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Ah but degrees don't guarantee you stable employment. Perhaps child-bearing should be limited to people with at least $100k in the bank to cover emergencies, pl

Ah but degrees don't guarantee you stable employment. Perhaps child-bearing should be limited to people with at least $100k in the bank to cover emergencies, plus a STEM degree? Maybe a savings account and a STEM degree and N years of experience, to make sure they aren't one of those people with a CS degree who can't code? Alternately, here is a good way of ensuring a minimum level of economic stability for everyone: a social safety net. Used successfully by countries ranging from Germany to Singapore to Sweden! I think there is some cultural difference in how to perceive kids as a starting point, though. Here (Denmark) such programs are particularly popular when aimed at parents, because parents are seen as performing a service for society, in raising the next generation. That feels to many people like something that is not only the parents' responsibility to support financially, since the kids will become the next generation of the country's citizens, not only the next generation of their specific family.

aianus 12y ago
For what it's worth I wouldn't have a kid without $1 million in liquid assets set aside for him. It seems evil to me to have a kid without enough money to feel confident he'll never have to work for money. But then most people think I'm nuts.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  What makes you think $1 million in liquid assets is enough to plan for the next ~100 years?
  - aianus 12y ago
    Nothing's for sure but you can live pretty comfortably on ~$15k a year and it's pretty easy to earn 1.5% more than inflation on $1 million.
    - kasey_junk 12y ago
      Without trying to poke holes in your economic assumptions (which I think I could), giving your kid 15K a year seems a lot less valuable than teaching them self reliance, logical reasoning, frugality, a love of education/learning, work ethic, etc. You can do all of those things without being a rich parent, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that a trust fund impairs someones ability to learn these things. The idea that teaching a kid to make their own way in the world is cruel seems downright backwards to me...
      - aianus 12y ago
        Well they didn't choose to be born so leaving them with the option of killing themselves or spending most of their lives doing things they don't enjoy just to stay alive seems cruel to me. I would hope I could teach them all of those things you outlined and have them be happy and productive on their own terms, not some other rich guy's.
        ars 12y ago
        > or spending most of their lives doing things they don't enjoy just to stay alive seems cruel to me. I assume you mean poverty? The parent having money is associated with kids having less money later in life, but it's not the cause of it. If you want them to do things they enjoy give them skills and confidence. If you give them money instead you do them harm. > I would hope I could teach them all of those things you outlined and have them be happy and productive on their own terms, not some other rich guy's. You can't. It's a reality of humanity that giving people things too easily leads to misery. People need to WORK for their success if they are to be happy. I'm very tempted to advise you not to have kids because of your weird views, but I won't, because I suspect you are actually just testing out your views to see what other people think of them. If you are willing to learn from the replies you got then you'll do fine.
        _delirium 12y ago
        > People need to WORK for their success if they are to be happy. I would guess this is not true on average. If anything, I would guess the opposite: the Waltons, Kochs, Kennedys, etc., who inherited their money and are able to do whatever kind of bullshit they want with it, are happier.
- jtbigwoo 12y ago
  It's a good thing for you (and all of us) that most people think you're nuts. If the threshold for having a kid was $1MM in the bank, our population would crash and our economy would be doomed.
- anon1385 12y ago
  If everybody did that it would cause a demographic crisis. Who exactly do you expect to be looking after you when you are retired (growing your food, manufacturing your medication, diagnosing your ailments etc etc) and only 0.01% of the population have had children in the last 50 years. Other people having children is actually a vital service to the rest of society. Or at least those of us hoping to live for at least another 30-40 years, which will require a younger generation to provide the goods and services we will need to stay alive. This point seems to be missed by a lot of libertarians (who are frequently childless single young men) in their anger about parents getting support from the government.
  - aianus 12y ago
    Hopefully robots by that time. Anyways, I'm not really interested in living past the age when I'm too old and unhealthy to work. Sounds awful.
  - streptomycin 12y ago
    How do you expect endless increases in population to affect the climate?
    - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
      That's irrelevant, because developed countries (i.e. the countries that are in the position to have a social safety net) almost universally have shrinking populations, not growing ones.
      - streptomycin 12y ago
        It's not irrelevant. More people (especially more people in developed countries) = more CO2. You can't spin that away. Even if the US population goes from 300M to 200M, that would produce more CO2 than going from 300M to 100M.
- ars 12y ago
  By the time you have $1 million you will be too old to have a kid (especially if female). People really need to start getting married earlier. If you marry in your early twenties having a child at that time is not a problem, even if you don't have tons of savings yet. And aside from the biology of having a child late, simply raising a child is much harder when you are older (late thirties), because your energy level really starts diverging from theirs. (Obviously you can make it work, I'm only saying it gets harder.)
  - aianus 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure men can have children into their 70s. And with $1 million I don't have to raise the kid by myself like normal people. I can use nannies and boarding schools. My parents already gave a standard middle-class upbringing. If I can't do better by my children, what's the point?
    - ars 12y ago
      > I'm pretty sure men can have children into their 70s. Sometimes, but sperm quality declines, leading to more birth defects and it takes longer to succeed. And a 70 year old is simply not a suitable father. I assume you were planning a may/cecember marriage? Which is pretty cruel to the wife, and to the kids who will loose their father MUCH too early. Kids need their father very much in their 30's. If you are waiting long enough that you are dead, or even just declined you are not doing well by them. > I don't have to raise the kid by myself like normal people. I can use nannies and boarding schools. You don't even have kids and already you hate them? > My parents already gave a standard middle-class upbringing. If I can't do better by my children, what's the point? OK, now you REALLY make no sense. A sentence before you want to give them a horrible childhood (using nannies too much leads to attachment issues, and various disorders). And now you want to do better? I have a feeling you have no idea whatsoever about what children actually need out of childhood. It's not money. It's love, attention, and approval. Having lots of money is detrimental to all of them. And your standard is ridiculous anyway - if every generation refused to have kids until they could do it "better" no one at all would have kids.
Kenji 12y ago
"Ah but degrees don't guarantee you stable employment." If the degree benefits your employment chance, you should have done it before you have kids. If the degree does not benefit your employment chance, then why do it at all? Either way, finish it before. Look, what I don't understand is people having kids, knowing fine well that they don't have the time and/or money to support them and then whine for public funding and about a lack thereof. The whole thing is completely self-inflicted. Why should the state support people who lack the most basic amount of foresight and coerce everyone else into paying for their faults?
- _delirium 12y ago
  > The whole thing is completely self-inflicted. No, it's inflicted by a broken society. In a working society, at least a working first-world society, everyone has at least a basic standard of living. This allows both a flexible economic system (entrepreneurship, job-changing, etc.) and family life to coexist: your company going bankrupt does not mean your kid can't attend school or eat. The American solution seems to be that people should have a corporate job for life with the old IBM or Amoco, which provides both ultra-stable employment and benefits (company-provided childcare, parental leave, health insurance, etc.) and only those people are "deserving" of having kids.
  - Kenji 12y ago
    "No, it's inflicted by a broken society." No, it's not. The broken society didn't make the woman pregnant and give birth. Also, 'broken' sounds really melodramatic. "In a working society, at least a working first-world society, everyone has at least a basic standard of living." Is having and maintaining a Ferrari a basic standard of living? No? Well, that's how expensive kids are, no, they're even more expensive. That is a very ambitious basic standard you're setting here. Obviously, this is going to cost uninvolved people heaps of money just because everyone thinks they are entitled to make as many children as they want regardless of their ability to support them. It's a huge burden on everyone else's back. The pinnacle of selfishness.
    - _delirium 12y ago

aianus 12y ago

For what it's worth I wouldn't have a kid without $1 million in liquid assets set aside for him. It seems evil to me to have a kid without enough money to feel confident he'll never have to work for money. But then most people think I'm nuts.

kasey_junk 12y ago
What makes you think $1 million in liquid assets is enough to plan for the next ~100 years?
- aianus 12y ago
  Nothing's for sure but you can live pretty comfortably on ~$15k a year and it's pretty easy to earn 1.5% more than inflation on $1 million.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    Without trying to poke holes in your economic assumptions (which I think I could), giving your kid 15K a year seems a lot less valuable than teaching them self reliance, logical reasoning, frugality, a love of education/learning, work ethic, etc. You can do all of those things without being a rich parent, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that a trust fund impairs someones ability to learn these things. The idea that teaching a kid to make their own way in the world is cruel seems downright backwards to me...
    - aianus 12y ago
      Well they didn't choose to be born so leaving them with the option of killing themselves or spending most of their lives doing things they don't enjoy just to stay alive seems cruel to me. I would hope I could teach them all of those things you outlined and have them be happy and productive on their own terms, not some other rich guy's.
      - ars 12y ago
        > or spending most of their lives doing things they don't enjoy just to stay alive seems cruel to me. I assume you mean poverty? The parent having money is associated with kids having less money later in life, but it's not the cause of it. If you want them to do things they enjoy give them skills and confidence. If you give them money instead you do them harm. > I would hope I could teach them all of those things you outlined and have them be happy and productive on their own terms, not some other rich guy's. You can't. It's a reality of humanity that giving people things too easily leads to misery. People need to WORK for their success if they are to be happy. I'm very tempted to advise you not to have kids because of your weird views, but I won't, because I suspect you are actually just testing out your views to see what other people think of them. If you are willing to learn from the replies you got then you'll do fine.
        _delirium 12y ago
        > People need to WORK for their success if they are to be happy. I would guess this is not true on average. If anything, I would guess the opposite: the Waltons, Kochs, Kennedys, etc., who inherited their money and are able to do whatever kind of bullshit they want with it, are happier.
jtbigwoo 12y ago
It's a good thing for you (and all of us) that most people think you're nuts. If the threshold for having a kid was $1MM in the bank, our population would crash and our economy would be doomed.
anon1385 12y ago
If everybody did that it would cause a demographic crisis. Who exactly do you expect to be looking after you when you are retired (growing your food, manufacturing your medication, diagnosing your ailments etc etc) and only 0.01% of the population have had children in the last 50 years. Other people having children is actually a vital service to the rest of society. Or at least those of us hoping to live for at least another 30-40 years, which will require a younger generation to provide the goods and services we will need to stay alive. This point seems to be missed by a lot of libertarians (who are frequently childless single young men) in their anger about parents getting support from the government.
- aianus 12y ago
  Hopefully robots by that time. Anyways, I'm not really interested in living past the age when I'm too old and unhealthy to work. Sounds awful.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  How do you expect endless increases in population to affect the climate?
  - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
    That's irrelevant, because developed countries (i.e. the countries that are in the position to have a social safety net) almost universally have shrinking populations, not growing ones.
    - streptomycin 12y ago
      It's not irrelevant. More people (especially more people in developed countries) = more CO2. You can't spin that away. Even if the US population goes from 300M to 200M, that would produce more CO2 than going from 300M to 100M.
ars 12y ago
By the time you have $1 million you will be too old to have a kid (especially if female). People really need to start getting married earlier. If you marry in your early twenties having a child at that time is not a problem, even if you don't have tons of savings yet. And aside from the biology of having a child late, simply raising a child is much harder when you are older (late thirties), because your energy level really starts diverging from theirs. (Obviously you can make it work, I'm only saying it gets harder.)
- aianus 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure men can have children into their 70s. And with $1 million I don't have to raise the kid by myself like normal people. I can use nannies and boarding schools. My parents already gave a standard middle-class upbringing. If I can't do better by my children, what's the point?
  - ars 12y ago
    > I'm pretty sure men can have children into their 70s. Sometimes, but sperm quality declines, leading to more birth defects and it takes longer to succeed. And a 70 year old is simply not a suitable father. I assume you were planning a may/cecember marriage? Which is pretty cruel to the wife, and to the kids who will loose their father MUCH too early. Kids need their father very much in their 30's. If you are waiting long enough that you are dead, or even just declined you are not doing well by them. > I don't have to raise the kid by myself like normal people. I can use nannies and boarding schools. You don't even have kids and already you hate them? > My parents already gave a standard middle-class upbringing. If I can't do better by my children, what's the point? OK, now you REALLY make no sense. A sentence before you want to give them a horrible childhood (using nannies too much leads to attachment issues, and various disorders). And now you want to do better? I have a feeling you have no idea whatsoever about what children actually need out of childhood. It's not money. It's love, attention, and approval. Having lots of money is detrimental to all of them. And your standard is ridiculous anyway - if every generation refused to have kids until they could do it "better" no one at all would have kids.

Kenji 12y ago

"Ah but degrees don't guarantee you stable employment." If the degree benefits your employment chance, you should have done it before you have kids. If the degree does not benefit your employment chance, then why do it at all? Either way, finish it before. Look, what I don't understand is people having kids, knowing fine well that they don't have the time and/or money to support them and then whine for public funding and about a lack thereof. The whole thing is completely self-inflicted. Why should the state support people who lack the most basic amount of foresight and coerce everyone else into paying for their faults?

_delirium 12y ago
> The whole thing is completely self-inflicted. No, it's inflicted by a broken society. In a working society, at least a working first-world society, everyone has at least a basic standard of living. This allows both a flexible economic system (entrepreneurship, job-changing, etc.) and family life to coexist: your company going bankrupt does not mean your kid can't attend school or eat. The American solution seems to be that people should have a corporate job for life with the old IBM or Amoco, which provides both ultra-stable employment and benefits (company-provided childcare, parental leave, health insurance, etc.) and only those people are "deserving" of having kids.
- Kenji 12y ago
  "No, it's inflicted by a broken society." No, it's not. The broken society didn't make the woman pregnant and give birth. Also, 'broken' sounds really melodramatic. "In a working society, at least a working first-world society, everyone has at least a basic standard of living." Is having and maintaining a Ferrari a basic standard of living? No? Well, that's how expensive kids are, no, they're even more expensive. That is a very ambitious basic standard you're setting here. Obviously, this is going to cost uninvolved people heaps of money just because everyone thinks they are entitled to make as many children as they want regardless of their ability to support them. It's a huge burden on everyone else's back. The pinnacle of selfishness.
  - _delirium 12y ago