If the government can charge me a higher rate of tax because I am not a useless turd with no marketable skills then charging people more for failing to keep population at or above replacement is also not an infringement of freedom. While we are talking about freedom, have you looked at what happens to societies when population growth rates collapse? They tend to not stay societies for very many generations after that. They tend to get invaded and added to an empire that still has a positive population growth rate, or they collapse internally due to the weight of unfullfillable promises and infighting over the shrinking pie and get picked off at the edges. In that regard, policy to preserve the birth rate is a freedom enhancing choice if you think our current society is free. I personally think it's not that great but everything else is pretty bad, so it's the best of a bad situation choice, which makes it worth preserving.
Sound like a totalitarian regime to me. Look at which countries already tried it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness These were all communist countries with at least an intention/policy of providing social services for those children: free health, free education, guaranteed job after that, afordable or even free housing, etc.
USA has none of those. The rich will have a choice; the poor won't. And we already know that children of the poor tend to stay poor and the more children the are, the poorer they'll be. It will be a generation of poor with no hope of escape.
Then there's the slippery slope: What stops the government from increasing the tax to severe punishment levels or levels completely unafordable by anyone?
sigh Very much true and very much not whataboutism because it is valid to compare taxation regimes. If you like progressive taxation then the onus is on you to justify your claims that applying the exact same regime to another characteristic (doing your job at keeping the birthrate above replacement) Is totalitarian while applying it based on income is not (you've failed to do this btw because you can't because they are either both totalitarian or both not because they are the exact same premise).
Also, you fail to appreciate what tax penalties look like. This will incent the rich to have more kids because a 10 % penalty when you are making a million dollars a year is 100k but it's a rounding error if you are in poverty because the first almost 32k of household income is tax free if you joint file. It was said partially in jest, but it is actually a good policy if you can price it low enough that it doesn't cause migration but high enough that it does cause more kids.
I'm going to split your arguments into parts, because they don't make much sense clumped together. I have a hard time understanding it.
> not whataboutism because it is valid to compare taxation regimes.
But this isn't a taxation regime. It's a penalty for choosing a way of life. It's as if the non-parent is responsible for the far future income of the state, especially in a state (USA) with no state-provided pensions; a state that doen't contribute anything back to the future non-parent compared to a future parent.
> the onus is on you to justify your claims
I already demonstrated that the only states that implemented it were totalitarian states. Are you in disagreement with this? Proportional taxation (fixed % of income) and even progressive taxation (higher % of income for higher income) is used everywhere, totalitarian state or otherwise. I'm not going to argue why that type of taxation is a good thing. Ask a LLM.
> (doing your job at keeping the birthrate above replacement)
Not my job. Not _a_ job. Not unless you consider that women should stay at home, cook and take care of children. BTW, do you?
> applying the exact same regime to another characteristic [...] Is totalitarian while applying it based on income is not
Sorry? Should that be the other way around to be comparable? More children, more tax? The state spends money on children, even in USA.
> This will incent the rich to have more kids because a 10 % penalty when you are making a million dollars a year is 100k but it's a rounding error if you are in poverty because the first almost 32k of household income is tax free if you joint file.
The rich have more disposable income. They won't feel 10%. A poor person is already at their limit. 10% will break them, so they'll have more kids and they'll be poor too. They will not contribute to future taxes. "useless turds" as you said - be careful what you wish for.
> the first almost 32k of household income is tax free
Oh, so they're exempt from childless tax too? That's moving goalposts.