a right that an individual can enforce. This changes the situation to that the state must put in efforts to care for elderly rather than giving individuals the right to elderly care. Right now an elderly person can sue the government if they fail to provide. Other various rights are being curtailed. Such as the right to "digital inclusion". The state's obligation to provide access to care offline is dropped.
- soco 5mo agoAnd why wouldn't the elderly need to keep working longer? They did benefit from all the new medical stuff extending their active lives, so how about giving back by working a few years more? It's also their own decision to have less children, thus less workers, and also they generally don't want more immigrants, so there - it's either more work, or magic. And we don't know how to do magic.
- spwa4 5mo agoThey voted and paid taxes based on a deal that was presented to them, in writing. Now the deal is being changed.
- soco 5mo agoDeals kept changing, both the economy and politics never kept the same line over time. We even vote every few years for a deal presented in writing and it never turns out as written, so I'm not sure why some folks could claim with a straight face whatever historical promise. And let's be honest, there was never a "written deal", ever - what you mention here is simply an expectation building up for the last decades and currently ebbing down.
- djoldman 5mo ago> Society gains massively from future workers/tax payers It seems to me that, all other things equal, future workers/tax payers will lead to economic increases proportional to their costs. A reasonable forward looking plan / budget scales with the population size. Therefore there would be no need for these special one off exceptions and nudges. All these little bandaids add up to complexity that necessitates more bandaids.
- myrmidon 5mo agoThis only applies in a steady state. If your populations shrinks quickly, you end up needing to run the infrastructure (and elder care!) for a whole country with too few working-age people. This is a massive problem, and some incentive complexity to avoid it is certainly worth it.
- Jamesbeam 5mo agoI think that someone gets an overall tax rebate when they have children is a reasonable decision for a society to make. But the real problem here is that there are a ton of adults who would love to have kids but are medically not able to for a bunch of reasons, from autoimmune disease to genetic differences to the simple fact that young people get cancer too and infertility because of treatment or the illness is a thing too. Is it really wise for a society to treat them as if they willingly deny the society additional benefactors and valuable younger members? It feels wrong for me that you get treated unequally by the law because of circumstances that are not choice-based and your decision to make in the first place.
- dchftcs 5mo agoLots of things that are wrong are also imposed on parents. Not to say involuntarily childless people are to be blamed for anything, or that two wrongs make a right, but society is immensely misaligned against having children, and forced charity already exists in various forms whether you like it. But honestly, developed countries not having children itself isn't that bad a thing. I feel that our existence and the hedonistic treadmill drains too many scarce resources, and population growth should not last long. On the other hand, it seems societies still gain productivity in spite of the slow population growth. There should be plenty of slack for everyone, so that middle-class parents don't feel like they are constantly in a deathmarch, and voluntarily childless people don't need to be pressured. There's an immense misallocation of resources that is hard to solve, and you end up seeing proposals like this.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5mo agoA parent has to pay for the dentist of the child (and so much more). But more importantly, people die before enjoying their pension and they don't get a refund.
- thefz 5mo agoWhat about taxing the rich instead of putting yet another burden on the young.
- bigballsbjorn 5mo agoagain, the problem is demographic. people like you are not able to see beyond the first order effects. if you finance the social system from the rich you will fundamentally not fix the issue. you can't eat euros.
- thefz 5mo agoCan't even eat babies (unless you visited a certain disgraced financier's island)
- utilize1808 5mo agoIf there are no young people to produce resources and care, your money is just numbers.
- GoodJokes 5mo ago[dead]