[wyager]

People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do.

If someone's getting 55% pay for almost a year while they're not creating value for the company, that has to come out of someone else's paycheck, directly or indirectly.

> Parents being around for their kids is important.

I absolutely agree, but that doesn't imply in any way that it's right to foist the cost of choosing to have children on other people.

[mikestew]

People who choose to do $THING_I_DONT_DO should not be forced to subsidize those who do. Why should I subsidize roads with 16 foot lanes when my motorcycle needs on a fraction of that? Why should I...oh, you get the point.

If one cares to argue whether something that arguably betters the collective (Amex's new policy would fit from my POV) should be subsidized collectively or individually, I'm open. If one would rather discuss the merits of attracting workers with benefits that some might not use, let's open that conversation. But if it's just going to amount to a simplistic, Ayn Randian "it's not fair!", then it's not really worth the time.

[wyager]

> People who choose to do $THING_I_DONT_DO should not be forced to subsidize those who do.

Yes. What part of this is unreasonable?

> Why should I subsidize roads with 16 foot lanes

16 foot lanes aren't a voluntary activity, they're infrastructure that everyone benefits from. If you don't benefit from them somehow, you would have a valid complaint against subsidizing them. For example, farmers don't have to pay the gas tax on farm-use-only gas because they don't put wear on the roads.

On the other hand, I distinctly don't benefit from random people diverting what could be my income to keep overpopulation going strong.

> simplistic

Simple arguments are better than complex ones. You're right, my argument is simple; it's morally wrong to force people to pay for things they don't want, and it's especially wrong to force people to pay for things where the benefit is obviously less than the cost.

[st3v3r]

>16 foot lanes aren't a voluntary activity, they're infrastructure that everyone benefits from

So is ensuring that parents get to, you know, be parents.

>If you don't benefit from them somehow, you would have a valid complaint against subsidizing them

They did say they don't. They ride a motorcycle, and as such, don't need the full lane size.

>On the other hand, I distinctly don't benefit from random people diverting what could be my income to keep overpopulation going strong.

You would be wrong on all counts there, buddy.

>Simple arguments are better than complex ones. You're right, my argument is simple; it's morally wrong to force people to pay for things they don't want, and it's especially wrong to force people to pay for things where the benefit is obviously less than the cost.

And yet, the simple argument completely falls apart once you think about it. For example, you said they shouldn't be able to not subsidize wide roads. So why roads, and not childcare? Why roads and not police protection? Why roads and not healthcare?

[paublyrne]

People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do.

Why not?

If you pay tax, some of that will go to paying school teachers, regardless of whether or not you have children of your own. Is that also wrong? Like it or not, all western societies include some form of wealth redistribution.

[jay-anderson]

Agreed. It's in everyone's interest (whether you choose to have children or not) that children are well adjusted, healthy, and educated. They will be our neighbors when we are older.

[wyager]

> Is that also wrong?

Possibly, but in a less odious way. Public school has at least two benefits over paying people to have children; 1) it probably doesn't incentivize people to have kids, but it does (probably) benefit the kids that already exist and 2) it might actually have a positive net value to the people being forced to pay for public school but aren't using it. In particular, public schools serve as a form of division of labor, where the adult/child ratio is much lower, freeing up a huge number of parents to remain in the workforce instead of staying home and watching the kids all day. This, I would argue, is most low-quality lower-division public schools' primary function; it's not about the kids learning, it's about freeing the parents' schedules for 8-9 hours a day.

[plandis]

To be clear the person you're responding to is talking about companies subsidizing those who choose to have children. That is different from a government social program.

You can be for the government paying people on maternity/paternity leave while also being against mandating the business should be the ones to pay for it.

[rayiner]

Parents subsidize the people who don't have kids. You think investors would be willing to pour billions into companies like Facebook if they knew there wouldn't be a new crop of 18-25 year olds every year? In a developed country, each person contributes a lot more to the economy over their lifetime than the cost of raising them.

(And immigration doesn't really change the result. Then you're just externalizing the cost of raising kids to another country; you're not getting rid of it, and you're still benefiting from that investment.)

[wyager]

> Parents subsidize the people who don't have kids.

That's a silly argument. Just because an action (possibly) has a positive externality, like having children, doesn't mean we need to subsidize it. You also get quickly diminishing returns; dumping $10M into a kid won't get you a 100x better result than dumping $100K into a kid.

Every single form of industry that isn't already subsidized by the government, by virtue of its continued existence, has a higher value to society than what they earn in income. Should we subsidize all those CEOs to make up the difference?

> each person contributes a lot more to the economy over their lifetime than the cost of raising them.

This is true and irrelevant. Again, spending more money on children doesn't mean their economic output will be correspondingly higher. At some point (which I imagine we've already passed) you're just burning money. That is, of course, if your goal is economic optimization (which your post seems to suggest). If your goal is e.g. more effective socialization/indoctrination or accelerated education, then you could reasonably argue for increased spending to push us farther down the diminishing economic returns curve.

[tdb7893]

I've recently come the the conclusion that instead of the purpose of people being to create value for the economy, the point of the economy is to create value for people. Being able to spend time with your new kid should not be a privilege of people who have money. Overall resources in our society aren't that scarce so I don't think it's unreasonable to allocate some resources to ensuring that privilege for everyone.

[wyager]

> Being able to spend time with your new kid should not be a privilege of people who have money.

Ah, of course. Instead it should come at the expense of people who chose not to (or were unable to) spend time with a child at all.

"<Positively connoted activity> should not be a privilege of people who have money" is a very nice-sounding statement, but it ignores the fact that there's a reason only people who have money do certain things; because it's very expensive.

> Overall resources in our society aren't that scarce

Evidently resources in our society are scarce enough that parents can't stay home with their child 24/7 without someone else paying for it. (Either that or the parents in question are able but unwilling to decrease their expenses in exchange for time with their children.)

[tdb7893]

As a society we've decided that some things are worth it despite being an economic cost (notably giving senior citizens access to medical care through medicare is an example of a huge cost with little to not economic benefit) so as a society we've decided that some things are worth paying for other people despite cost to ourselves. You are arguing that people shouldn't pay at all for benefits that they choose not to partake in themselves and as a society we've already decided that we are willing to do so in certain situations. Really what it then becomes is an argument of "is it worth it?". It comes down to a value judgement of "is it okay for people to pay for things that they don't personally use?" and "is it worth it to pay for parental leave?". I personally think that the economic losses are outweighed by the societal good of parental leave so I think that answering "yes" to both of the questions leads to a better society.

[wyager]

> As a society we've decided that some things are worth it despite being an economic cost (notably giving senior citizens access to medical care...)

I'm painfully aware, given that this number is broken out on my W2 stubs.

What I'm obviously doing here is arguing that "society"'s (meaning those in charge of tax code, who nominally take some amount of inspiration from the rest of society) policies are wrong.

Your argument is just "This is how we do things right now, so that's how it should be." At the risk of pulling a Molyneux, that is, in fact, not an argument.

[ghaff]

Most companies offer employees a bundle of benefits that have a lot of different pieces. I'm sure that, if any individual employee were designing the bundle specifically for their own maximum benefit given a specific $ pool of money, it would look quite a bit different from the one that's actually offered.

Some people would be happy to forgo benefits like life insurance. Some will want the maximum 401-K matching while others don't contribute enough to take full advantage. People trade off vacation time and salary differently.

[NumberCruncher]

People who choose not to have children should not be forced to subsidize those who do. And should not get a pension paid by the children of others.

[revelation]

Children pay the pension of childless people, of course they should be forced to subsidize those who have them.

[user5994461]

> Children pay the pension of childless people

I don't think that this is correct with the usual pensions in the USA and the UK.

There are other countries with different pension funding where this applies though.

[lotsofpulp]

Search for the funding status of defined benefit pensions for most government entities. Most are counting on passing on the buck to future generations to fund their promises, either via increasing taxes or decreasing the value of money.

[revelation]

It doesn't exactly matter if you personally paid for your pension or the state took some percentage from you paycheck or any other imaginable system, if in 40 years you want to retire and the majority of society is made up of other retirees, any form of currency isn't going to be worth anything.

No matter which way you turn it the sustainability of a retiree lifestyle hinges on a large part of society showing up at work on 9am. In 40 years, that's not going to be your peers, it's whatever children your generation produced. If you don't want to pay for benefits that ensure enough workers will be around then you are betting that we got rid of human workers in 40 years of time or investing your money into a hut in Alaska and some shotgun ammunition.