If you want highly educated people to have children, incentivize them to. If it is so easy to convince them not to have kids, the incentives provided (if any) suck even though "our sustained quality of life depends on children from these people." Clearly, there is a price value disconnect. Society must pay up if these children are so valuable. The evidence is that they are not, based on the environment people of childbearing age are currently operating in.
Ummm.., yes? I don’t know how to respond because I agree with all of this (I think). It’s not inconsistent to say that raising high-contribution children is a massive cost to parents and an even greater benefit to society.
And just enough of them have been ‘tricked’ by religion or culture or noblesse oblige, etc. to keep post-agrarian civilization going.
But also there is a huge number of people that have children that are poorly prepared for net-positive contribution, and they receive almost all of the structural incentives allotted to parents.
There are actually structural disincentives to intensive parenting, like triple-taxation levied on parents that hire professional childcare. It would be easy to make this fully-deductible, but, like I said, the people at the top don’t like competition. Also consider that Social Security is just generational transfer payment, so it might make sense to pay some portion of taxes up the family tree, as well as deducting for any social burden like welfare and imprisonment. You do well, you get rewarded, you screw up, you pay, and there’s a big element of chance, just like anything in real life.
But I really would like to know, do you want less total number of children in the world, or do you want more childless leisure-class adults, or are you genuinely trying to warn people that their lives will get a lot harder with children?
It seems to me that you’re not wrong in the small sense, but in the grand scheme, we still need those hero parents out there.
> do you want less total number of children in the world, or do you want more childless leisure-class adults, or are you genuinely trying to warn people that their lives will get a lot harder with children?
All of the above. I want people who are resourced and intentional about having children to have them, and have the support they need. I want people who don’t want kids to be fully empowered to affirm that choice (temporary and permanent birth control). And yes, genuinely trying to warn people about how hard life is raising children in the current macro. In theory, this should lead to less aggregate suffering, with less unwanted children and less unhappy parents (of unwanted children).
No one should have to be a hero if they would rather not. The evidence is clear we don’t provide support for the parents and kids here today, and potential parents should know up front they’re on their own and always a few steps away from disaster or peril. If you choose the suck anyway, good luck, you’re on your own.
(I donate to Dietz and Stop Having Kids)