[gls2ro]

Just to preface this with: I don't try to convince you of anything, nor anyone else.

But there is a side of this conversation that I almost never see discussed:

What I want to add to this conversation is the following: it is a privilege (in the true sense that only a small group can afford to do this) for you to be able to decide not to have children and keep your conform. And this priviledge relies or borrows on the other people deciding to have children.

Because if nobody will have children then your retirement will be meaningless in the future. Nothing to invest in, no economical growth, no food, no products, no services.

Who will take care of you in the hospital when you will be old? As example? Who will pay for those (younger than you) doctors education?

Some parents, right?

So what you are exercising is a priviledge => available to a small group of people because the others are supporting the costs.

hot take: If the society will ever want to make this fair it should put higher taxes on people without children. As they need to spend money to buy good sleep and comfort in the future.

I even dare to say put a tax close to the estimated cost for having a children. Why? Just to make sure that the sleep is in the right balance when thinking about the future.

I repeat: this is not about the individual decision itself, everyone should do as they see it fit. But about the fact that we are part of a society and there are duties to that aswell.

[rhn_mk1]

By the time the person without children retires, they already completed the duty of supporting the previous generation, making your case for a tax weaker.

[gls2ro]

So lets see:

Person A (no children) gives 60% of all income for 40 years.

Person B (with children) gives 60% of all income and a child which will work and generate income and give taxes

Are you saying they are equal when thinking who contributes more for the future of society?

[DonHopkins]

You're conspicuously failing to account for the burden on society, the economy, and the environment that your children and their descendants will inflict, which is exponentially larger than a single non-breeder's finite contribution.

And you're also not addressing the fact that maximizing the number of humans on the earth is too much of a good thing, and makes life much worse for an exponentially larger number of people in the long run. Fewer people will suffer the sooner we slow and even gradually reverse population growth.

And you're incorrectly assuming that the only alternative to exponential population growth is sudden extinction, when it's much more likely that sudden extinction is actually the most likely result of overpopulation, due to ecological and climactic collapse and war.

If parents really altruistically cared for the wellbeing of their children and their descendants in the long term, and they're not just self-servingly and short-sightedly breeding in order to make their old age and retirement easier, then they should have fewer children to reduce the destruction they inflict of the environment from overpopulation, and stop driving their children to and from school in gas guzzling SUV minivans, when they could just as well ride their bikes or take a bus or public transit.

[Copernicron]

How is it a privilege when something like 10% or more of all people to have ever been born never reproduced? Not everyone who doesn’t have kids chose that. Some die before they can. Some are sterile. And some simply never get the chance for one reason or another.

I agree that we all have a duty to society but I disagree that I should have to pay absurd sums of money simply because you say so. I meet my duty how I choose and I already pay for your kids education through my taxes. Comments like that come across as envy that people without kids frequently have more disposable income than those with kids.

[notch656a]

Nah the first world can just rob third world elderly of their retirement by just importing in their most skilled/intelligent workers and spitting them back out when EvilCorp finishes chewing them up and cancels their work visa. No reason to have a child in the first world when the nominal comparative advantage in pricing is a little Bangladeshi child.