I shouldn't have to make such a ridiculous disclaimer, but this is the internet, land of a lack of body language, inflection and tone, where everyone is just constantly looking to be offended (or so it seems).
It shocks a lot of people to learn I used to be a child. In fact, I even had parents. I'm not inherently opposed to parents or children. Other than the Universal Forced Infertility Society and Child Defamation League, I'm not sure who is.
But this is ludicrous.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/tax_credits_and_children_parents_should_pay_lower_taxes_and_childless_people.htmlYet it is also true that we’ve stacked the deck against parents in all kinds of ways. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that raising a child born in 2012 will cost a middle-income family a cumulative total of $301,970 over 18 years. As high as this number sounds, it is actually a massive understatement, as it fails to take into account the cost of postsecondary education. It also fails to factor in the value of forgone earnings and career opportunities. While nonparents can focus on their jobs in laserlike fashion, parents are rarely in a position to do the same. Every time a sick child keeps a parent home from work, her earnings suffer, either directly, because she’s taking an unpaid leave of absence, or indirectly, because she’s missing out on opportunities to climb the corporate ladder.
Even when we compare a nonparent and a parent who are working exactly the same hours and earning exactly the same income, the nonparent has a clear leg up. Most obviously, the nonparent has far more disposable income to play with, which she can save, to become much richer than her parent counterpart over time, or spend, to travel to exotic locales, to eat out constantly, to wear awesome clothes, or to live as I do in a conveniently located shoebox in a great American metropolis. Raising taxes on nonparents could even the score a bit, tilting the balance ever so slightly in favor of those who toil on behalf of America’s future workforce by wiping their butts and painstakingly removing their head lice.
Well first of all, why is this Antimustachian? The idea that parents are a financially helpless victimized group just chaps my backside. I believe this is a prime example of the complainypants syndrome.
He even comes out and says it right there, people with children can't save! My parents would like a word with him.
I could pick apart specific statements and how he isn't consistent with his own beliefs and all that, but that's really what it boils down to, let's wring our hands and cry for others to save us rather than you know actually deal with a life challenge that millions of people deal with just fine every day without this clown's goofy proposals helping them.
People ought to bear the actual costs and consequences of their choices, it's transferring those consequences and costs onto others that leads to irrational, socially destructive behaviors. Has the author never considered the fact that it's the poorest, least advantaged people who have huge litters of children because our existing system creates perverse incentives to do so? And he wants to tilt the table even further?
Being a parent is strictly optional, it's no different than any other decision from a purely financial perspective. Look responsible parents reading this, I actually do have a lot of personal respect for responsible hard working parents. But as you so consistently point out (and correctly so) they're
your children. Rights come with responsibilities.
I'm not saying you'll never get any help from me, it's just it's going to have to be something I personally agree with is all.
The financial nonsense here is pretty bad too, the $300k figure is highly questionable, as is the notion that transferring income from non parents to parents benefits children. I've known way too many divorced people paying child support to believe that it or anything roughly resembling it actually helps the kids.