Well, the OP said “public dime”, so let’s talk strictly money. How much would it actually cost to give free heroin, meth, morphine, etc. to every addict in the U.S. who wanted it? Economies of scale in full effect. $1 billion/day? How much is the U.S. now spending on law enforcement, courts, prisons and mandatory treatments related to addiction? More? Less?
I doubt it would cost anywhere near $1 billion/day to supply all the addicts. Drugs in general are ridiculously cheap to manufacture. It would be a fraction of that. This site says casual and hardcore users spend about $60 billion/year on drugs, but that includes a huge markup.
We spend about $40-$60 billion/year on the drug war depending on whose estimates you use.
As to the OP, I think the only thing you could do is offer to pay these people not to have kids, or to get on a more reliable form of birth control. But in general, cases like this really don’t affect the bottom line too much. It sucks, but it’s the cost of a free society.
This story tells about a woman who has adopted 4 children from a woman who is a heroin addict. She went on to start an organization called Project Prevention that pays drug addicted woman to either get an IUD or to get sterilized.
I’m not advocating this as a universal solution but I do think that it could be helpful in certain extreme cases.
To clarify, I am absolutely against any action that’s coercive. What I do advocate is fully subsidized birth control, plus some other incentive.
I’m pretty sure I’m liberal enough to agree with fully subsidized birth control for anyone who wants it, but that’s not really the point of the debate.
Chemical sterilization required for men and women that are on the dole.
Full free universal health care, including drug and psychological treatment.
Reconcile these 3 premises which I believe most Americans would hold to.
- Everyone over 18 have the right to choose whether or not to reproduce.
- Society has an obligation to protect children, even from their parents if necessary.
- Parents are responsible for providing basic support for their children excepting a reasonable social welfare system.
OK, not terribly difficult. You lose your job you get unemployment or you work at WalMart you get WIC. The problem is from the poverty mentality but moreso those that condone it. I’ve written about my SIL. She has dogs but cannot afford to feed her own kid. Her rent is the same as mine on a household income that is 1/3 of ours. Why? She needs a backyard for her dog and a landlord willing to have a dog - with paying more deposit of course. She burned through her tax refund and has nothing to show for it and yet many on this board (and in society) say we don’t understand. She buys preprocessed shit to eat at 2X the price and I’m expected to be understanding of the poverty culture she grew up and subsidising her choices directly (for a year and a half) or indirectly through WIC or other low-income government programs.
Now for me, I’m an asshole so I have no problem reconciling the 3 statements by saying that if I’m helping you and your family get by then YOU have to make some hard choices. Get rid of the fucking dog. There’s $50 off the bat per month to buy food with plus more options for low-cost housing. If I’m buying your daughter’s food, it needs to be healthy - not processed shit. Of course this runs counter to those that think people should not be accountable for their own stupid choices or that every choice is somehow right. So the idea that maybe if you can’t afford your 3 kids you shouldn’t have a 4th is seen as oppressing them and that because of their choice we need to support their kid. As much as they would deny it, they would throw out statement #3 or change it to
3) Parents are responsible for providing basic support for their children excepting a reasonable social welfare system or when the parental financial & reproductive choices - which we must respect no matter how bad or stupid because that Cracked article from Gladstone justifies them - means that the burden gets shifted to others.
Really? How long would I have to be on public assistance before you cut my nuts off (chemically)? Does it make any difference to you, in this forced sterilization policy of yours, that I am gay and therefore won’t reproduce?
This “solution” is neither workable nor justifiable.
I prefer to think of you as a cad.
First, there is currently no such thing as chemical sterilization for men.
Second, there is a certain percentage of woman for whom chemical birth control poses significant risks, including things like heart attack and strokes.
Third, coercive birth control is offensive.
Don’t get me wrong - I am all for offering birth control, making birth control free, or even providing incentives for birth control but I have to remain opposed to forced “sterilization” regardless of euphemism used.
THAT I’m totally on board with. Just understand that that alone will not solve the problem of poverty. Not all poor people are one drugs, not all poor people are mentally or physically ill, and some of those people who are drugs addicts, mentally ill, or physically ill can’t be “fixed”.
Well, he doesn’t sound like a Saint. 
Which rights of ours are being violated?
Do you really trust any government to decide who gets to reproduce?
It would end up as only Pubs and Dems can reproduce and third party/independents are forcibly surgically castrated without anasthesia. Somehow in the negotiations, a law is passed children of those making $500,000/yr and anchor babies of illegal aliens are provided for 100% via government welfare.
Except in Arizona only NRA members are allowed to reproduce, and a skin color test means you had better not have been out in the sun too long before you apply for your permit.
I’m as liberal as they come, but yeah. You read enough stories like this one and you start to feel like maybe not everyone should be allowed to have as many children as they please.
Perhaps forced sterilization is too icky. I don’t have a real problem with it, but I will concede that the slippery slope is real and potentially treacherous. However, I don’t have a single problem with the state requiring that a mother like the one in the OP and the one in the linked article prove they are capable of raising additional children. Until then, they shouldn’t be allowed to take a baby from the hospital ever.
And the children, as adults, are likely going to pay taxes for many decades. This will dwarf the cost of the births.
Mom, like most people, is likely to receive far more from social security (and, especially, medicare) than she ever pays in. If she had no children, her old age would have to be paid for by my children.
This of course isn’t an argument to force people to have children just because there is economic benefit to society. I believe in reproductive freedom.
I’ve actually thought about this one a lot as well, due to the behaviors of some people I happen to know. I won’t claim to have answers, but I also agree that it seems unacceptable to allow people to just continue having children they can’t/won’t care for. The cost of that lifestyle is borne by society, which ain’t cool, and is has a direct impact on the children, which really ain’t cool. So I would hope we all agree that people living this lifestyle, however common or not, present legitimate concerns to the rest of us, both economically and morally
I am also left of center (though not way left), and I could get behind the concept of imposed birth control of some sort, but no, I can’t imagine how that would be administered without all kinds of problems.
How about this:
If someone hasa child (or perhaps some other number) that she can’t care for, offer the temporary solution (i.e., IUD or sterilization). If that offer is refused, fine, but thereafter additional children for which the person can not care become acts of defrauding the government, carrying jail time. I realize jail is expensive, but it would serve a few purposes, including providing substance abuse treatment, deterrent, and one assumes the incarcerated generate relatively few offspring.
Just thinking aloud.
What makes you think the average prisoner has access to substance abuse treatment? What with budget cuts I’m surprised there are any of those left. “Treatment” consists of a forcible detox and trying to keep prisoners from obtaining drugs, nothing more. The person is eventually released with all the emotional baggage and bad habits that lead to drugs in the first place, if they don’t actually have more of the same.
Although it is true few prisoners generate offspring.
Basically, what you’re saying is jail the mother and permanently remove her children from custody.
How about if someone has an extremely healthy lifestyle that results in them living to age 100. As a result, if they retire at age 65, society has to pay 35 years of social security and 35 years of medicare hospitalization – including expensive joint replacements that might have been avoided if they had led a sedentary lifestyle. Yet nobody is saying that isn’t cool.
As for the impact on the children, you are assuming with zero evidence that their life will be neither useful to society or to themselves. Why isn’t that uncool?
In a free society where the government doesn’t control reproduction, some women are going to make decisions you don’t like. Some may make decisions I don’t like. But it seems to me equally uncool to force people to have children, and to force them not to.
When you get your first check. That includes everyone from the Amish to the Hasidic Jews to the single mother trying to make ends meet on minimum wage.
Nope. Unless there is a scientific test that you can take that will verify you as gay.
That sounds like an opinion. My opinion is that it may or may not work (based on current medical science) but its justifiable.
We should work on that.
We should work on that too. When we have the health problems licked, the only objection left is that it offends some sensibilities.
It depends on what you mean by coercion. Its not permanent but frankly, I am willing to make reproduction decisions for you, especially if you are having kids you can’t afford and expect me to pay for.
A lot of people find it offensive that people on the dole are having more and more kids that we end up paying for.
Its not sterilization at all. There is a HUGE difference between forced sterilization (which is unconstitutional, at least when applied to the mentally retarded) and imposing birth control as a condition of getting welfare (which is likely constitutional).
Yeah I suspect a lot of people would be very happy to just take half the program. I suspect there are folks who would be OK with just taking the birth control part of the idea and dropping the universal healthcare part of it. Its not multiple choice, you can’t just take the part that falls on one side of the partisan divide.
Its not just the cost of their birth. All those children will also be taking out from welfare and medicare/medicaid while they are minors. They are more likely to be chronically poor and on welfare. And eventually and these kids will get old and draw just as disproportionately relative to their contributions as their mom.
I agree that birth rates are one of the most important factors in economic growth but its no the only factor especially when we have a social safety nets that effectively shift the cost of raising the kids in poverty onto society.