Tax lawyers as a group have much better analytical skills than most lawyers and most lawyers have much better analystical skills than the general population. I don’t think your failure to grasp my argument is the result of my poor anylitical reasoning.
I’m married with kids. I’m never going to be that guy. But its nice that you assume that I have some sort of personal stake in this. I can only assume that you are a single mom that is getting child support from a reluctant father or you want the ability to fuck rich jerks with the comfort of knowing that if you get pregnant, you will have finaicial support to raise the child if you decide to keep it.
Whenever you bring up this argument, I say "then why are the child support payments based on the father’s iocome? Why aren’t child support payments from reluctant fathers designed to mimic state aid?
And how does getting money from the state versus a reluctant father change the woman’s behaviour (its oblviously not going to change the child’s behaviour), unless there is a difference int he amount of money they can extract from a reluctant father versus what they can get from the state.
Where are all these analytical skills you are talking about?
I was refering to your apparent inability to see the difference between a child’s right and a custodial parent’s right. Who has a right is a very important distinction in law.
This is presuming you don’t get divorced of course. And I think the divorce rate is pretty high amongst tax lawyers, judging from personal experience. But let’s get real - I thought it was pretty clear I was speaking in generalities there.
Your impression of me, however, seems to indicate a failure to read and process the thread, something I accused you of earlier. If you go back and look again (or indeed for the first time) you will see I am a divorced father, currently paying child support.
Yes, every time you do say this. And every time you are told its a different argument. It’s a valid debate, and one I would consider entering, but not in this thread. Because it is a different goddamn argument.
OK, I am totally lost here. I never talked about using it to change behavior. I said we think of it as better that people are not dependent on the state. And as another situation where we seek to avoid people being dependent on the state, I talked about how we prefer people to work than get welfare. I even mentioned one of the major reasons for that - the deficit.
Oh look, you cut that out. Make it easier to misrepresent my argument, did it?
I think its “or” not “and” You either make abortion illegal (thereby making pregnancy a real risk for both parties) OR you give men the right to disavow the child after they find out about the pregnancy (thereby giving both parties a right to be free from the effects of a pregnancy).
You’re either putting words in my mouth or you don’t understand what i was saying.
When does anyone say that in this entire thread? When does anyone say taht a man can walk away from a child he agreed to support?
That may be because you haven’t understtod what you have read (assuming you actually read the thread). We’ve said this many times but we are only talking about the situation where a guy finds out he got someone pregnant and tells the woman that he will not support the child.
And what does abortion say about the other half of humanity? Ultimately it is the woman’s decision to give birth to a child she cannot afford, not the man’s. The man should be given a choice as to whether he will commit himself to supporting that child.
I see the distinction. If I were focusing on the child’s rights I would say that the child, any child, has the right to be fed, clothed, etc. It does not have the right to be fed clothed, etc. by a reluctant father. Money from the state is just as good as money from the father. Now if you want something MORE than that so that the children of poor fathers only get what the state affords them while the children of reluctant but rich fathers get a percentage of his income, then I don’t think that children have that right any more than the heirs to the Mars family fortune have the “right” to inherit all of their parents’ money without paying an estate tax.
Fortune of birth does not convey that right. Why does the unwanted child of a wealthy reluctant father deserve more than the unwanted child of a poor reluctant father, as a matter of right?
It seemed pretty personal but if you were speaking in generalities then lets just assume that I was as well.
Nope its related. If you think the purpose of child support is to prevent a burden on the state then child support would be limited to providing what the state would provide.
Better they be dependent on getting child support checks from a reluctant father?
Not really. I guess I don’t always address every sentence of every post I respond to.
How big do you think the deficit is? How much more do you think we would pay in benefits if fathers were able to disown fetuses? How many fewer children do you think would be born if child support was not forced on reluctant biological fathers?
I’d rather base things on the evidence that you haven’t read the thread. You may well end up as liable for child support. There is a possibility you will father a child that you want to disavow all financial responsibility for. I will never be a single mom. But it says an awful lot about your mindset that you think someone who believes a child has a right to support from its parents must be a woman.
Yes. A hundred times yes. Better they get it from the people who created the child than from me.
And how convenient that which you leave out is the part that allows you to misrepresent the argument. Some might even call it fortuitous for you.
It’s big. We’d pay a lot more. Very few fewer children.
When you say this you are saying “if that is the rationale, the current system doesn’t fulfill that goal and I can think of a system that would reach that goal more equitably.” That may be the case, and you may demonstrate such a system is far and away, unquestionably, inarguably, undeniably and beyond the shadow of any tiny, tiny doubt better than the current one, for all time. After you do so you will have said nothing at all about the original argument. You will have proved nothing about why men should be allowed to opt out of child support. You are still at square one. You are there because you have committed a logical fallacy and changed the subject away from the one being debated, and proven a different matter than the one that you set out to prove.
One has nothing to do with the other. Men don’t get pregnant. Men therefore have no right to be freed from the physical effects of pregancy. The right to control my uterus has nothing to do with a man’s desire to refuse to support his biological children.
Unless men can get pregnancy they will NEVER face the real risk of pregnancy. My husband isn’t the one with a backache. He certainly isn’t the one who has stretch marks from my prior gestation. He will most certainly not face weight gain or spend three months recovering once I give birth.
I understand what you’re saying perfectly. You’re just wrong. You want to essentially tell half of humanity that they have no childrearing responsibilities unless half a dozen requirements are met. Worse, you either want to argue against a woman’s right to control her own uterus or you want give men the right to avoid child support in exchange. It’s a little boy’s argument. A man does not and should not have the right to unilaterally declare he simply won’t support his own biological children.
If a man gets someone pregnant he should never have the right to say he won’t support the child. His selfish interests are not the only possible consideration at every turn.
The only thing that an abortion says about a woman is that she should investigate better forms of birth control that are easier on her body. The moral judgements that get made only get made in certain cultures. Many religions, including my own, do not view an abortion as anything but a minor medical procedure.
Once a man leaves his sperm in a woman’s uterus he loses control over what she chooses to do with it. That choice is made when he has unprotected sex or uses bad control methods. The man should not be allowed to simply decide he does not want to support a living child after the fact.
When you start to argue that a man should be able to have an abortion you leave open all kinds of other issues. If he can decide not to pay for child support then what other decisions can he make about children? Force a woman to forego an epidural? Demand that she breastfeed? Mandate prenatal vitamins? Can he decide that he doesn’t want to support children conceived while married? After all maybe the condom broke and he told her to get an abortion and she didn’t.
You’re about to slide down a slippery slope here. The only possible “benefit” to allowing men to refuse to support their biological children is that you give them license to fuck around. That benefits no one but horny adolescents and men who wish to remain one for the rest of their lives.
And I just showed you on the last page that the Constitution doesn’t allow the law to treat those children differently. There’s no requirement that the state make any provision for children to be supported, but if it does it’s an all or none proposition. Do you propose that we do away with child support altogether or not?
No kidding. If it was possible for the state to simply open the valve on the state’s Scrooge McDuck money vault and do away with the need for child support payments completely that would be great, but my own state is considering itself fortunate to only have a $15 billion deficit this year instead of the $30 billion one that was projected. 8000 state jobs are being downsized, education is being slashed, benefits are being cut, etc. etc. The idea that the state could possibly take on the child support payments of fathers who didn’t want to to pay them is simply unworkable and impossible. Even if there was a budget surplus it would quickly drain the treasury, and voters would never, ever stand for it.
The fortuity is in my choosing the moer defensible side of the argument. Its not too late, you can change gears and just ditto everything I said, it will make you appear smarter.
I don’t think so. We are not talking about replacing ALL child support with government support. We are talking about replacing child support from men who did not want children with a flat amount for meeting the needs of the child. We are not talking about replacing child support from men who wanted the children when they were conceived or born.
I think you miss my point. My point is that the government burden rationale is bullshit so go find another excuse for forcing men to have children they don’t want merely because they had sex. We don’t force that upon women, why do we force that upon men?
If your point is that the supreme court says we can’t do it so that should be the end of the discussion then we would never have a debate on abortion. I concede that the Supreme Court thinks its an equal protection issue. I think there is a similar equal protection issue. The question is, “Should we grant men equality in an issue that is naturally unequal?” The 14th Amendment grants Equal Protection to all, no matter your gender.
If this debate were whether such a distinction was currently permissible under the law, then this would have been a very very short thread.
And why don’t we apply the same rationale for women during their pregnancy?
His decision must be made as soon as possible, this is almost always in utero. The child only exists because the woman decided not to get an abortion.
Nope. She can do whatever she wants (including getting an abortion) and he can do whatever he wants (including disavowing his biological child in utero). I am willing to concede that a marraige is explicit consent to raise and support any children of the marriage.
I don’t think so. I think there is a pretty bright line between unwanted children and unwanted children.
Because women face health considerations bearing children that men don’t. A man doesn’t get an ectopic pregnancy or molar pregnancy. A man doesn’t get pre-eclampsia or morning sickness or weight gain from pregnancy.
Why do you persist in ignoring the fact that pregnancy has physical risks for a woman and not a man? She’s entitled not to be forced to risk her life because the birth control failed and someone else has a religious belief.
Making a woman go through with a pregnancy has entirely different consequences for a woman than it does for a man.
Most men don’t walk into a room and immediately start fucking strange women. The child exists because of multiple decisions not merely because a woman said so.
Consensual sex is consensual sex whether inside marriage or out of it. If a man wants to retain control of the results of his sperm he should be careful when he puts it.
It doesn’t matter whether the child is wanted or not wanted. The child still exists. The child is entitled to support from the biological father. The only bright line between the two exists in this thread.
I think you miss the point that you coming up with an alternate system that you believe could meet the goals of that rationale better doesn’t make it “bullshit.”
So you’re proposing a law that you concede would be unconstitutional, that would be so massively unpopluar that it would never, ever get voted into law even if it weren’t unconstitutional, and that would be so expensive that we could never afford in any event. I agree, this should have been a very short thread.
You put a lot of argument into the fact that women have troubled pregnancies, rightfully so but you are missing the point.
Getting an abortion = having a child
Having a child results in costs (that you can choose to foot or not simply due to the fact that you can rightfully choose to abort)
Having a child knowing full well you cannot support it is selfish and relies on the taxpayer
Having a child knowing full well you will get no support from the father would lead to the mother making an informed decision.
Having a child in a marriage would rightfully imply support from the father.
Having a child out of wedlock gives you no such rights (well it does currently but that is the argument)
If you are told you cannot garner support of an unwanted child and choose to have it anyway then you can foot the bill.
No one is taking any rights away from you, as you currently are the only one with the choice to abort.
I was pretty sure we were talking about elective pregnancies.
Are you trying to make the argument that the main purpose behind allowing abortions are based on medical risks?
The objection to abortion does not require religious belief any more than religious belief requires objection to abortion.
The woman is the ultimate arbiter of whether a child is born or not.
I could use the same argument to say that we should outlaw elective abortions (outside of rape or incest) because the woman chose to have a child when she had sex. If she didn’t want to have the child, she shouldn’t have had sex.
The child is entitrled to support form a reluctant biological father only because we say so. So far the only for us saying so are:
Men shouldn’t have had sex if they didn’t want to pay child support;
Burden on the state to support children born to women who can’t afford them; and
The child would suffer without child support from the father.
These rationales have already been demonstraed to be rationalizations rather than anything that is actually rational.