Baby Tax

Truly, I'm biased with my own baby daughter here on my lap, but this is one of those few issues I go off about - and I've been seeing a lot of discussion about it lately, especially on the Fark message boards h2odragon and I frequent.

Have you seen the movie 'Idiocracy' yet? Where the intelligent people stop breeding and thus the world is overpopulated by idiots who are slowly letting the world go to hell in a handbag? I think of that movie when I see an article like this.

On the other hand, it also almost ensures that poor people, regardless of intelligence, would not be allowed to have kids unless they can come up with the money. Some of the decent folk I know who have children, including my brother, would be ready to run if they had to choose between a 5000.00 tax and 800/yr after or aborting a pregnancy. Yes, babies are expensive but most people can find a way to make ends meet when it comes to taking care of their child. When, because of something like this, only the 'rich' can have children, what happens to society? What happens to how society views and treats children especially? It opens the door to lots of evils... like China's one child policy has done.

Human reproduction is just one of those issues that is much too difficult to put limits on without eventual corruption and misappropriation. As I saw in one of the message boards - there are times when all the poor have is their lineage, and if you tax or take away that, they are left with nothing to lose at all. In short, when you take away a people's future, especially their children, they are likely to raise up against you.

Also, having children can open some people's eyes. They suddenly begin to work for the future, for their children - and become more productive members of society. My friend in high school straightened out when she had two kids - beautiful kids and she takes care of them well even on a minimum wage job while going to school. A female relative of mine went further into the hole when she had kids, and foisted them off on others so she didn't have to stop her lifestyle... If anyone political had looked at those two situations at the beginning they would have set them equal when both of these girls had entirely different reactions about how to live their lives from that point on.

There is also talk of 'baby licenses' where each individual is sterilized in puberty, and must then prove themselves able and willing to take care of a baby before they are made fertile again. It has some logic to it, and would give free birth control to all of those who would want and/or need it. However, I'm sure you can see ways this could be used politically, to further somebody's agenda. Soon after, you have to be in a certain income bracket to have a child, and then of a certain 'optimal' age and live in a 'safe environment' etc etc... until the restrictions are so insane that the only people able to pass the test are those that slip a bribe into the right hand. Our society would crumble within a single generation, much like the movie 'Children of Men.' However, I do not think children would be looked on as favorably as in that script. There are already so many 'child-free' couples who complain about taxes providing for public education, public health etc... who would like everyone else to 'stop breeding' so they can go back to whatever else it is they're doing with their lives.