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Comment by atatatat | Hacker News Reader

The financial planning bit is meant to come before one has a list of expenses to "figure out" (like home+leased car+children).

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"Just don't have kids" is, IMO, one of the most incredibly insensitive approaches to this problem. It reminds me of all the people telling gay people to "just don't have a relationship". Having an entire class of people who work hard but are too poor to raise children is a failure of society - not a failure of financial planning.

Sorry — everyone unfortunately does not have the human right to have a family of 5 in Manhattan.

Everyone does (IMO) have the human right to live off of the land without destroying it permanently for the next family.

No. Not raising kids in poverty is a matter of social responsibility. I would also argue that most people don’t want kids until they have a certain level of financial security.. That’s why family planning was so successful in decreasing birth rates.

So what do you recommend to people who are in a poverty cycle but want to feel they’re free humans, not economic slaves?

You mean they're poor and they think they're real human beings!? /s

I know people to whom the /s doesn't apply...

Sad but true.

Run, don't walk, to a farm community, and away from expensive fancy cities.

That’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one.

Having a companion animal is also something a free human does. Should we tell people to get pets they can’t take care of?

You premise that people are owed the opportunity to have children is a silly one. It’s not the parent that is the priority but the child.

I don't see why it is silly. I believe an opportunity to have children is an opportunity to have a purpose (not the purpose, note). I'm not saying that people who can't support children should have them - I'm saying that the society (i.e. other people) should help individuals to find their purpose. If making money and being rich is it for some, fine, no issue with that.

My purpose in life is fighting for 2nd amendment rights. Should the government pay me to that too?

don't confuse opportunities with money and if you feel people should have help to get the opportunity, isn't that what having a government is for?

Children are not a luxury product like a sports car or yacht. They are a basic function of human life.

All the kid free couples out there beg to differ.

It may be optional for individuals, but as a society, if a significant portion of people cannot afford to have children, that society will go "extinct" very quickly.

Yes, humans being too sparse is headline news weekly.

There are 8 billion people on the planet, but if we stop having kids the situation is unlikely to sustain itself for more than 100 years or so (just stopping for 40 or 50 years is long enough to pass the point no return).

With regards to developed countries? It actually makes the news occasionally.

Wrong. There are people who chose to not have kids and don’t deny that. They chose to give up this part of humanity on their own. Other people probably rationalize this differently because they can’t admit to themselves they’ve given up anything.

This is a relative statement. I never wanted kids they are annoying and I’d probably end up a terrible parent and get divorced and then be paying child support. In fact this would have been what happened if I stayed with my last gf.

Much better to be able to FIRE by 35 instead haha.

And it's wonderful that you can make that choice.

Now imagine you couldn't. Imagine someone wanted children but was forced not to? How would that be different than forcing you to have (and pay for) children?

The government already forces me to pay for other people's children though our child welfare system that I mostly support. WIC/CHIP/Preschool yield enormous economic benefits.

Having Aircraft carriers and military bases all over the world doesn't. Raising the personal income tax exemption to 100k would.

I agree that it's relative, it was the point. The parent asserted that not having children is somehow a better or smarter thing to do. It isn't, in the long run we're all dead, but children make grownups feel human and not just like a cog in some pointless machine.

Please don't start flamewars on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27246064.

Where are you supposed to live meanwhile?

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