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.
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.
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’re right, it’s the parents that aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, not Fortune 100 companies or billionaires /s
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.
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.
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?
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.
A big problem with modern society is that too much of the population is aging out of working age. Dropping birthrates are considered a big problem for developed countries, one that they will have to fix through incentives or by increasing the number of immigrants.
Tax breaks for parents having kids are an incentive to try to encourage more children, and more children are needed for the future of the country.
Here’s a video talking about how falling birthrates are a problem for countries
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.
Remember folks, in this community we upvote unpopular opinions. Looks like people are downvoting because they disagree.
It’s Lemmy, people can’t help but launch into political kneecapping
That’s always how this goes. A better name for this sub that reflects people’s voting patterns would be “popular_opinions_on_lemmy_that_are_unpopular_with_my_dad” but it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.
You’re saying more children should live in poverty so that former children with jobs get a small tax break.
We all have to foot the bill for your old age care, so makes sense you should pay for the children who will be your nurses in old age.
You’re saying more children should live in poverty so that former children with jobs get a small tax break.
I would never suggest that children or adults should live in poverty. As long as someone is doing a job to the best of their ability, they should at least make a living wage, and I would gladly pay higher taxes or an increased cost on goods to help support that.
What I am suggesting is producing a child is ultimately a personal choice made by the parents, and they should foot the bill associated with their choice. If someone can’t afford a child, they should not have a child (and the rest of us should help pay for birth control or abortion). If someone has a child that they can’t afford, the child should be removed from the household and given to a family that is both willing and financially able to support a child. If that’s not an option, the child should be placed in a state-funded care center and given an education and basic necessities until they become an adult. The ultimate goal is for adults to think twice about reproducing unless they are fully capable of raising a child on their own and for a large number of people to stop having children.
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.
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.
Upvoted because it truly is an unpopular opinion.
While we are at it any one who is irresponsible enough to become a parent shouldn’t be a parent!
I would ask who is this tool but I’m sure the fool in question lacks a functioning tool of their own.
@corroded this opinion is bad. Upvoting for the unpopularity!
