Letters to the Editor
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World Population is 6 Billion
We need to STOP rewarding people for breeding.
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unless the first world wants it's entire population to be replaced by third world immigrants
it should probably reconsider the amount of "picking up the tab" for having children that it does with an eye to increasing it. Now that children are such a huge liability and people have a real choice about whether to have them or not people will have fewer if they get less govt. support.
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Better yet do away with pensions for everyone
You work, you eat. You don't work, it's a self correcting problem.
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pension solvency
Pension solvency is a real problem both in the States, and, I have to imagine, in more generous welfare states in Europe. The fact is that pension contributions by public workers rarely cover the future pension obligations that those workers will put on the government. Generally gov't salaries are below private sector, but benefits like pensions are more generous.
The fact that the expected contributions of these people will not cover the money that they get back is clearly demonstrated by the fact that these people very much want to make the contributions. It is was a break even scenario, then workers could take it or leave it. Of course there may be some modest advatage to gov't invesment returns over what a private person could expect, but I know that in the US, many pensions have shortfalls that are made up from tax dollars from the general funds and taxes on the general public.
Increasing pension payouts to longer living women is probably especially expensive for the government. I am supposing that women don't pay more than men into the pensions system than their male counterparts, nor am I suggesting that they should. I am only saying that women pensioners will cost more than men because they will live longer into retirement.
I'm sure the gov't would love to fund this feel-good measure. They probably aren't doing it because the expense estimates came in at a really unacceptable level.
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work v. time off
Work is an activity that you do not want to do, but someone else wants you to do it. That is why someone else pays you to do it. The compensation is to induce the worker to do something that they would otherwise choose not to do.
Having kids does not fit this description. People have kids and raise them because they want to. It is the parents themselves who derive the ostensible psychic or other benefits of the existence of their children. Why should other people pay for parents to do an activity that benefits the parents primarily and that the tax-payer has neither demanded nor even requested.
Obviously if we want to pay people to do their aryan duty and preserve the white race, then that is an entirely different matter. Then maybe it does make sense to pay people to breed inspite of ever-growing population trends on an evermore crowded planet.
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knock it off
I'm so sick of the breeder-nonbreder debate. It's nauseating.
This is a work issue.
Workers have been (yet again) lied to by those in control of their pensions. Which sucks.
If we look at the scenario in that context, perhaps we could come up with better alternatives than "don't breed, you selfish ass," which is neither helpful, realistic or humane.
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Don't work, don't eat -- sounds like a plan!
Only I'd like to add a couple of steps in the not working and the not eating scenario when we do get rid of our evil breeder-centric pensions. I'm a mother of four who stayed at home to raise my children and my husband and I took the financial hits so I could to do it. But we figured that, if we had them, we should raise them. They are grown up now and all have good, well paying jobs.
So how about grow old, don't work, don't have kids who can support you in your old age, starve. This is the way it was for most societies in the past and many today still operate this way. Your children are your wealth. I'm sure my children, who are now working to support many elderly pensioners through their taxes, would really appreciate just supporting good old mom -- much cheaper really and they do get the benefits of my babysitting -- and letting those pensioners who didn't have the wisdom and foresight to have children work until they drop and then starve.
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The idiot generation behind mine won't be able to fathom taking care of me anyhow
So I plan to work until I drop in the harness. You have a choice. You can outlive your money, outlive your healthcare or die early. Pick one.
BTW, the notion that tax deferral works to your advantage long run has yet to be established. Everyone thinks that their 401K will be taxed less when you need it - but that still remains to be seen. I've never seen this actually happen in practice. Most deductions have been eliminated, the brackets have been expanded and the AMT will eventually eat us all alive. So your fixed income then will be taxed just like your income is now. Most people understand this intuitively which is why the early cash out rate for 401K's is more than 25% now.
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Don't Kid Yourself
Once grown, your children will probably want nothing to do with you, and will have to spend hours on the analyst's couch getting over the fact that they were only born so they could support you in your dottage.
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another solution to the pension problem
in addition to the reneging on current promises, would be to deny everyone over the age of 40 health care. Raises the death rate and would quickly bring down the population numbers as well as saving the next generation the expense of supporting a bunch of useless old people like us (or at least me)
What's not to like?
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To Shazzer4400
My kids are grown and they do like me. They voluntarily spend time with me (murmurs of shock and disbelief from the anti-breeder contingent so ubiquitous here) and would have no problem with supporting me in my dotage. I spent time with them, not so-called "quality time" either, but hours and days and years of the somewhat mind numbing drudgery raising small children to fully functioning, well adjusted, and productive adults entails. I am now reaping my reward and it is a pretty damned good reward too. Just because you seem to have issues with your parents and choose not to have children, don't assume everyone feels the same way.