[qurren]

If you want to incentivize people to have kids, hand out $500K-1M to anyone who wants to have kids. Don't penalize those who don't.

And yes, kids cost that much.

I'm a senior level software engineer in the bay area. I don't have kids. I don't think I can afford them. I'm tired of people telling me I can afford them. The world works differently today. In the 1980's, if you had a stable job that let you leave at 5pm, you could more or less handle kids.

Today, leaving at 5pm means risking PIP and not having an income; your company may lay off people randomly without notice; your rents could go up 10-20% unexpectedly; groceries could double in price over a couple years; you basically need to be working round the clock to not get PIPed and even sustain an income. And if you work around the clock you also need cash to hire nannies because you don't have the time to raise them yourself. As such I wouldn't even think about kids in this world without having saved up the full sum of my expenses AND their expenses for their ENTIRE life until 21 years old in CASH before even having the kid. We just don't have the job security today.

[guruide]

I have 4 kids and can say that they absolutely do not have to cost that much. Child care is legitimately costly until they reach school age (age 5), but if you use public schools, cook modest meals at home, recognize that kids will survive and even thrive without costly extra-curricular activities, and avoid cities with outrageous costs of living like San Francisco or New York City, then having children is quite affordable. I live in the Midwestern United States. I know many families who live very comfortably on less than $100k per year.

That isn’t to say you should have kids. That’s a really personal choice. And it can come with huge amounts of extra anxiety around job security, for sure. But there are tons of options for arranging life and work to make it happen if one really wants to.

[qurren]

> I have 4 kids and can say that they absolutely do not have to cost that much.

Look, my electricity bill doubled. Will the landlord pay for efficiency upgrades? Nope. Will the landlord still increase rent? Hell yes. My water bill doubled. Extrapolate those numbers.

Taco Bell used to cost $5 for a meal, and now costs $14.

My $5 sandwich now costs $15.

50%+ of my income is lost to taxes of sorts. Before you lecture me on tax, I know my taxes better than you know me. Sales taxes, self-employment taxes, tariffs are all taxes.

I get hit with $5-7K of medical bills a year. With insurance. I have a rare idiopathic heart condition, so that's my cost (systematic tax) to stay alive, and probably would be the cost for a potential genetically-infected kid to stay alive as well. I also pay $3K/year in orthodontics last and this year, and another $2-3K in preventative care out of pocket. After my orthodontics is over, I'm sure some other $4K/year shit will come up. I'm stashing up cash for all of this.

"Live in the Midwestern United States" and "avoid San Francisco", you say. But there are no jobs there. None that I could get. Everything I could get wanted me to be 3 days/week on site in silicon valley. Jobs that I found in even LA or Boston were literally half the salary or less. Jobs elsewhere were less than 1/3 the salary. Considering more than half my salary goes to taxes, tariffs, and more taxes of sorts, my partner and I really need that cash.

I don't have time to cook every meal at home. I don't have time to see kids. I'd get PIP from my job if I did that. Today's jobs don't let you work 40 hours a week; you need to work closer to 80. At my last job I worked 70 hours a week and still got PIPed. My coworkers took my ideas, finished them on weekends, worked 100 hour weeks, presented to leadership on Monday without my name. I didn't meet the "bar". My work is making millions for a big corp as I write this. Just not in my name.

Public schools are expensive. Because you pay for it in housing costs. Wherever housing is cheap, public schools are shitty. I live where housing is cheap, relatively speaking, for the bay. But I don't have kids, so it works out.

My financial planning model works like this.

For every $1 I need to support myself and my partner, I need to earn about $8. $4 goes to <strike>taxes</strike> government laundering, $4 left. For the $4 left, $2 goes to retirement (base assumption is the economy is now irreparably broken and S&P500 isn't necessarily going to grow in the next 40 years like it did the past 40), $1 goes to my catastrophe fund (in case of very realistic war or AI unemployment), $1 goes towards spending now.

My partner and I barely meet that 8x bar. That is my bar to feel safe. I couldn't meet it with kids. Without kids, we have a sane and happy life. Everything is covered, from the taxes to the whopping medical bills to housing. End of story.

[ghusto]

> Today, leaving at 5pm means risking PIP and not having an income;

This is Germany, not the USA. Shit doesn't work like that here.

[nowandlater]

It also doesn't work like this in all job domains in the US. These hyper-competitive FANGlike employers are meat grinders. You can live well enough on a modest wage a few hundred miles away in the Central Valley working for a public institution with a pension. It still exists even it's less so than it was 30 or 40 years ago.

[saalweachter]

> If you want to incentivize people to have kids, hand out $500K-1M to anyone who wants to have kids. Don't penalize those who don't.

Where does the money come from?

[hephaes7us]

Same place it always does, just print it. Of course, that still effectively penalizes those who don't want children, but the penalty is less legible to the public so there are fewer objections.

[qurren]

I really don't fucking know. That's not my problem. Either increase my salary by $500K for a couple years, or stop taxing me to death (state taxes, federal taxes, sales taxes, indirectly paying property taxes via rent, taxes disguised as car registrations, tariffs, so many goddamn taxes I don't have any money left to save), stop starting wars elsewhere, stop squandering money, anything.

It's not my problem, really. I'm very happy childless. Unless that money materializes, I can't afford kids.

[saalweachter]

It's just that in the US, there are 3.6 million babies born each year; even taking the low-end of a $500k one-time payment to one parent, you're already talking a $1.8 trillion / year program, slightly larger than Social Security's $1.6 trillion program.

Social Security is funded by a 12.4% income tax, with half nominally paid by the employee and half nominally paid by the employer.

You'd need a similar tax to fund such a benefit, which would amount to a 15% income tax, assuming the program isn't too successful in raising birth rates.

[VirusNewbie]

There are plenty of people in the bay area who have kids who likely make less than you do.

[moomoo11]

seems like cope.

you’re probably making like 500k TC

if you’re 30 and worked in tech you should have around 1m nw

if your partner makes 200-400k you can afford to have children

i see arab/muslims and mexicans here with like 3-4 kids. i live in sf, so somehow they’re able to do it without a high paying tech job.