[gones00n]

Well said. It's a bit farcical that this discussion has degenerated into "I have kids for the better of society".

Let's stick to the simpler rationale that some people have kids because they love kids and/or want to pass down their genes.

[jdm2212]

People join the military for lots of reasons (patriotism, free college, bad family situation, and more) but we all recognize that funding the military and making life tolerable for service members is necessary for our society to keep working.

Similarly, people choose to have kids for lots of reasons (family pressure, want to pass on genes, etc.) but society's continued existence depends on people having kids, so it's on all of us to support the people who do have kids whether or not any given individual's motivation is noble.

[gones00n]

I respectfully disagree on the need to fund the military.

How might we use the trillions of dollars spent on the military for education, healthcare, retirement and other betterment initiatives for U.S. citizens? If hypothetically all nations agreed on world peace, then having a military becomes superfluous but the would-be soldiers can find other meaningful professions in society rather than being soldiers.

Again I'm not against supporting parents. Just when there's immarginal benefits being conferred, that are not available to non-parents.

[jdm2212]

> If hypothetically all nations agreed on world peace

In a perfect world, that would work. We don't live in a perfect world, which is why virtually no society has ever disbanded their armed forces and lived to tell about it.

Similarly, in a perfect world, we could treat every individual exactly fairly and never given someone slightly more than they should have. But in this real fallen world we live in, sometimes the best we've got is simplistic decision rules like "support categories of people who do work that is essential for society to survive".