[jahewson]

Over your childhood you received plenty of money from the previous generation in the form of schooling, subsidies or tax breaks for your parents, publicly funded resources, etc. The assumption is that you'll pay it back over your lifetime so that the next generation has access to the same resources which you did. I'd suggest starting your quest for fairness by paying back this money, because by your own standard you're freeloading.

Welfare is ultimately an insurance scheme and the idea of getting your money back is as silly as getting your money back on your car insurance because you never crashed it. You're human and on average you're ~50% female and will eventually have children. Maybe if you volunteer for a vivisection then you can have a lower premium, but you're a member of the group whether you like it or not.

There's really no way to know who will and won't have children, ask a man under 20 if they want kids and you'll probably get 50% "no". Yet some 98% of them will have children. Somebody who has had a vivisection can easily have it reversed and somebody who is infertile may yet be treated my some future medical technique. From an insurance perspective everybody "may" have children and so needs to pay into the insurance scheme.

[jobposter1234]

It's one thing for an insurance company to operate in that manner, it's another for the government to do so.

People have a choice whether to procreate. I should either be allowed to participate in that choice, or be removed from the financial consequences.

[jahewson]

The government has to operate like any other insurance company, otherwise it will become bankrupt. Because it's impossible to gurantee that any straight health person will never have children, i.e you must be a member of the group. Much like car insurance, where you can't promise to never crash your car - you can have a lower premium for not crashing but you can't have no insurance. These are the simple financial facts of insurance.

While individuals do have a choice of whether to procreate (and it's not always a choice), society as a whole does not. Without procreation the economy and society would quickly collapse and the human race would eventually come to and end. So there's tremendous societal benefit to procreation and it should be supported by any government which society chooses to put in place. What you're suggesting would insentivize large numbers of people to not have any children, which is harmful to society and the wider economy. Indeed, without parents, you yourself would not exist.

A world in which you don't have to incur costs for others's children, is a world in which the benefits of those children should arguably be denied to you: no pension, lesser pay because you can't sell to children (or adults once those children are grown up), expensive services because you won't be allowed to use young cheap labor, no universities, larger tax and medical burdens as your own generation becomes older and more sickly, no hip young music or art, no interactions with people more than 25 years younger, no younger workers at your company as it grows, no technologies invented by or provided by those children in their adulthood, etc. Since you didn't contribute to raising the children, it's only fair that you don't get to reap the rewards, right?

The fact is that as a member of society and our economy, you derive a huge financial benefit from other's children which is inescapable. No man is an island.