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by rayiner
3481 days ago
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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.) |
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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.