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by matheusmoreira 314 days ago
> Universal healthcare, strong social safety nets, free education, etc.

No such thing as free anything. Somebody's gotta work to pay for it. Those somebodies are the children and young healthy adults who are economically active. They are the ones who will pay the taxes which in turn fund services for everyone else.

So it's impossible to create a welfare system in order to encourage families. People need to have children first so that they can be made to pay for it.
1 comments
supplied_demand 314 days ago
== So it's impossible to create a welfare system in order to encourage families. People need to have children first so that they can be made to pay for it.==

This ignores some important facts. First, lots of immigrants already pay taxes and don’t receive government benefits. Second, we already run a continuous deficit. Third, we could choose to shift existing spending priorities to more pro-family spending.

It would cost about 1/3 of our military budget to pay for universal pre-K 3/4.

https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2022/6/2/total-...

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matheusmoreira 313 days ago
> immigrants already pay taxes

Immigrants function as imported children in this context. People wouldn't have the children that would grow into economically active adults, so the country had to import those adults from some other country whose people did have children.

> we already run a continuous deficit

Which is unsustainable.

> we could choose to shift existing spending priorities to more pro-family spending

Absolutely. Protecting and promoting families as a national policy is the right solution in my opinion.

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supplied_demand 313 days ago
== the country had to import those adults from some other country whose people did have children==

Those people chose to come the US for the opportunity as they have throughout history, even when birth rates were high.

== Protecting and promoting families as a national policy is the right solution in my opinion==

So you agree that we don’t need to wait for more people to have kids to pay for the policy because we could just adjust our spending priorities. Glad we are on the same page.

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