Hacker News Reader

Comment by r00tanon | Hacker News Reader

I don't have kids, but I do pay property taxes, which largely contribute to schools. I also pay federal taxes that contribute to child tax credits, etc. So, my contributions are not offset by costs of children I do not have. I do not complain. If you've brought kids into the world, then you have a responsibility. I help pay some of those costs even though I don't have kids. I don't think that is unfair and I don't begrudge, because it helps raise a healthy society. But please don't cast my life choices as selfish just because I made a different choice.

View on HN

I don't think you realize how much it costs to raise a child. The property taxes are nothing compared to what parents are spending, and amount of work every kid takes is enormous. You have no idea how much it is

Notice: I am not saying you have to support other people's children. I'm just saying that when you grow old, you should make your own arrangements on how you fund your late years, because you probably count on "society" to support you, and this "society" would translate to "children of other people who I didn't raise"

> I don't think you realize how much it costs to raise a child. The property taxes are nothing compared to what parents are spending, and amount of work every kid takes is enormous. You have no idea how much it is

Yeah, except having a child is a choice (Disgusting laws in TX notwithstanding), I have no choice in paying my taxes. That said, I don't ever gripe (nor would it even occur to me to gripe) about paying for other people's children's education or other things like that that my taxes go to pay for.

> I am not saying you have to support other people's children.

Except that's exactly what all childless people do, how do you think schools, child tax breaks, etc are funded?

> I'm just saying that when you grow old, you should make your own arrangements on how you fund your late years, because you probably count on "society" to support you, and this "society" would translate to "children of other people who I didn't raise"

This is an outlandish and straight up insulting statement. I'm not asking for a handout in any way to fund my "late years". That's what my 401K, IRA, SS, etc is for (though I have no expectation that SS will still be around by the time it's my turn to collect it, despite having contributed to it since I was 14). Pretending childless people are a drain on society when they fund your children is borderline delusional.

Let me explain something to you, which you don't seem to understand. The way people's civilization works is like this:

1. people get born 2. people get raised 3. people replenish pool of people with new people 4. people die

if people don't complete your activity on step 3, they failed. It doesn't matter how must $$$ they got. 401k, IRA, SS, savings - they won't deliver you food, change your catheter, or comfort you when you are lonely. If new generation isn't born, the rest doesn't matter. Global warming doesn't matter. Gay marriage doesn't matter. Inequality doesn't matter. Cops wrongfully arresting black people don't matter. You're done, game over. You wasted your life, and didn't do the only thing which actually mattered.

To believe that our only, and highest, purpose is to create more humans is misguided and just wrong. We probably need less people (as things currently stand), not more, on this planet if we want to have any hope of continued existence. If you want to get into what's most important: what really matters is stopping climate change so that people have a place to live, not popping out more and more babies. Absolutely no one is saying "no more births" or "no one should have kids" but you are pretending that civilization is going to fall over because people are making informed decisions on if they should/can bring more life into this world, which I find reprehensible.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion. If you think reproducing is not your mission, don't. Albeit every ancestor of yours did successfully complete this mission, so take it for what it is. I guess they wasted their time and effort on you.

It's not really a judgement it's just reality. Life / functional society at it's core is a pyramid scheme. If you don't have a downline your contributions are almost always dwarfed by your withdrawals. Parents pay all the same fees as you do now and in the future their children will pay them too, whereas at some point childless contributions stop.

Having exactly two children per family isn't a pyramid scheme though.

The pyramid scheme is that automation makes us more productive and therefore lets us work less. When we have more children we get to work more. So full time employment basically requires us to grow our consumption exponentially. Either we consume ourselves or we let our children consume.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com