It's not so much incentives as support - if you do have six children, it's going to be hard for you to provide for them, and they're the ones who will suffer for it if you can't.
What is with the backlash against feminism?
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Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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Don't have six kids then.
Precisely. I think we live in a sufficiently rich society now that we can afford to just give everybody a decent standard of living with no questions asked, and if we can, why on earth shouldn't we? If it's a choice between playing moral arbiter and deciding who 'deserves' a basic level of human dignity or simply helping first and reserving moral judgements, I should hope it would be an easy one. I remember Cutlass on CFC a while ago explaining to me that it was actually more expensive to enforce stringent rules to ensure that only 'deserving' people receive benefits than it is to simply give them to the 'undeserving' as well.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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Don't make it profitable to breed excessively then. Which it is in the UK at least.
I don't like that line of reasoning; it's basically coming from the perspective that social security is something that 'we' the taxpayers pay to 'them' the receivers of it as a matter of charity, and we get to use it as a carrot to make 'them' act in accordance with 'our' morals. Firstly, it shouldn't be like that at all; it's more of a collective insurance plan or a union membership that we pay into when we can so that we can have it when we hit hard times - the people paying taxes today may well be drawing benefits tomorrow, or indeed doing both at the same time. Most of us pay more than we'll ever get back to the NHS because a few of us will end up with some horrible and horribly expensive disease and need to count on the rest of us to hold them up. Secondly, and more to the point, I don't think it should be seen as charity or something given out of good grace - we are a community, and if you live among us you should be entitled to a basic standard of living and comfort just as a right. It shouldn't be conditional on you 'not breeding excessively' or spending prudently - since the state is able to avoid doing so, if it leaves anyone without enough money to live decently on then it's failing in its duty.
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
i agree with everything you said except the spending prudently part. I think don't think the state should be required to step in if you don't spend prudently. Now if you spend cheaply as possible just to live with the bare minimum, then that is where the state holds a responsibility to step in.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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I know what social security is. I know that the majority of people will act selfishly if the system allows them to. Making it profitable to breed excessively will encourage it to happen. If it's only profitable because they soak up social security and give nothing back, then that's not a good thing for anyone.
It's one thing to provide a safety net for people who are falling, it's another to make it a gold-plated safety net* which tempts people to jump into it. It's not about "them" and "us", it's about not having a skewed system that encourages the wrong things.
*and yes I know that wouldn't work in practice.
It's one thing to provide a safety net for people who are falling, it's another to make it a gold-plated safety net* which tempts people to jump into it. It's not about "them" and "us", it's about not having a skewed system that encourages the wrong things.
*and yes I know that wouldn't work in practice.
I find this one tricky. On one level you're right; it's silly to imagine that a sensible state would intervene to help people who found themselves tight for money at the end of the month because they were too eager to get their round in at the pub at the start of the month, because in that case they'll be fine again in a few weeks. On the other hand, if they've made bad decisions which ruin them in the long term - such as losing a house through gambling - then I think it should be the state's job to help them; the fact that you've messed up doesn't mean that you should have to be homeless. There's also the question of dependants - it doesn't seem fair for children to go hungry (with all the educational disadvantage that that implies) because their parents spend frivolously. Perhaps putting more social security into services - such as health, housing and education - which cannot be spent away would be the best of both worlds? In other words, you give people the freedom to make mistakes and suffer for them, but not to fall below (or gamble above) a certain threshold.
It's not profitable to have children; the point of child benefits is that they cover the cost of having children. If they paid more than that cost, then it would certainly create a perverse incentive, but if anything the reverse is true, and having a child is still a major financial cost. You hear a lot of people say 'let's wait until we have a stable home and income before having children', never 'let's have children to give us a stable home and income.'
Actually, that's exactly what they should do, since reproduction rates are falling below replacement in a lot of developed nations.
Plus, if you don't have six kids, the musloms will!
/s
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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A good line of thinking, but I can't help but feel that the very concept of community is meaningless in a society numbering in the tens of millions. There's little reason or ability to empathize with strangers you know nothing about and whom you'll never meet or get to know, so it's easy to feel no connection or willingness to help them.
Hence the collective insurance plan - an extension of 'everyone should be allowed to live decently' is 'I might fall on hard times, and if I do I want to be taken care of'.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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Well, I politely disagree. I don't think child benefit covers the bare minimum cost of feeding/clothing/providing for the child, it also gives some excess over this. Which is reasonable of course, but if the excess is significant, and if it stacks up with each child, it can incentivise more breeding. And of course it doesn't actually have to be very much to be "significant" if you're talking about the sort of families/couples/people who would be pretty much on the breadline and struggling to start with. Plus it opens up extra doors and safeguards when it comes to social housing options as well. Again, I know there are families like this because I am again related to some, and have friends who belong to them. And yes you do hear people saying 'let's have children to give us a stable home and income', just perhaps not all that brazenly openly in case the DSS are listening (although you'll see a few more brazen examples on Jeremy Kyle).
I'm not scaremongering or saying this is a rampant problem mind you, but it is something that's real. It's also wandering a fair distance off topic as well so I apologise.
Even assuming that that were so, surely it's a problem with the implementation of the system rather than its conception? In other words, it doesn't invalidate the idea that giving people money to help towards the cost of having children is a good idea, it only claims that the government currently pays the wrong amount.
You said you live in the UK right? Well I don't know how much the UK pays out for child benefits, but here in the US it most certainly is not enough to consider raising a child profitable. In the US the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is approximately $245,000; that come out to around $13,600 per year per child. Again, I do not know the exact amount one can receive for having children, but I know it is well under $13,600 a year.
Now imagine how hard it would be for even fairly well-off families to raise children if they didn't receive any kind of tax break from the government. Taking away the financial benefits for having children would pretty much be the equivalent of saying only the wealthy have the right to reproduce.
[£20 a week for the first and £14 for any more. There's no way that covers food, school costs, bills, clothes, occasional childcare... it helps, but you definitely won't make money out of having children.
EDIT: That's under $800 a year if my maths is right (assuming $1 is about £1.50).
EDIT: That's under $800 a year if my maths is right (assuming $1 is about £1.50).
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
True. But it's an incentive for families to have kids as well. The main benefit is supposed to be for society and all, isn't it? So that we keep our stock replenished and such?
I just think some obsessed people are taking advantage of it by having 50 kids each.
I'm just not really sure how to prevent them from abusing the system without making life even crappier for the poor kids. I don't like the solution of somehow trying to cap the number of kids you can have. I don't think we should be in that business...
Did you see the figures I dug up? I don't think it's actually possible to game the system in that way - of course there will always be sensational stories in the Daily Mail et al, but it seems from the figures that it's not physically possible to make money from having a lot of children. Even a family with 5 children is only receiving just under £4000 a year, and it's even more difficult now than it has been to get a council house that actually fits a large family in it.
Not to mention factoring in the cost for the parents to sustain themselves as well. That gets factored into the cost of raising children as well since if the parents can't feed themselves, pay the rent, and afford medical care for themselves then they can't really take care of their children now can they?
Part of the 'occasional childcare' proviso would have to be the occasional day off work to look after the child when they're sick... a single day off work costs at least £50 if you're working full-time.
