As is stands, parents are able to claim their children as dependents on their tax returns, which lowers their overall tax liability and in effect means that the parents either pay less in taxes or receive a higher return at the end of each year.
Until they reach the age at which they can work, children are a drain on society. They receive public schooling and receive the same benefit from public services that adults do, yet they contribute nothing in return. At the point that they reach maturity and are gainfully employed and paying taxes, they become a functioning member of society.
If a parent decides to have a child, they are making a conscious decision to produce another human being. They could choose to get a sterilization surgery, use birth control, or abort the pregnancy (assuming they don’t live in a backwards state that’s banned it). Yet even if they decide to have 15 children, the rest of society has to foot the bill for their poor decisions until the child reaches adulthood.
By increasing taxes on parents instead of reducing them, you not only incentivize safe sex and abortion, but you shift the burden of raising a child solely to the individuals who are responsible for the fact that that child exists.
I am a strong advocate for social programs: Single-payer healthcare, welfare programs, low-income housing, etc, but for adults who in turn contribute what they can. A child should only be supported by the individuals who created it.
Children are not a drain on society, they are society. You cannot have a society for longer than a single generation without children. They are critically important to continuing any society and penalizing people for deciding to have children is backwards thinking.
The idea that a single family body should be the sole people responsible for the development of a child is also a foolish and somewhat modern misconception. The adage of “it takes a village…” comes to mind. As a society, it is our collective duties to ensure that all members of the society are healthy and cared for. We are communal, social creatures who have long relied on community to be successful and raise our children. This individualist perspective is myopic and counterproductive.
Additionally, the value of a human being simply cannot be reduced to what they contribute to the GDP. Children or adults.
Also the idea of yet another way or reason to exclude young people from society, yet another way to make them other or less than is the opposite of what modern society needs, and should be treated as fundamentally offensive.
Children are not a drain on society, they are society. You cannot have a society for longer than a single generation without children.
Nowhere did I suggest that people should just completely stop having children. The fact is that children are extremely expensive, and having more than one per adult is quite frankly unnecessary. At least until the unchecked population growth is under control, reproduction should be disincentivized as much as possible, and society should not be forced to bear the brunt of parents’ poor reproductive decisions.
Overpopulation is a myth that results in supporting eugenics.
This is so wrong it’s not even funny. Look at CO2 emissions and climate change. Do you really think we’d be destroying the environment the same way we do now if industry wasn’t producing products for billions of people?
These can be addressed in ways other than eugenics. What you’ve suggested here is essentially that. And it only penalizes those without money. The rich can have as many kids as they want.
Unpopular as advertised, sure. But man, what an absolute weapons-grade bad take, with beginning to end poor reasoning.
Parents pay less in taxes because they’ve contributed a human to the system which will inevitably be taxed.
It’s an incentive for procreation.
Frankly the incentive isn’t good enough.
You’re assuming the child will eventually pay taxes.
Unless you’re in a country/state with no VAT/sale taxe, the child will inevitably pay taxes.
I’m in a country with no VAT. 40% of US citizens pay no income tax.
I’m not from the US, but according to this source, only Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon don’t have sale taxes. Which means, if I’m not mistaken, that at most only about 2.5% of the US population can realistically never pay taxes (percentage of us pop. per states from Wikipedia)
The post was about federal income tax deductions.
This isn’t unpopular, this is plain wrong. You seem to be so blinded by your hate of kids that you forget they’re critically essential for the society to function
Parents already pay higher taxes on everything they buy for their kids.
You need one jacket. My fam needs 4. I’m paying 4x the sales tax you are. I drive my kids to school …I pay more gas tax.
The only place parents get a break is on income and the only reason is because we have to pay for at least 2x the stuff.
As someone with no kids, never wanted the crotch goblins, I have no issues with parents getting a break on taxes raising their kids (where I am there is no tax on kids clothes and I am 100% behind this) and my subsidising their education. Besides I, OP, and basically everyone else will need these new adults in the making to take care of us when we are once again, and I am sure will shock OP, will be in the position to need to be looked after again (unless OP came to the world a fully formed adult, I know I wasn’t). Who do they think is going to look after all of us?
Who is going to look after you in particular? Probably no one.
Sorry bro. Go play video games.
If I go to the store for a jacket, you’re right, I only need to buy one. You may need to buy 4, but do you really think that the sales tax you spend on supplies for your children is equivalent to what they cost the taxpayers in public education? Does it offset the increased demand that your children place on the supply chain for food? Does it offset the carbon emissions that 4 more human beings produce for 18 years?
Maybe your children will grow up to cure cancer one day. Maybe they’ll spend their entire adulthood working a minimum-wage service job. As long as they don’t grow up to become drug addicts or serial killers, they’re still contributing to society in whatever way they can. Until they become adults, though, they’re not a contributing member of society. Nobody forced you to produce 4 children, and the taxpayers should not be forced to support your life choices based on the possibility that they may benefit from them in the future.
There are states in the US where this might be reversed, e.g. they have no sales tax, but higher income tax (Oregon). I’m not suggesting that moving to any of those states would be feasible for most of us, but the tax burden may work a bit different for parents there.
I don’t hate children. They’re brought into the world whether they like it or not, and they should have every chance to succeed as long as they put forth some sort of effort. What I do hate are parents who have a child without any consideration to what they’re doing. No couple should ever have more than 2 children, at least until the population declines. Children should not be punished because of their parents poor reproductive choices. Parents should be punished, not rewarded.
Say what you will about humans on earth, annoying kids, etc.
But the state needs bodies. Kids are future workers, and they state wants healthy, capable workers. As such, tax credits are offered not as a prize to the parents, but an investment by the state. The state is hoping parents will have a bit more money for healthy food, housing and education for their kids, thus creating workers who are a bit healthier and more capable.
Human capital is a real thing, at a state level. Lose your input, and you’ll grow weak.
You may not have had a perfect, or even good upbringing, but any tax credit your parent/guardian received didn’t make it worse. If you did have a good upbringing, think of all the variables that went into that. Tax credits are a small part of that.
Upvote for using the sub correctly
The state doesn’t need bodies…this is absurd…
Who’s going to provide care for you when you’re retired and ill? Another pensioner?
I would change the wording so it makes sense. Society needs children. Humanity needs children. A state is just some construct, but any human society needs children in order to survive.
You can’t use logic with these people, you have to give them examples, even if it sounds stupid
The state needs bodies for the grinder, aka military and corporations need bodies for the workforce.
LOL, get this libertarian incel fantasy land bullshit out of here.
By increasing taxes on parents instead of reducing them, you not only incentivize safe sex and abortion, but you shift the burden of raising a child solely to the individuals who are responsible for the fact that that child exists.
I bet you don’t even realize how telling this sentence is about you.
this post is the perfect representation of the far reaching consequences of western hyper-individualism.
community is a thing of the past, the golden rule is long dead, no longer do we have any reason to look out for each other. everything and everyone is reduced to its simple atomic parts; you are responsible only to you and what you create, and nothing else from which you have benefited.
You’re probably right about this being a Libertarian view, but I do disagree with the Libertarian philosophy in general. The government needs to regulate certain things in order to maintain a functioning society. What I don’t understand is how you can possibly make the stretch that this is in any way associated with incels. In no way am I being disrespectful to women or trying to profess some sort of twisted misogynistic worldview.
I bet you don’t even realize how telling this sentence is about you.
I believe that any 2 adults who produce more than 2 children are fundamentally selfish and are destroying the planet. I believe that until the ballooning population is under control, abortion should always be the first option when a couple becomes pregnant. I believe that except in very few cases, any possible contribution to society that someone makes between the ages of 18 and 80 pales in comparison to what they consume. I believe that forcing existence upon another human being is an act of non-consent to both the child and the society that’s forced to support them.
I realize exactly how telling this sentence is about me.
Who do you think will be paying your pension when you get old?
I don’t suppose OP would want to go on pension and work until they die - after all, they don’t want to be a drain on society!
I fully intend to work until my physical and mental state deteriorates to a point at which I can no longer do so. Once that happens, I’ll try my best to take a lower-paying job that can still support my by basic needs. My plan for retirement is to die. I still put away a bit in retirement savings for the small gap between when I can no longer work and when I can no longer breathe, but I hope that gap is no more than a year at most.
So while your comment was intended to be sarcastic, it is completely accurate.
You do you - whatever makes you happy.
Upvoted because you’re dead wrong, in my opinion. Your argument incentivizes the demise of the human race by saying “stop having kids to save money”. Society is made up of generations. Get rid of the youngest generation, you remove humanity.
Individuals choosing not to have kids should pay an extra tax that should go to the ones having children.
Choosing not to have children is a perfecly acceptable individual choice, but the consequence is that you become a net negative for the economy.
Taking on the burden of child-raising is an essential task that is net positive for the economy, which has been way underappreciated for too long.
I don’t get this one… If I am a productive worker and self fund my retirement, how am I a net negative?
Because you aren’t replacing yourself. It might not be net negative while you’re alive (though I would be very surprised if your 'self funded" retirement wasn’t helped along significantly by the tax code (either tax breaks you get for saving for retirement or tax breaks tour employer gets for matching contributions, etc) the state will outlive you and need a replacement…one you didn’t contribute to the system.
Then I’m net neutral.
No, neutral would be to have 2.1 children. That keeps the population steady.
I see you haven’t met their youngest, Decimo.
This overlooks the uncomfortable truth that most humans in the developed world consume far more resources than they produce.
I’m not for parents paying higher taxes, but some of the counter-arguments here seem to assume having more children is unquestionably a good thing in all circumstances. They read more like dogma than rational thinking.
Net consumption (if I’m understanding your definition here correctly), while important to the economy, gets a little weird when you think about how individual choices impact the overall economy. Technically, if I were to buy less than I’d otherwise use of something, that’d lower GDP (the standard, if very flawed, measurement of economic activity) because I wouldn’t be circulating those funds among other workers. Buying more than I need actual improves the economy right up until the point we run out of the inputs for production. It’s gets more confusing in a service-based economy because service workers don’t technically produce any resources…instead they free up time/energy by doing things for resource producers to make more resources or they aid the process of getting those resources to the folks who want to buy them.
None of that means I disagree with you. From a resource-consumption standpoint, there’s good arguments on both sides of the aisle…each new person DOES use more resources than is sustainable long-term, but we also need enough people to keep the economic engines running smoothly. A big part of why life got harder after the pandemic (and one that doesn’t get talked about much) is that so many workers died or were disabled beyond the ability to work. That’s part of why you see the child labor laws relaxing most in industries that were hit hardest by covid (like factory farming). It’s definitely not always the moral choice to have kids, but to tie it back to OP, the state definitely has an interest in people having the right amount of them.
That all makes sense from an economic/state point of view. From an environmental aspect, 8B is far too many humans for this floating rock. A slowdown in reproduction is a good thing, long term.
If people don’t reproduce enough, we aren’t going to have enough workers. Fortunately though, there’s always a steady flow of immigrants to solve that problem in wealthy countries. After a few hundred years, many societies might look very African/Arab/Asian. If you want to further speed up that process, you could start taxing reproduction too.
Your taxes should go up each decade you age without having children. If you have a kid some of that could be refunded as an incentive.
The fact that there exists a mind who can think this is a good take has me deeply concerned for the future.
Upvote.
Upvoted because it truly is an unpopular opinion.
Until the age at which they can work, children are a drain on society
Just remember that after the age you can work, you will be a drain on other people’s children.
Further, he was a drain on society until he was of age too.
This is such ‘fuck you, I want mine’ mentality.
I was a drain on society until I started working. My parents should have paid higher taxes to compensate, or perhaps thought twice about having a child in the first place. I can’t go back in time 40 years and change tax laws to support what I’ve learned as an adult, but I can certainly advocate for better laws now.
Furthermore, I will not be a drain on other people’s children once I reach the age that I can no longer work. At some point, I will reach an age where my physical and mental state no longer allows me to be a productive member of society. With any luck, that will be very close to my death; hopefully, I’ll die while still gainfully employed. If that doesn’t happen, though, my retirement savings will be more than enough to last me through the very few years between the point that I stop working and pass away.
Anyone that’s lived more than a decade as an adult should start to make the connection that kids eventually become your coworkers and neighbors and it’s more comfortable to live in a society where they are educated and have reasonable opportunities. I’m happy to pay taxes so other people’s kids become marginally less shitty adults than they would be if we actively punish them for daring to create the next generation.
By increasing taxes on parents instead of reducing them, you not only incentivize safe sex and abortion,
Ah yes, make sure they have less money to spend on preventing pregnancy. What a well thought out and not completely backwards take you have mashed into your keyboard.
One would hope logically that those additional taxes would be used in part to cover contraceptive costs and have them provided by the government
Not saying anything about OP but it seems like an obvious answer
Take money from the very people who would be spending that money?
That just adds overhead without spreading the costs around.
used in part
Just the elimination of parent tax credits would create so much tax revenue that it’d cover those costs 10 fold and that’s not even accounting for the new taxes. Plus fewer people would become parents as a result of this policy so it would help non-parents too. Contraceptives help everyone, not just those trying to avoid pregnancy
Again, no comment on OOP, just saying this isn’t really a problem with their opinion
Wait, so you want to tax parents to pay for everyone’s contraceptives instead of it just being spread around the general population? That is even dumber.
You do understand that society benefits from younger folks, and barriers to having children will encourage a country to end up like Japan with an aging population that can’t be supported by a younger workforce?
Just the elimination of parent tax credits would create so much tax revenue that it’d cover those costs 10 fold and that’s not even accounting for the new taxes.
[X] Doubt
Assuming that this is even remotely accurate, which I would argue it isn’t, that increase in revenue would evaporate within a decade or two as child birth plummets and the workforce shrinks in double that.
You might have a short term increase in taxes, but that increase will be massively outweighed by the loss in revenue as you no longer have as many parents to tax the fuck out of, along with an ever shrinking worker base to tax. And that doesn’t even add in the increased costs associated with criminal activity (because poverty is the main driver of crime, and this policy will only increase poverty) or malnutrition/starvation (because how are poor parents going to afford adequate food when they get taxed even harder) in the longer term.
just saying this isn’t really a problem with their opinion
It’s only not a problem if you’re only looking at first order consequences. If you think about the follow on societal impacts even a little bit, it absolutely is a problem with their opinion.
deleted by creator
You do realize that preventing pregnancy comes before birth, right? I’m talking about increasing taxes on parents. You’re not a parent if you don’t have custody of a child, and you wouldn’t be paying a “child tax” until a child actually exists. This is all irrelevant anyway if we had a single-payer healthcare system and access to legal and safe abortion in every state.
You do realize that parents frequently want to prevent additional pregnancies so they don’t end up with a ton of kids, right? Harder to afford that when they have to pay for their kid AND taxes on top of that.
“The government should disincentivize making more citizens and make it much more expensive to do so” is a take that definitely belongs here.
Until they reach the age at which they can work, children are a drain on society. They receive public schooling and receive the same benefit from public services that adults do, yet they contribute nothing in return.
“Future citizens are a drain in society until they aren’t, so we should make their caregivers pay more to the government while they’re also paying out the nose to raise them”
By increasing taxes on parents instead of reducing them, you not only incentivize safe sex and abortion, but you shift the burden of raising a child solely to the individuals who are responsible for the fact that that child exists.
“We should be actively sabotaging our society by destroying the incentives to make the next generation”
I am a strong advocate for social programs: Single-payer healthcare, welfare programs, low-income housing, etc, but for adults who in turn contribute what they can. A child should only be supported by the individuals who created it.
“If you can’t support your child on your own while paying higher* taxes, good fucking luck birther”
I read it as we should tax OP more for all the years that they were a drain on society to make up for all the tax breaks that they got.
As it is people like this should consider that “paying taxes to support other people’s kids” is really just them paying everyone back for when they were a kid.
But yes society needs people of all ages and without young people there would eventually be a collapse.
