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Comment by coldbrewed | Hacker News Reader

If you're a dual income/parent household, you have to afford both the house payments and childcare; typical child care costs can be so great that it makes sense for one parent to drop out of the workforce to care for children so you're back at square one with a single income household. At a median income of $57k your options are house XOR children which does a decent job of explaining why we're seeing birth rates plummet.

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You only have to pay childcare if you have kids, and if you have them, it's a temporary expense for the first few years until they are in school.

People online act like you gotta pay childcare for the rest of time once you have a baby.

It's so awesome society cares so much about kids they'll toss you in jail for leaving them in the car while you run in the gas station to pay, but they won't lift a finger to contribute to the future tax slaves until they're five. Society in its sick tragedy of the commons war against parents want to get all the tax generation rewards with none of the risk and the minority of the investment.

You might be from another country, but in the US there are very generous tax credits (better than deductions) for people with children. It doesn't make children free or profitable, but it's unfair to say "society doesn't care".

The credit barely covers the increased property taxes incurred to inhabit a larger structure, to fulfil laws such as child safety equipment, taxes on diapers, extra costs of registering and state mandated insurance of larger vehicle with additional seats for children. And other mandates imposed by law. They are at best covering cost of their own mandates and other child related taxes.

It is the single largest tax credit in the entire US tax code. My point is that it's unfair to say "society doesn't care". I'm not necessarily arguing that it's currently at the perfect amount.

It's interesting you put that in quote form when it isn't a quote from what I've said.

"It's so awesome society cares so much about kids they'll toss you in jail for leaving them in the car while you run in the gas station to pay, but they won't lift a finger to contribute to the future tax slaves until they're five"

This is your quote, there's a lot of sarcasm which makes it awkward to directly quote but we can all see the point your trying to get across. Society "won't lift a finger" for parents with young children.

But they do the child tax credit, and not only that, it's even more generous for children age 5 and under! So they do "lift a finger to contribute to the future tax slaves until they're five" in your direct words.

They lift the finger in the sense they yank it down and then lift it almost to the same place. As I've just explained, additional other child related taxes and state mandates counterbalance that credit to the point they're lifting the finger they smacked down to about where it started. It is like bragging about applying a bandaid after a punch to the face.

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