A Sensible Natalist Proposal
If we’re willing to see rates of reproduction as a kind of public good, then why not try to replicate the conditions or yore in which children redounded to their parents’ bottom line. Pass a law that gives parents a claim on some percentage of their children’s future earnings. This will not only increase the quantity of children produced, but will increase the quality of children as parents make targeted invetsments in their childrens’ human capital in order to maximize their take from their kids’ future production.
Doesn’t this make grown children slaves to their parents? Well, it’s not exactly clear how this differs in principle from the way taxes make us slaves to the state. If it turned out that the incentive for parents to produce kids and invest in their skills led to average after-parent-tax earnings greater than average earnings in our current system, and it produced a higher rates of economic growth through greater labor productivity, a stable level of population growth, cultural continuity, and non-collapsing pension systems, wouldn’t that be enough to justify it to the grown kids themselves? Shouldn’t we want the state to require that we pay the tax to parents, rather than to the state, if paying taxes to our parents produces all these externalities?
Maybe you’re uncomfortable about treating people as mere means even to the end of their own welfare. Then maybe you’re against taxation altogether, which is absurd.
April 28th, 2007 14:26
You get to vote for you government, but you don’t get to vote for you parents.
April 28th, 2007 14:59
You would need to factor in the parents’ outlay in the child’s upbringing. A ne’er-do-well parent would unfairly benefit from a go-getter child.
April 28th, 2007 19:58
Suddenly, I have an overwhelming desire to be absurd. I should start the Absurdist party and promote Absurdism everywhere. Beats Anarchism anyway.
Why can’t people pay for services rendered? I know, its a strange concept, but just maybe we could BUY and perhaps even SELL all the stuff that governments currently tax us for.
On the whole, I do like your proposal. It’s far better than the current lunacy and can serve us well until I figure out how to create Absurditopia.
April 29th, 2007 00:42
I teach Evolutionary Psychology, and it seems from this perspective that the proposal goes against biology.
It is generally believed among biologists that resources flow down the generations in animals that invest in their offspring - because investing resources in offspring leads to greater reproductive success (so long as parenthood is assured to a high probability, ie. offspring really are genetic offspring - which is sometimes not the case eg. for cuckolded males)
Adults who invest resources in their parent are (biologically speaking) throwing away resources on non-reproducing relatives - while adults who invest in their children are increasing the chances of replication of a proportion of their own genes.
This genetic reality underpins various human instincts, so that if indeed parents were entitled to a tax share of their childrens’ earngings then on average they would simply give this money back to the kids, and give the kids even more.
Also under this proposal society would suffer the inefficiency, economic dead weight and demotivating effect of much higher taxation.
So - it’s an interesting thought experiment, but I think a bad idea.
April 29th, 2007 10:35
“This genetic reality underpins various human instincts, so that if indeed parents were entitled to a tax share of their childrens’ earngings then on average they would simply give this money back to the kids, and give the kids even more. ”
That was one of my first thoughts. Whenever I leave for my 8 hour drive back home, my mom pushes a couple twenties on me. If it came to one of my kids giving me my ‘cut’, I’d just say, ‘Oh, you keep it honey.’ Is this an unconscious psychosocial ploy to increase the odds of being taken care of in extreme age?
April 29th, 2007 12:50
Actually, it’s quite a good idea if it is thought through carefully, and implemented well.
1.Payments to parents would be tax deductible.
2.Social Security absolutely must be modified to take into account the income of seniors. (SS is a welfare program, not an insurance program)
3.Early payments would go into an investment fund for disbursal to the parents on retirement.
Etc.
Children would only begin paying back to their parents when their own education was complete and their school loans taken care of.
April 30th, 2007 03:36
Interesting idea, but it falls apart fast when you think for a couple of seconds.
What happens to parents who have four kids, but all of them die or emigrate? Who makes sure kids don’t let their elderly parents die of neglect to get out of paying? Does a woman whose father raped her repeatedly when she was a child have to pay him once she gets old enough to run away from home?
There are only two (non-mutually exclusive) things that can result from this kind of a policy: it’s blindly applied, and large numbers of individuals are penalized for things that were beyond their control; and the government is forced to become even more intrusive to monitor all inter-family interaction.
Of course, the alternative to outright cruelty and intolerable intrusiveness is to abstract out the flows of payments to anonymise the cash stream, so that people are supported anonymously by aggregate cash flows contributed by everyone who had the good fortune to be born and remain healthy enough to be a contributing member of society.
Gee … that sounds familiar somehow.
April 30th, 2007 08:57
Looks like you may have been a touch too subtle Will; you should’ve called it “A MODEST Natalist Proposal.”
It is, incidentally, slightly bemusing to see the once-ubiquitous practice of “kids supporting parents in old age” declared a biological impossibility.
April 30th, 2007 11:14
I thought it would be clear enough that the post was authored by my frenemy, Liam James, but I guess not.