Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Day care costs of course.

Total paid on childcare is higher in a family without a stay at home patent, though the two earner family generally will have more net disposable income (After child-care)




Solution: free day care. It’s a win for taxpayers if those parents go to work and pay taxes instead of staying home with the kids. Also a win for women’s liberation.


How is "sacrificing" yourself for capitalism more liberating than taking care of your kids and family?


Because you can now have your own means of survival as opposed to depending on someone other (such as "state" or "husband") and possibly being booted from time to time from that dependence together with children.


Women's liberation is about choice, not about "acting like men".

Not everyone wants to have kids and family. Some will work, some will stay at home. Same goes for men btw.


In the UK it's very hard to have one parent stay at home - to pay the mortgage you usually need two full time to cover the mortgage.

Child care is subsidised heavily by other taxpayers, but only government childcare - get a grandparent round and there's no tax break. The tax system works hard to discriminate against single parent families too (two people with two kids on total £80k pay a marginal tax of 32%. One person on £55k pays marginal 60%)


There is a strongly negative relationship between women's education and fertility. Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?


> There is a strongly negative relationship between women's education and fertility.

Actually, it is a correlation between educated women having educated partners that know how to use contraceptive methods. Educate all men and women's education will be less relevant. Or stop any education of men, contraceptive methods will decline and fertility grow.

> Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?

It all depends. Is it good for "taxpayers" that humanity does not go extinct? Is taxes the only moral compass for our society?

Each time someone mentions a social advance for our society there is a big reaction against it because "costs money". Yes, it costs money, and it is money well spend in the citizens well being.

Is the legal system, schools, the police force, firefighters, etc good for taxpayers? Yes.

Does it costs money? Yes.

And that is why there is taxes. To pay for our needs.


Why should taxpayers get a say in an individual’s choice to pursue an education or fertility? That’s an incredibly personal decision.


Well if they're not paying for the daycare they don't. If they are they are then they do.If you want someone else's money then you're going to get it on their terms or not at all.


This is downpayment for the future taxes by their children. Seems fair to me. But, for some reason, not for you?


Does going to daycare over have a stay at home parent lead to an increase in the money made? And if we were considering just the number of children and how having more children will lead to more tax payers, then cutting funding for education in ways that result in more children being had is even better because you save money now and have more tax payers later.

If you begin to optimize social and political decisions on the basis of having more tax payers, you'll get weird results. For a second example, cutting reproductive education funding in schools will lead to more tax payers (though arguably tax payers who pay less, so then the question becomes are you optimizing for tax payers or for future taxable income in total).


> cutting funding for education in ways that result in more children being had

Do you have a citation for this? One with "cutting funding" in it and not the generic comparison between Somalia and Germany.


There is a well established correlation between education in girls increasing and child birth rates decreasing. Unless you think that funding could be cut without decreasing education rates, in which case shouldn't we cut funding?


But do you have correlation between education availability to girls decreasing and child birth rates increasing?

Your primary fallacy here is that you think you can always "mince the meat back". You usually can't. It doesn't work that way.


Yup. Let's forbid education for women. It'll definitely result in a better society for everyone.

Quality is more important than quantity. More educated people will produce better product and improve everyone's lives. Not saying that denying 50% of population a chance to live their lives as they want is plainly wrong and immoral.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: