On Apr 5, 2008, at 3:24 PM, Hal Vaughan wrote:
Seems kind of stupid to put yourself in that kind of ethical dilemma in the first place. It's not like there aren't six billion other people on this already overpopulated rock, plopping out another before you can afford to raise it through age 18 in this day and age ought to be considered child abuse.Sorry to be so harsh, but there's no other way to call it than to say such as statement is shortsighted, overdramatic, and ignorant. Planning out the next 18 years is just not possible. Even for the independently wealthy, there is no way to be sure you'll have the resources in 18 years that you have now. By your standard, less than 2% of the entire world's population should ever consider parenthood, and those would be the richest 2% on the planet. Unless you're at least a multi-millionaire (considering numbers thesedays, I'd say worth $3-5 million), you've just qualified yourself as anunfit Father.
Not going to dive into the fray about overpopulation and people having children who can't afford to raise them... but I will comment that having finished my 2007 taxes here recently, and as a (by choice) non- parent, I find our society "rewarding" parents by giving a tax break for each child to be quite distasteful.
I have no problems paying my fair share of taxes, but lowering both taxable income and this year -- offering a higher rebate as an "economic stimulus" package-- for people who decided to have or keep children, is fiscally irresponsible, as it rewards the wrong behavior. I guess I wouldn't spend that money more readily on capital goods that would truly help the economy? Yeah right. What world is this again? The parents with four kids will spend it on higher fuel costs for soccer mom to rush children from event to event.
As a DINK family (Dual-Income, No Kids and yes, we're a "family" too, even if we're treated like second-class "family" citizens by almost every government, religious, and societal group), who probably will be for our entire lives, we know we're in the minority, and screwed -- when it comes to pointing out to our so-called "representative" government that handing back more money to someone because they have children, and/or offering them a lower taxable income number every year than ours at the same real income level, is blatantly wrong.
-- Nate Duehr nate@natetech.com