2001-06-20 15:10:42+00 by Dan Lyke 8 comments
I haven't read Paying For It: what children fully cost enough to do basic fact-checking on, but I wanted to continue the cost of a child discussion in a separate place so that we didn't make that page way too long to load. So this is just an entry to hang another discussion off of.
[ related topics: Child-Freedom ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:54+00 by: Dan Lyke
Larry, in the previous thread you said that the low birthrate in China was causing a lack of aunts and uncles. I'd think that the larger ratio of adults to children would cause more adult attention.
As for what I'd have missed out on if I didn't have aunts and uncles, I'd have missed a lot of the experiences that I hope I'm offering to kids now. And one of those I think of in that light was an unrelated adult with attitudes much like mine (where ever you are now, Bill Kennedy (of considerable model railroading fame), thank you for showing me that I could pick and choose the bits of being a grown-up that I wanted to.).
#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:54+00 by: Larry Burton
Basically, what I was commenting on was a change in the traditional family structure. Good, bad or indifferent, that has now changed in China with the second generation of the one child family now becoming parents. Your decision to be an "Uncle" rather than a father is comendable in that you are not just opting out completely in helping to shape the future generations. I wonder, though, how many people are willing to be "Uncles" or "Aunts" to an unrelated child.
#Comment made: 2001-06-20 18:18:36+00 by: sethg [edit history]
If you're going to do such a complete accounting for the social cost of raising children (including the cost of maintaining the road in front of the house that a family-with-children just bought in a new subdivision -- sheesh!), you have to do an equally complete accounting for the social benefit, which only becomes visible after said children grow up.
Let me try to recast "children are our future" in terms that would appeal to a childless person's enlightened self-interest:
Imagine Joe Retiree living off the dividends from his IBM stock. Why can IBM pay dividends to Joe? Because it has employees who are producing the products and services that IBM sells, and IBM returns some profits from that sale to its investors. If IBM employees did not already have a baseline level of education subsidized by the state, then either IBM would have to spend more on training them (reducing IBM's profit margin), or the employees would have to spend more on their own education (either by spending less on other things or by saving less -- both of which would impact retirees' returns).
If everyone in Joe Retiree's generation had decided not to reproduce, then as soon as IBM's last employee retired, IBM wouldn't have any dividends -- and as IBM's work force got older and older, the stock market, anticipating this, would bid down the value of the stock. Furthermore, since intelligent investors buy stocks because they're willing to accept short-term risks in exchange for long-term rewards, as the cohort of investors got older and older, they would sell off IBM, driving the price down even faster.
Everything I've said above regarding IBM goes for every other interest-bearing investment you could make in anticipation of retirement: All of them assume that there will be a generation n+1![[Wiki]](/adbanners/lookingglass.png){kind=small}
that will be productive enough to pay returns to generation n.
You can't say the same thing about boats.
Note that I haven't even mentioned Social Security.
#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:55+00 by: Dan Lyke
Actually, all that I ask is that there be enough adults around when I retire that I can purchase services from them. Obviously, the less adults to provide services, the more expensive their services will be, so there's a curve there that bears further evaluating, but...
Modulo the .COM lunacy of the past couple of years, the existence of unions and the real estate price curve indicate that we have a glut of adults as a commodity.
What we're short on is capable adults.
Now it's fairly well shown that the out-in-front overrides-everything-else indicator of how the children are going to be is the parents, both in who they are, and in how they're involved in the upbringing of their children.
Given that, if I'm going to contribute to the upbringing of children, I either want to be supporting parents whose efforts I believe in, or I want those children taken from their parents and raised in a manner I think is appropriate.
Anything else is just bad wealth-redistribution which should really be dealt with at an income tax level.
#Comment made: 2001-06-21 02:41:58+00 by: Pete [edit history]
I've been busy, so I'm addressing several previous posts in this single post:The House of Delegates voted today [2/2/2001-ed] (85 to 10) to express regret for Virginia's policies of selective breeding during the 20th century, including the forced sterilization of 8,000 mostly poor, uneducated men and women for supposed hereditary "defects."Virginia performed forced sterilaztions until 1979. Enough.
Virginia passed its Eugenical Sterilization Act in 1924 -- which targeted "socially inadequate offspring" -- on the same day it passed the Racial Integrity Act prohibiting marriage between whites and nonwhites.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization at the Lynchburg facility in a case involving a woman named Carrie Buck, who had become pregnant as a teenager. In allowing her sterilization in 1927, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes assessed Buck, her mother and her daughter, then declared, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
#Comment made: 2001-06-21 05:30:36+00 by: topspin [edit history]
Pete, you are misinterpreting my statements. Read:
>I am not opposed to subsidized
>education of the children of parents who are negligent
>parents, ie., neglectful in their duty as parents to
>financially support their children. Non-negligent
>parents should fully pay for the education of their
>children because it's part of the responsibility of parenting.
I clearly state I am NOT opposed to the subsidized education of the children of parents who are negligent, but I AM opposed to subsidized education for the children of parents who aren't negligent and can afford to educate their own kids. Again, I believe parents are responsible for the expenses incurred from their choice to have a child. Children are FIRST the responsibility of the parents and SECOND the responsibility of society if the parents are irresponsible or extenuating circumstances are involved.
I am NOT equating simply having a child with a crime. I am equating having a child which you cannot support with a crime against society. I am NOT advocating punishing the children for the crime, but the parents. I am simply suggesting what is common sense in any other endeavor: if you choose to take on a responsibility in society and cannot meet that responsibility, you face consequences for failing to meet your chosen obligations. Bankruptcies, negligence lawsuits, malpractice lawsuits.... these are not news.
You misinterpreted my call for parental testing. I am not suggesting "controlled reproduction" or eugenics, rather I'm calling for a way for society to identify existing parents who aren't pulling their parental weight in society.... who aren't getting involved in their kid's lives.... who aren't making financial decisions with their kids in mind.... who aren't being responsible parents.... and single them out for education and possibly sanctions by society. I'm suggesting parental testing to return responsibility to the equation for negligent parents. As I said, most parents are VERY responsible, even sacrificial, for their kids and family. I think society has an interest in identifying and admonishing those parents who are cavalier about their children's needs.
As for rights vs privileges, education is a privilege, not a right. If society is going to subsidize the privilege of public education, it has the right of regulation. Expecting certain things from the parents (via testing) is part of maximizing the investment in the child's education, unless you want to suggest the education process occurs only at school and the home environment has nothing to do with the success of a public education. Regulating parenting behavior is part of educating the child, IMO, because it teaches the kids about societal consequences, responsibility, and parenting skills.
#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:56+00 by: debrahyde
Dan,
>>Biological processes practice eugenics, that's part of nature.<<
Not nearly as much as it use to, given our medical advances. My son would probably be dead already if not for his meds. And I know countless other children who would've died even younger as well. In the daily course of living, death and disability is a far and distant thing for most of us. And it's probably better that way, given how hypervigilant our society seems to be.
Granted, we don't understand and fear death and disabled like our greatgrandparents did. We can't imagine their natural tragedies visiting us today. I, for one, can't imagine the typhoid epidemic that took my maternal grandfather's first wife, plus his mother and sister. I can't imagine spooning soup to three small children from the sickbed, the way he did.
And how did I handle the parent of Fosterboy? I called the state. You might find that whimping out, but I wasn't about to let him bring his violence to my doorstep. Plus, the man was way beyond reasonable discourse. There was no opportunity to influence him; the best I could do was shelter his kids and call the state.
You still haven't answered the class aspect of this issue though.
#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:31:57+00 by: Dan Lyke
First off, so that we can keep things from getting too personal here, I suggest a revision to the terms of debate. I, and I think Topspin shares this view, am arguing from a point of philosophical purity. Pragmatism, unless I'm willing to completely alienate myself from the world, involves compromise. I'm just trying to push towards a philosophically better world.
Pete said:
This analogy is predicated upon the idea that the birth of a human being is a crime or other abuse of the community that must be compensated for, an idea you have failed to support.
If the community undertakes responsibility for the raising of a child, the birth of a child is the incursion of a liability upon the community. What's so hard about that?
Even if the community doesn't take such a responsibility, if we say that a child has rights, and if, as in, say, Objectivism, those rights are based on a very small humans-to-available-resources ratio (and this is assuming Objectivism's positive rights, not, for instance, Marxism's negative rights), then if we don't make the parents responsible for that use of resources we must lay the responsibility on the child.
That way, the presumption of being born in sin and obligation, lies Christianity.
To go back to the Superfund analogy, having a child is like acquiring hazardous materials for a manufacturing process. If you are responsible, then that manufacturing process may indeed result in a product which provides value to the society in which you hope to sell it, without harmful byproducts. If you are not responsible, future generations will end up spending millions attempting to collect and safely store the product of your misdeeds. Just as Superfund is insurance, so is public education.
In fact, if we took the enlightened northern European approaches to manufacturing, that manufacturers are responsible for the life-cycle and disposal of their products and the packaging, we'd require parents to post bond up-front.
Pete also commented that:
The interest group this expense should be, and is
I don't buy that argument for the same reasons you'll hear me argue against roads as an unecessary and unfair subsidy of overly polluting technologies. Yes, this system benefits the populace, but only in a myopic way that precludes change in any meaningful time-scale to better modes.
And, in response to Todd's use of "antedeluvian", Pete asked: "What flood?".
September, 1993. (and those involved in this discussion, even if you joined the online community after that, should take this as a compliment.)
In response to my assertion that biological processes practice eugenics, Debra said:
Not nearly as much as it use to, given our medical advances.
I disagree. It's more that our medical advances have changed the rules by which we evolve. We still evolve, it's just that the rules of evolution favor a different set of genes than when the culling mechanism was who could outrun the predators. For instance, the rules as they stand right now don't favor whatever genes Topspin and I would pass on if we'd chosen to reproduce. Is creating a society in which I could not imagine raising a balanced, healthy child who could
And I don't tackle the class aspects because I believe that there will always be classes, some organisms are more adaptable than others. The only way to handle classism is to make sure that the social pressures which create the classes are just.