Quote: (08-05-2016 11:46 AM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
A lot of the issue comes down to $$$. Children are not an economic asset like they were during the agrarian days and before the rise of the welfare state. You needed kids to survive in your waning years.
This is not entirely new problem. Emperor Vespasian instituted monetary incentives for upper class Romans to have more children (they were having them below replacement rate at the time). Russia is doing the same now desperately trying to get its non-Islamic birthrate up.
You also have death by a thousand cuts with our current laws. An example: When I was a little kid, Mom or Dad could load a bunch of kids in the car and go somewhere. Today my parents would have been fined or worse as none of were wearing seat belts let alone had car seats. Its a big operation now to a mom to get her kids all strapped in to go. Leave your kid alone in the house? My mom left me alone for hours at a time. Today, she would be arrested.
Has all this made kids "safer". Yes.. but sane, intelligent adults have fewer kids because of the increased time an effort you have to put into each one.
For birth rates to go up, you need to financially incentivize children and (this is the hard part) de-feminize the culture. It is the feminine hyper protectiveness that has made parents prisoners to their children.
I agree, tax incentives need to be in place to offset negative incentives.
1. Make marital tax brackets significantly wider than individual. ie. 25% tax on individuals starting at $42K/year, martial starting at $100k/year
2. An allowance for couples with a stay at home mother to claim the equivalent child care tax credit as working couples who pay that to daycare
3. Add a 50% bonus to the child tax credit for couples that are married filing jointly
4. Create a bonus child care credit for families that surpass replacement birth rates, ie. bonus for having 3 or more kids.
Reduce the incentive to be a single mother
1. Reduce the income thresholds for EITC, foodstamps and daycare subsidies to 50% of the poverty level, not 200%.
2. As said above, alter child support laws to be based on cost of living indices for where the child is, not income.
Reduce the incentive to retire on the government
1. Make children eligible to act as medicare vendors when providing home care for aged parents
Right now the system incentivizes a) SINGLE motherhood, popping out at thousand kids to max out benefits and live in near poverty vs. working or b) SINGLE career womaning, where you are your own boss after getting divorced or providing no incentive to get off the cock carousel and have a family.
If there were better incentives to get married, stay married, and pop out kids people would do it.