oh no, back on topic, just when I noticed the subthread had continued!
That isn't economically disincentivizing kids, it's improving people's lives. They may choose to have less kids after that, but that is not what is being suggested here. That's what I suggested as a better solution than what was suggested by Bakari and Watchmaker.
I'm not sure what you think I was suggesting, but what I wrote was "
The transition wouldn't have to be tragically terrible, if we could spread it out a few generations and accomplish it via free sterilizations and birth control and a one-child policy (at least in terms of social expectations, if not law). We could also, for example, tax each child, instead of providing tax breaks."
Free (not mandatory) birth control, and a social expectation of fewer children, plus not giving tax breaks for having kids. Taxes incentives tend not to have big impacts on the poor, since they generally pay little or no taxes anyway.
Although, incidentally, as politically incorrect as it may be to say, I don't think it is actually that terrible to disincentives someone who can't afford to provide for a child to not have that child. In fact, that may easily make the difference between that person raising out of poverty: average spending per child in the 0-40k income range, (average of only 18k) is 150k over 18 years. That's almost 1/2 of everything they make.
More than 1/2 of pregnancies are unintended. These are dramatically higher among poor women - 5 times as high
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1506575While people tend to default to genocidal scenarios, the reality is closer to that poverty greatly exacerbates the problem of unwanted pregnancies, which in turn keeps people in poverty.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/unplanned-births-another-outcome-of-economic-inequality/386743/Free birth control, sterilization, would already go a long way to ensuring each child born was wanted.
And in a very real, direct, and literal way, it IS improving people's lives.
Eliminating tax credits only affect the middle class in any meaningful way anyway - because poor people don't pay taxes anyway, and the rich can easily afford them. But the highest portion of the population is middle class, so that could still be significant. There is no particular reason adding to the population should be subsidized.
Any tax penalty could kick in beyond replacement level (2, which is what a majority of people who want kids say they want anyway), at say 4, where it only affects those people who have entire broods. If everyone else has 2 kids each, then in a few generations Mormons will completely overrun the Earth. They can at least pay a little more for the social services they'll use as it happens.