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This may be a very American perspective, but I utterly fail at any sympathy towards the parents that had two kids and were doing fine, then decided to have two more and are whining that someone else didn't step up to pay for them. I mean, it's not as if babies being up all night is a predictable part of having a baby or anything. The mother whines that kids shouldn't be like a mercedes, where you decide beforehand if you can afford it. But that's exactly what kids are like. And if only there where some way (algebra) to know that per-capita income would shrink with each child! Hell, you may even think the country should pay for unlimited kids, but they couldn't be bothered to check before having the 3rd and 4th child if Germany does or not. They are irresponsible parents.

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Well, it is official German policy to encourage people to have more children. So, if you have financial difficulties raising more than a couple of kids, there's a policy failure somewhere.

Encouraging is not the same as making it free and completely painless for everyone, regardless of their income and how many kids they are having.

Well-adjusted and well cared-for children are the edifice sustaining both public and private investment - their future productivity will generate the demand that gives value to savings and investment. I suspect Germany will get a good rate of return on the rabbit-raising, goatherding,beekeeping, highly-valued Ehler kids.

As the article clearly points out, the Ehlers are not able to support and take care of 4 children. They all will not be well-adjusted and well cared-for children. They will not form a cornerstone of the German economy or society. They will not be as productive as they could be if they were being raised by mature, responsible parents who know their own limitations.

From the brief description, and the photos, they appear to be raising healthy children in an orderly home with an level of enrichment and parental investment many children would envy. I suspect the burden of the financial strain is being borne largely by the parents. Poverty of this sort does not necessarily, or even generally, produce maladjustment. German politicians endlessly polemnicize about the need to increase the birthrate, and there are a lot of contradictory social pressures surrounding family size (Rabenmutters: yay or nay?). I am not surprised that based on political rhetoric and the confusing tangle of statutory entitlements the Ehlers expected more financial support than they eventually discovered. If it were possible to buy 'Ehler offspring futures', I would invest.

You can offer them a loan at a reasonable interest rate, and profit from their future.

That's (unfortunately) indeed an American perspective, that I totally share.

Obviously nurses in Germany earn too little money. Obviously society would benefit if the state would help in cases like these.

Still it bothers me that this family is actually paying off its house, which means they are taking part in capitalism and creating capital for themselves, but rely on the state to do so. They decided that the benefit they are already getting (3 year job security, 14 months of wage-like financial benefits), which every American parent can only dream of, are not enough for their child.

Germans don't invest in the capital market (4,14% of Germans have stocks, compared to 23% in the UK or 56% in the US [0]), Germans - especially women - choose their careers without considering how much they will earn. Being rich has a dirty connotation in Germany. If you are rich, you better be a doctor or a lawyer, then you get an excuse, other than that you probably did something shady or just benefited from other peoples work. Business school is for people who were too stupid to become engineers. They will earn more, but be worth less, because they won't be a Diplomingenieur (okay, this one is gone now, the Master of Science has much less reputation). When Germans finally realize that a bit more would be nice, they complain that the state is not fixing their situation.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion%C3%A4rsquote

>Being rich has a dirty connotation in Germany. If you are rich, you better be a doctor or a lawyer, then you get an excuse, other than that you probably did something shady or just benefited from other peoples work. Business school is for people who were too stupid to become engineers. They will earn more, but be worth less, because they won't be a Diplomingenieur

Wow, it's the same situation here in Argentina, word for word. Amazing considering the differences in culture and history.

Here you go[0], figure 3. You are referring a shrinking fraction of households here in the US[1].

Interestingly though, combining this data with the total numbers of households[2] since 1970 means that in 1970 there were 13M households of 5 or more...while there are 12M now...so the total number of these households has remained constant--although the demographics of that group may be quite different today.

[0] https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf

[1] US, since you claim this is a "very American" perspective.

[2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-househol...

> "I utterly fail at any sympathy"

agreed

Instead of looking at this as "just desserts"n

It's definitely a very modern, selfish American perspective.

The net effect of that attitude is that larger families break up,are fully supported by the state and have worse outcomes. And when the "DINK" couples get old, society will be stuck supporting you fully after you become unable to manage without the type of support that adult children usually provide.

> And when the "DINK" couples get old, society will be stuck supporting you fully

Because countries like Germany force the current generation to pay for the previous generation (and you can't opt out, it's called "intergenerational contract"), which is the reason why they need to motivate people to produce children, so that somebody can pay for that system. It's basically an intergenerational ponzi scheme.

The distinction is merely accounting. "Saving for retirement" is just calling dibs on future production. You still need strong young backs to harvest the wheat to make cereal for old people, even if those old people pay for that cereal with money they "saved" for retirement.

Most of our jobs are outsourced to a different country and automation is increasing our productivity. We don't really need more people.

If a country stops producing useful things, it's currency will become worthless and they will no longer be able to outsource things. Any form of retirement inherently relies on the productive capacity of subsequent generations. There is no way around that.

Why do you mention DINK? Parent didn't say you should avoid having kids, even if you have a good dual income. He said you should not have more kids than you can afford, taking into account child-induced career changes. That seems like a very reasonable statement.

The net effect of that attitude is not that larger families break up. Larger families break up because they are trying to do something infeasible (i.e. trying to support more children than they can afford to support)

Studies show that the rate of single motherhood increases dramatically with rises in welfare. It's no surprise to anyone whose eyes are open that people are generally rational, and act to further their own interests.

It's morally abhorrent that it's accepted practice that people vote for politicians that promise them money taxed from others. Social democracy is simply authoritarianism.

Yeah, well, you know that's just like uh, your opinion man.

Do these studies show what proportion of those single mothers would otherwise be forced to endure some kind of abusive environment if welfare didn't enable them to get out?

The studies show that women are far more likely to give birth while unmarried when there are higher levels of welfare available, so this is not measuring the incidence of women who already have children in a marriage and then get a divorce.

Given abortion, adoption and not getting pregnant in the first place are possibilities which a person has some control over, I don't think you can argue that all of those single mothers would otherwise be giving birth to children in abusive relationships if not for welfare.

Furthermore, welfare is funded through abusive tax laws, which throw those who refuse to hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade in prison, where they are kept in small enclosures, and often suffer mental illness and are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. There is nothing compassionate about authoritarian income redistribution.

Children shoudnt be a risk. Everyone should be encouraged to have at least two and getting help from the government to raise them.

Help from the government means forcing people, through threatening them with time in the dungeon, to help.

It's collectivist ideology turned into dogmatic religion.

That ship sailed a long time ago with the disappearance of the frontier and homesteading opportunities. Now that it's virtually impossible to completely opt-out of society, some safety net is a necessary correlate of removing that liberty.

Because it's considered to be requisite to interact with society, it's necessary to initiate force to collect funds for a safety net? I don't really follow.

it's now impossible to use foraging or subsistence farming as a last-ditch survival strategy because all land is claimed by public or private actors (not to mention regulatory and land use obstacles). With the disappearance of that formerly natural right, we are obligated to provide at least minimal support to persons we've locked into the modern system. While there might be other mire common justifications, the loss of the choice to opt out is the ultimate grounding behind the social safety net, in my view.

We have no natural right to forage any given plot of land.

You did before the plots existed. albeit on the level that a wild bird has a right to forage for wild berries.

I had the means, not the right. As soon as someone homesteaded it, I lost the means. By definition, you cannot have a right to unclaimed property. Having a right to it is synonymous to having a claim on it.

There are actually a number of national legal frameworks that would disagree with you. See "everyman's right" in Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Norway, which has law backing it up. Just because in England such a right wasn't recognized doesn't mean that everyone agrees on this.

(In Finland, by definition of "everyman's right", everyone has a right to hike and to respectfully pick berries and mushrooms on claimed and unclaimed property -- in essence, all of society has limited rights on your land.)

Those are explicit national legal rights, limited to the citizens of a particular nation, granting them rights to land under the legal jurisdiction of the national government. It's not the same as a general implicit right possessed by any given person to forage any given plot of land.

In this comment I further explain why I don't believe these national legal rights, and their subsequent abolishment, in any way justify a tax on private income:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11797024

The rights granted by Nordic countries to forage are not limited to the citizens of a particular nation -- that's why a lot of folks from Thailand fly in each year to pick cloudberries.

How is the right to forage a tax on private income? That's a non sequitur.

As far as I know, Nordic countries don't allow unrestricted entry into their country for foraging of their commons. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The OP argues that a tax on private income is justified by us no longer having a right to forage the now privatized land. I thought you were supporting the OP's position, which is why I made that argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

> The Inclosure Acts (or "Enclosure Acts" in modern spelling[1]) were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country, creating legal property rights to land that was previously considered common. Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual Enclosure Acts were put into place, enclosing 6.8 million acres (2,800,000 ha; 28,000 km2).[2]

> Prior to the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under some kind of collective control.[3] Called the open field system, a single plot of land was divided among groups, often a lord and employed or participating peasants.[4] This facilitated common grazing and crop rotation.[4] "Waste" was the only land not officially claimed by any group, often cultivated by landless peasants.[3]

That's specific to British subjects in the UK, and would only possibly create a legal justification for raparations paid to descendants of those who had legal right to the commons, with revenue raised from taxes levied on that land. This is not the same as any given person having a natural right to forage any given plot of land, especially when there was no established commons and subsequent enclosure. And the history of the enclosure acts in the UK certainly in no way justifies the naked authoritarianism of modern income tax laws, which relate to a tax levied on private human activity (as opposed to land), and which necessitate blatantly privacy infringing laws requiring people to report their private financial details to the government, including all of their private sources of income.

At least two? We've exceeded the carrying capacity of Earth already. Governments encouraging further population growth is a looming disaster.

A. No we have not.

B. That's what the Malthusians said.

C. Google: [demographic crisis europe].

Thank you.

The so called "demographic crisis" ignored current technological development.

We don't need more people without jobs.

A. There is obviously nothing like THE carrying capacity of earth¹, it heavily depends on the consumption per capita and the technology available. I never did the math but I always wondered what would happen if we upgraded every human in existence to the first world. I think seven billion people with first world living standard are possible but I am not sure it would end well today, resource consumption would increase by a factor of maybe two. So I can imagine that we are not in big trouble with seven billion people and current technology and consumption only because we still have a lot of relatively poor people.

C. We improved living standards and decreased mortality in early years, so a pyramid shaped population structure is a thing of the past. And countering this with continued population growth is not an option because it is not sustainable. Some countries could nonetheless use a few more babies to get back to 2.1 children and avoid an inverted pyramid due to a shrinking population.

¹ There is certainly some theoretical upper limit but that is also certainly not relevant here.

resource consumption would increase by a factor of maybe two

That's significantly lower than most estimates I've seen. Jared Diamond for example says that the first world versus developing world resource consumption ratio is 32, with the majority of the world's population being much closer to the developing world:

The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

He goes on to say that if China was to increase to match US consumption levels --- with no change in population or change in consumption elsewhere --- that alone would double the worlds consumption:

Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html

Your numbers are probably closer to the truth, as I said, I never did the math or looked for existing calculations. I just looked up the energy consumption in 2008 - EU-27 40,821 kWh/capita, World 21,283 kWh/capita - which gives a factor of 2 and hoped that energy consumption would be a reasonable proxy for resource consumption. I definitely expected something more than 2 but would not have guessed more than maybe 5.

A factor of 32 is a lot but that is also the extreme. China at 11, that leaves 5 billion people. If they were all at 1 that would drag the average down to 2.7. So maybe between 3 and 5 in the end? That still means a 5 to 10 fold increase in their resource consumption and matches my expectation. Suddenly needing twice as much of everything is probably already way harder than it first sounds, but up to 10 times...

I'm not familiar with the numbers either, but your estimate sounds plausible to me. Tom Murphy has a nice presentation from which a more exact figure can probably be extracted, but I don't see it there directly: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-populat...

You're right about everything except the demographic crisis.

There is no crisis, and there is not going to be a crisis. That premise is identical in concept, funny enough, to why the malthusians were wrong.

Robotics / greater automation + basic AI will more than dramatically take the place of the lost productivity from declining populations. Declining populations are not going to be a threat over the next century, not at all.

Japan and Germany should be cheering peak population. The inbound robotic boom is going to provide an extraordinary bounty for the remaining population, as productivity and GDP per capita soars in advanced nations. The absolute last thing any nation should want at this inflection point is more people.

The so-called "demographic crisis" is blatant racism.

There are plenty of people who would love to live in Europe. If Europe needs more people, let in more immigrants instead of adding even more humans to the world.

>The so-called "demographic crisis" is blatant racism. //

Yes, but in this situation is it wrong? For example genetic diversity appears to be a benefit to the species, allowing that to reduce may be a net loss even if there is a period of over-population (nations apparently reduce their birth rates as they develop which suggests we should be able to get a handle on population; hopefully before we ruin things too much!).

How about replacing people that are already there? There's so much Germans, what's the problem if they have enough offspring to keep their numbers? If you oppose to that right it's much much worse than racism you mentioned.

I don't think it's a "problem" if they have enough offspring to maintain a constant population.

I also don't think it's a "right" to have as many children as you want and to expect state support for those children.

> Everyone should be encouraged to have at least two

Why?

Officially supporting families who have more children than their income allows encourages bad parents to have (and neglect) more children so that they can claim additional benefits from the government.

We would be better served by loss-of-income insurance, where people who made reasonable choices based on their income and then lost it would be able to continue supporting their families.

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