Yes you can. Why not? Not to mention your (implicit) assertion that [poor] people, "have as many children anytime they want" is also ridiculous.
> Not to mention that for every poor kid in this country (assuming you meant the US when you said "the country") there are a five to ten in southeast Asia with a lower standard of living. How do you justify tapping the productivity of a Boeing working in Renton to provide for a poor kid in Mississippi who has no more connection to that worker than a poor kid in Cambodia, while simultaneously not ensuring that that Cambodian kid has the same standard of living and opportunities you want to give to the Mississippian?
This is true, but irrelevant to the USA's own government policies. Presumably other countries should do the same with their own children.
Of course, we can take your line of thought and cut off the supply of public services to children and adults alike. Then see how quickly your own quality of life erodes. Indeed it's this very philosophy you hold that will explain why humanity will never take action on climate change or any global scale catastrophe that isn't imminent.
> Such parents have shown they have no limiting factor...
You make it sound like there’s an infinite loop of childbirth which will eventually use up every last dollar in the world, but that’s not what happens in reality when people have enough money to keep having children. There are also potential options to combat this, through incentives, support, education, etc...
Your point about it being worse in other countries is common enough. My reply tends to be that for every problem in the world we don’t find the worse example out of all 7.6 billion of us and start there. We start where we can and then try to keep going as much as we can.
> I'm not going to lower the standard of living of my own family
Not everything is a zero sum game. Currently the US right seems to frame a lot of centrist/left policies as significantly detrimental to the lifestyle and income of the average person. There is plenty of economic resource out there which we can utilise before we make any significant impact on a typical taxpayer’s lifestyle. Even then it would be minimal compared to the overall improvements to the country.
It's not infinite, but we cannot provide every child in the world with the same standard of living as that had by the average Norwegian, for example. And given that a couple chose to give birth to a kid even though they could easily see that they can't provide for the child and society can't provide for the child. E: It shows they don't have a limiting factor.
>Not everything is a zero sum game. Currently the US right seems to frame a lot of centrist/left policies as significantly detrimental to the lifestyle and income of the average person. There is plenty of economic resource out there which we can utilise before we make any significant impact on a typical taxpayer’s lifestyle.
Life is certainly zero sum in many ways. If you take ten thousand dollars from me this year and pay it back to me fifteen years later by saying "hey, the average productivity, prosperity, happiness went up by 30%" that doesn't undo the fact that you prevented me from sending my child to a better school. I will never have the opportunity again to send my five year old to a great preschool because next year that kid will be six and that one year of more nurtured development will never be able to be regained.
Currently the US doesn't pay for everything it does on an annual basis. Approximately 25% of spending is borrowed. And of the total four trillion dollars in spending, around sixty percent of that is for social security, medicare, medicaid, social safety net programs, chip, snap, and etc. Additionally, less than 40% of households are net tax payers. You really can't make dramatic changes in social programs without also dramatically impacting people's lives.
That's a straw man - that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about much more achievable aims, such as children not being hungry and not living in unhealthy housing. Many interventions to reduce poverty are relatively low cost. We’re certainly not talking Teslas & Scandinavian design for all.
On zero sum games, you’re talking about economics here and if anything is an example of non-zero-sum game, it’s economics and monetary theory. Large amounts of wealth and economic potential are created pretty much every minute.
Your example of sending your child to a better school isn’t really accurate for a few reasons. There is a practical, real world limit on school fees. At a certain level of income you would have been able to afford the best school possible, hired tutors, etc… and any further earning would not make a difference. You personally might not be at that level, but a lot of the progressive ideas for taxation target those who are exactly in that situation.
The wealth taxes being proposed by a couple of the US Democratic nominees would kick in at the level of millionaires, who are far removed from scraping together every last dollar for the college fund. Other tax changes would certainly not have “dramatic” negative impacts on tax payers, many might see gains.
The preschool/school example is great, especially as you brought up Norway! You have a problem of having to pay to send children to school. That’s the problem, not that any tax changes might jeopardise that. So let’s solve that problem!
In Norway you wouldn’t have to worry about affording preschool as they are all state funded, even the private ones. You pay a small additional contribution at most, if you can afford to, but that’s capped by the local government and about $350 a month. The schools are free (you pay a similar amount for after school babysitting if you need it) and all roughly a similar good standard. University is similar. So your problem of having to afford 20 years or so of education disappears entirely. Which is pretty awesome, plus your healthcare costs also don't exist and you have much more money for discretionary spending. A lot of Norwegians have cabins in the mountains and boats in the fjords, and it's not because they pay low taxes and ignore child poverty.
Well, the direct answer is: these are all Americans, and all pay some kind of tax to their city, county, state, and ultimately the country, in theory so they can draw on the shared resources of the nation. That's how you justify supporting the kid in Mississippi and not the kid in Cambodia.
As for rationally holding the belief that people can have as many kids as they want, and those kids will be cared for, yes, you can hold those simultaneously. I don't want any kids in my country to go hungry; how many siblings they have or what choices their parents have made are irrelevant to those individual kids' needs being met. There's no conflict there.
We live, as they say, in a society.
I also want to point out that they don't pay taxes to their city, county, state, and country. There have been several studies by the CBO[0 - see the chart on page 31] that show that the lower 60% of households are not net tax payers at the federal level to such an extent that their entire non-federal tax payments offset by the transfers and benefits they receive from the federal government.
0 - https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
You're also forgetting that those workers exist. Beyond taxes the benefit of workers is also in the products and services they provide. When you're a retiree you still need someone to stock shelves in the supermarkets and sit in front of the cash register or someone to work on a farm and pick up the harvest.
When these discussions come up, I often think about this simple chart:
https://i.redd.it/pg5w8ws3b0o31.jpg
If the distribution of wealth, i.e. access to resources, were what 92% of Americans considered ideal, we'd need the minimal social programs you seem to want, and your low-wage worker in Renton would probably pay nothing to support a poor kid in Mississippi.
The current wealth scheme in the US is very much a consequence of US politics, i.e. taxation, wage laws, etc., it's not a natural state of being. (There is no natural state of being for a society.) What we have now is the result of choices made over a long time; getting different results, so you'd never be on the hook for someone in Mississippi, would take different choices from society, not just you declaring that we cannot afford and therefore should end social programs.
Changing post-tax income distribution is fairly straightforward (in theory), but it's less clear to me how to change wealth distribution.
Where does this argument end? For example if you end up needing to live in a rest home and your family can't afford or refuses to take care of you, why should my tax dollars go to help you out? You should just be thrown out into the streets until you die to reduce the burden you put on society.
As many countries have justifiably chosen, they consider this to be an extremely barbaric approach.
Your tax dollars shouldn't. I would have to be a real asshole who has no empathy and care for you to live my life in a way that I end up destitute in my old age and expect you to sacrifice your family's well being so I can live my life selfishly and greedily.
>As many countries have justifiably chosen, they consider this to be an extremely barbaric approach.
You might phrase it like that, but every single day in every single country that provides a generous safety net someone dies whose life could have been extended by some amount of time if only the country had spent more money on doing so.
This is a nonsensical argument. Said safety net is often the reason why people don't die, because as a whole it's cheaper to prevent people from getting to the point of destitution than it is to pull them out of it.
And your first argument is nonsensical too. Because a lot of the time it's simply a roll of the dice whether or not our health nosedives. By your argument if you get in an accident, you would be an asshole to expect other people to help you out in a time of crisis.
That's not having no empathy, that's having a nihilistic worldview and expecting everyone to subscribe to your 'every person for themselves' mentality.
Writing snarky remarks is uncalled for and not pleasant to read on this forum.
That's what I call out and encourage them and others to slow down and consider peoples' humanity.
There are many poverties, many dimensions of wealth.
Happy educated young are a public good and the wealth of nations.
A rising tide raises all ships.
Female education is the driving factor in population stabilisation.
Inherited inequality is implicitly unjust.
A naive idea is, have a baby penalty. A baby penalty would make would be parents think twice about having children, and more about family planning and contraception. It would suck to be a child in a family that cannot afford to raise children (this really needs to be emphasized). To offset this people can be paid to bring up a child that their parents cannot afford, this works great as the people who raise the other parents children are less likely to have children themselves. Now this is naive, is not fleshed out, and has all sorts of things that can go wrong, but conversations about these things has to start. Take China, without their 'Family Planning Policy", the place would be a much worse place to live in than today. What was described is something much softer than the Family Planning Policy, but countries may have to move to something like China's policies to have any hope.
"We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now." - David Attenborough
You didn't think that through. They are less likely to have children because they have decided against children. A female lawyer isn't going to give up her career to take care of other people's children. She has much better options.
What may happen is that poor people get their children taken away and sent to another poor family that now gets paid for taking care of the child. It's basically a very "unorthodox" form of childcare/adoption without class mobility.
It's also a curious way to characterize it that "we're consistently condemning the children for the sins of their parents." Seeing as "we" had nothing to do with creating the plight of these children, "us" not acting to change it is not us condemning them. That's like saying "we" are responsible for that child that fell into the well and drowned recently as we didn't save him. Or that "we" are condemning that fat guy to an early death because "we" aren't forcing him to eat salad and go to the gym.
Not to mention that for every poor kid in this country (assuming you meant the US when you said "the country") there are a five to ten in southeast Asia with a lower standard of living. How do you justify tapping the productivity of a Boeing working in Renton to provide for a poor kid in Mississippi who has no more connection to that worker than a poor kid in Cambodia, while simultaneously not ensuring that that Cambodian kid has the same standard of living and opportunities you want to give to the Mississippian?
I will agree that it's a very unfortunately situation, but I'm not going to lower the standard of living of my own family that limits their chances of having their best life so as to provide for the child of a stranger who doesn't give the same care and thought to me and mine.