Reducing Births

Hello Mina,

It can be frustrating that childless people and people with only one kid wind up subsidizing families with more kids (by way of child tax credits, benefits that are more available for people with more kids, and higher payments for things like public schooling, etc.) Yet, at the same time, we don't want to punish innocent kids by letting them sit in functional poverty just because their parents decided to have a "quiverfull" without an income to afford that without help.

So, here's an idea for a solution: give parents an option of whether or not to claim any benefits for kids beyond the first two (e.g., whether to claim them for child tax credit/welfare purposes, whether to send them to public school, etc.) If the parents opt-in, then they get those things the same as today.... but, in exchange, the parents have their Medicare/SS full eligibility age postponed by 5 years for each such kid.

So, if you want to claim four kids for tax purposes, and send four kids to public school, and so on, that's fine and is your choice. However, you'll effectively pay back the rest of society for your disproportionate take by way of postponing retirement. You'll work until 77 before the government gives you full SS benefits, where most get then them at 67. Want 6 kids? Fine, we'll help out with that, too -- but expect to work until you're 87 (or dead). It sort of takes the form of a loan, where the extra benefits your kids suck up when they're young wind up being partly reimbursed by you in your elder years.

That would discourage people from burdening the environment by overbreeding, but would ultimately leave that decision to the individual. It would avoid punishing the kids. And it would help to prop up SS and Medicare funding.

I like it. I think it's a great idea.

And we can increase the legal immigration quota to provide willing young workers for the country, get taxes paid, and pay into SS and Medicare.
 
soaring populations in poor countries

Much of the third world is seeing reduced population growth. Fertility rates of below 2.1 are considered below population replacement rates. Sooner or later(absent migration), there will be population decline. Some countries with below replacement rates are Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, and Turkey. Mexico has a fertility rate of 2.103 in 2019, barely above replacement rate of 2.1. Almost certainly it is below 2.1 now.

Supporting access to education and birth control for women does amazing things in dropping fertility rates. If anything, it can drop it by too much. The solution then is building schools, not trying to force people not to have children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
 
We should enact this and then make darn sure this is well explained in every public school.

If you turn into an irresponsible kid-generating machine, you will pay dearly for it later in life.

Here is another idea. Anybody who has more than two children, and is in a higher tax bracket, should have to pay an additional amount of taxes. This could be done by taxing everyone who has more than 2 kids, and then giving those with lower incomes an exemption.

We have to do something. The environment and ecosystems can't withstand too many humans on the planet. The system is already over burdened as it is.
 
The real way to limit the population of Earth is to redistribute wealth.

The greatest birth rates are found among the poorest humans on Earth.

We need to step up our efforts to provide every person on the planet ample food to eat, a safe secure place to live, health care, and all the basics for a minimal but comfortable life. The USA alone can't do this, but we can be a huge part of what should be an international effort.

When humans have everything they need, they tend to have around 2 children per couple.

It is absolutely absurd that as people are starving and producing way too many births, that others are living in lavish luxury and have more wealth than they will every be able to spend. Huge tax rates should kick in above a certain amount of wealth so that our institutions can do more for society.
 
Hello Mina,

The more you burden the environment with excess population, the longer you work to make up for it. If you're worried about Social Security, that's easy to fix simply by admitting more young workers as immigrants.... which gives us the SS contributions without the added global population.

There is another good reason to increase the legal immigration quota. We could admit individuals into America who then find more opportunity to work hard and enjoy a good life, which leads to having fewer children (within a few generations) than that same family line would have it their entry into the USA were rejected, and they went back to a hopelessly impoverished situation, which tends to produce even more births.
 
Hello ThatOwlWoman,

It's really a non-issue. From Statista:

BDZsbGU.jpg


The Quiverfull fundies are a tiny minority. They deliberately choose to live in or near the poverty line in order to have a boatload of kids that they hope to brainwash into their religious practices. There was one of them on our former forum. Most of them homeschool so they're not burdening their local school system with actual education. In these large families the mom typically does not have a paying job -- who could afford the daycare for such large broods? So the only one who would have to worry about collecting social security would be the dad, who probably won't collect for long, if at all.

Maybe reducing the income levels to quality for the child tax credit would be a better idea. If your combined income is $150,000/year why do you need a tax credit for the kids?

Great idea!
 
Hello Mina,

If the first world truly was a world, in the sense of a separate planet with a separate environment, that might matter. But it's a global ecosystem and we're all on the same planet, so when you have flat populations in rich countries and soaring populations in poor countries, the environmental challenge is just going to get worse and worse. We are basically "leaving it all to people to work out for themselves" and the result is rapid global population growth and an accelerating climate catastrophe. I think there are better options.

One observation is that the rich account for far more pollution and climate change than the poor do.

But there are no simple answers. We need to get every human on the planet well provided for, and we need to change world environmental policy to care for the climate.

Really, this whole enchilada is an indication that we need a strong functional world government to deal with worldwide issues. This whole every-country-for-itself thing is not really working out very well.
 
Here's another idea.

The world gets better children if they are raised in two-parent families.

Create a tax credit for married parents that single parents do not qualify for.
 
Much of the third world is seeing reduced population growth. Fertility rates of below 2.1 are considered below population replacement rates. Sooner or later(absent migration), there will be population decline. Some countries with below replacement rates are Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, and Turkey. Mexico has a fertility rate of 2.103 in 2019, barely above replacement rate of 2.1. Almost certainly it is below 2.1 now.

Supporting access to education and birth control for women does amazing things in dropping fertility rates. If anything, it can drop it by too much. The solution then is building schools, not trying to force people not to have children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate

On average, population growth is still positive. Even in 2020, with unusually low population growth thanks to COVID, it was 1.05%, globally. Over the last decade, it's been a little over 1.14%, annualized. It's nice that it's slowing, but it's still rising, on a planet with nearly 8 billion people already. And as people in poorer countries get richer, they're going to be polluting at far greater rates, causing our current overburden of the environment to get worse and worse. The math on that gets a lot easier to "solve" if population is gradually declining that if it's growing, or even just steady.
 
Hello Mina,



One observation is that the rich account for far more pollution and climate change than the poor do.

But there are no simple answers. We need to get every human on the planet well provided for, and we need to change world environmental policy to care for the climate.

Really, this whole enchilada is an indication that we need a strong functional world government to deal with worldwide issues. This whole every-country-for-itself thing is not really working out very well.

Definitely agreed. Unfortunately, the current generation has been programmed, by the plutocrats to fear a world government. The plutocrats know it's easier to dominate a bunch of divided nations than a single organized government (e.g., they can play government against each other by fleeing to tax-shelter flags of convenience.)
 
Even in 2020, with unusually low population growth thanks to COVID, it was 1.05%, globally. Over the last decade, it's been a little over 1.14%, annualized.

In 1972, it was 2.01%. It has been falling ever since. Worldwide extreme poverty dropped from 36% of the population in 1990, to 9.9% in 2015. If someone had predicted that in 1990, they would have been laughed at. The two are linked. And both are linked to education, and access to birth control.

We sometimes forget that most of the world is getting better.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

It's nice that it's slowing, but it's still rising, on a planet with nearly 8 billion people already.

It will probably peak around 11 billion. Though with rapid advancements, we could be surprised with a peak of as little as 9 billion. We seem to be surprised a lot lately.

And with rapid urbanization, that 11 billion will do a lot less damage to the environment than the current population. Urbanization is more rapid than either population growth, or population slowing.
 
Much of the third world is seeing reduced population growth. Fertility rates of below 2.1 are considered below population replacement rates. Sooner or later(absent migration), there will be population decline. Some countries with below replacement rates are Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, and Turkey. Mexico has a fertility rate of 2.103 in 2019, barely above replacement rate of 2.1. Almost certainly it is below 2.1 now.

Supporting access to education and birth control for women does amazing things in dropping fertility rates. If anything, it can drop it by too much. The solution then is building schools, not trying to force people not to have children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate

The United states will be in trouble labor wise without more immigration

Demographers use the birth-to-death ratio (BDR) to track the changing relationship between fertility and mortality in a population. For whites, the BDR fell from 1.21 in 2000 to just 0.98 in 2016 (Figure 2). Thus, the number of white births for each white death declined from 1.21 in 2000 to less than 1 in 2016.

https://apl.wisc.edu/data-briefs/na...graphers use the birth-to,less than 1 in 2016.
 
Hello Mina,

Definitely agreed. Unfortunately, the current generation has been programmed, by the plutocrats to fear a world government. The plutocrats know it's easier to dominate a bunch of divided nations than a single organized government (e.g., they can play government against each other by fleeing to tax-shelter flags of convenience.)

When Earth is seen from space, it is inspiring to think that this little blue bubble is the only place that humans exist in the entire vast universe. A tiny blue speck. It is absurd that, as humans squabble over who owns what, their one and only livable habitat is being slowly destroyed. Any logical being would wonder why the humans do not get organized and use their intelligence to improve their situation.

Instead, the majority of the most adept humans are obsessed with selfishly collecting wealth, as if that is the true measure of doing a good job of being an individual part of the human race.
 
In 1972, it was 2.01%. It has been falling ever since. Worldwide extreme poverty dropped from 36% of the population in 1990, to 9.9% in 2015. If someone had predicted that in 1990, they would have been laughed at. The two are linked. And both are linked to education, and access to birth control.

We sometimes forget that most of the world is getting better.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty



It will probably peak around 11 billion. Though with rapid advancements, we could be surprised with a peak of as little as 9 billion. We seem to be surprised a lot lately.

And with rapid urbanization, that 11 billion will do a lot less damage to the environment than the current population. Urbanization is more rapid than either population growth, or population slowing.

Check the CO2 output, though. We're not on a pace to rein that in anywhere close to fast enough to avoid horrendous disaster. Achieving negative population growth faster would make that challenge easier.
 
Child tax credits come from federal income taxes and Social Security benefits from the SS Trust Fund. Making people wait until later to collect SS does not help the loss of federal income tax revenue.
 
Hello evince,



Meaning something that will work for people who make policy decisions based more on emotion than logic...


What positions are you talking about?

These are human beings

Humans make mistakes

That does not mean you force old people to work or starve
 
Hello evince,

What positions are you talking about?

These are human beings

Humans make mistakes

That does not mean you force old people to work or starve

And there is a bit of a problem with it about delayed consequences. Most of America is of the 'instant gratification' mindset. They don't concern themselves with delayed consequences, whether they be good or bad. Most people who create kids are young and not thinking about their retirement or even wondering if they will ever make it that far in life.

So, to take something away that is many decades off from the future benefits of an individual who is hardly or barely two decades old, doesn't seem like much to them at that point.

The punishment might be too far removed from the action.

What hormone-influenced teenager is going to stop in the act of procreating because it occurs that it might affect retirement benefits 45-50 years later?

They look at the rate at which we are destroying the environment and wonder if they will even live that long anyway.

The immature mind would tend to think: "Might as well do what I want while I have the chance."
 
Possibly. But to the extent this results in them eventually taking less out of SS, and paying more in, through delayed retirement eligibility, that helps as well.

But it would very likely have no impact whatsoever on the problem that you proposed it might resolve.
 
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