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In the past, people would have a ton of kids. My great grandmother had 14 kids and my great grandparents on my dad side had 9 kids. My friend great great grand parents had 20 kids. Now days people have 1-4 kids. Why is that people are having less kids?
Well, maybe if I'd whelped-out eleven babies, I could have explained to the IRS that I was being "unselfish", and maybe they'd let me have a lower tax rate than whatever piddling deduction you get per-child. And maybe the banks would have let us have a lower interest rate on our mortgage, on account of our having eleven kids and all. You know... the "Unselfish Breeder Lending Rate". And maybe the grocery stores would have just let me load up carts with food for free. And maybe the hospitals would have birthed our eleven babies for the sheer joy of seeing such an "unselfish" mother. Likewise for clinics/emergency rooms...
Actually, plenty of people with coloring like mine do get endless freebies from cradle to grave. And plenty of them spew babies like volcanos spew lava. After all, 'the government' is going to take care of them.
Silly me, feeling guilty for having three kids, instead of just one. Most young professionals we knew were having to wait into their thirties before they could have even one child. Plenty found themselves incapable of producing children by the time they'd gotten to the place where their debt load was low enough to even consider having kids.
Most people we knew were having to work their way through college, then grad school, then doctoral programs (the job market grew ever more difficult, as time went by). And, while they were trying to pay off their student loans, buy the cheapest houses they could find in the closest-to-decent neighborhoods they could afford, they (and we) were being taxed like crazy, to fund the breeding habits of people who wouldn't know Personal Responsibility if it bit them on the butt.
One huge reason middle class people don't have more kids is because they are being taxed to death to fund the irresponsible reproduction of the lower class. The money young middle class people would have used for producing intelligent, responsible, productive offspring has been confiscated to pay for breeding Tomorrow's Problems.
Remember that when Paw Paw and Gan Gan were having huge families, there was no Inheritance Tax and no Income Tax. One way to look at today's taxation is to consider it as a form of genocide against the middle classes.
And also consider that many public schools are no longer physically safe places for children (particularly White and Asian children). In much of the South, and in many metro areas across the country, private schools are a must, if you actually care about your child's well-being. The alternative to private schooling is to move into an expensive community, where the schools are "good". The price of admission to a "good" community is a gargantuan mortgage. The money eaten by those mortgages effectively precludes extra children for most people.
So please, criticize me for only having as many babies as we could see our way clear to provide for. Forgive me for paying taxes, instead of using my status as a Native American to bleed 'the System' for the hundreds of thousands it would have cost the Taxpayers to raise a big brood. Forgive us for setting up trust funds as each baby was born: for having college funds, and for doing everything in our power to position our kids to move forward in life. I mean, I could have used free daycare, free clinics, food stamps, welfare... and could have got me a nice big doublewide trailer on the Taxpayer's dime, and could have produced a whole bunch of scary creatures, instead of two Surgeons and an MBA.
I mean, "Babies are like flowers. How can there be too many flowers?". Apparently, some people value quantity over quality.
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 04-18-2013 at 06:03 PM..
^^^^Awesome post--our tax code is indeed a major deterrent to having large families, which is why the replacement rate in the USA is sinking, and has fallen off the cliff here in California over the past 20 years, thanks to the 3,500,000+ residents who've left for other states to start families.
Europe's replacement rate is also sinking; funding a welfare/entitlement state ain't cheap!
GrandviewGloria has succinctly illustrated the "Negatively Leveraged Societal Model". Well done! It should be used as a reference post to summarily link certain issues that come up in variety of forums such as Economics, Education, etc....
Thank you
if i have a farm---- kids are useful they earn their keep. but if i have to put every one of them thru 20 years of schooling and take care of them til they are 50, having lots of kids is not a good idea. today kids are a liability not an asset.
I've seen a prolapsed uterus...I didn't say anything to the woman but I was like wtf in my head of course. It looked like a pink balloon was poking out of her vagina. It was a woman in her 80s so she had been dealing with this for decades. There is something called a pessary which holds it all in but uh yeah once that is removed for cleaning the uterus pokes out.
A lot of these male posters don't get it.
How is it selfish to not want to be knocked up and have to push a human being out of your vagina year after year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JrzDefector
Have you ever seen a prolapsed uterus? My friend saw her grandmother's once. Of course the poor woman had given birth to 9 children.
Increased selfishness my ass - it's better education, lower mortality, better technology and birth control and just common freaking sense.
Some silly reasoning/assumptions going on here. It is not selfish to not have kids, but a reason some people decide not to have kids is selfishness. That is one of a dozen reasons people are having fewer kids. I know several couples who say they will not have kids because they are too selfish. Others express this reason without recognizing it as selfishness. They want their time, money, and other assets for themselves and are not interested in the self sacrifice necessary to have kids. For some couples that is the only thing that prevents them from having any children or from having more children. That is different than saying people who do not have kids are selfish - get it? Selfishness can be a reason a lot of people decide not to have kids without everyone who decides not to have kids being selfish. Or, to use terms typically used to explain the fallacy being applied here, being out in the rain may be a reason someone is wet, but that does not mean everyone who is wet has been out in the rain. I really think they should require a basic logic class in high school or at least in college.
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in my head of course. It looked like a pink balloon was poking out of her vagina. It was a woman in her 80s so she had been dealing with this for decades. There is something called a pessary which holds it all in but uh yeah once that is removed for cleaning the uterus pokes out. 
