Providing for the next generation is everyone’s responsibility.
I did not carry them for nine months, give birth to them, teach them to eat and speak, toilet train them, get them to school on time, put up with them as teen-agers, and watch them ruin their lives every time they disagreed with me, and now you are telling me I don’t even have pay anything?
Cool.
Fool.
If nobody had kids until they were fully prepared to bear the entire financial costs of their education, what do you think that birthrates in this country would look like?
Remember that about one-fifth of all US households have a household income of less than $20K per year. And even households making over $20K may not be able to afford private school tuition for years on end.
If somehow the entire American population magically acquired the determination and self-denial required not to produce any children unless the parents were fully prepared financially to cover all the costs of educating them, how many adults would actually be producing and raising children? What would the resulting huge decline in birthrates do to current jobs, future tax revenues, and so forth?
Or alternatively: would you be willing to pay the kind of increases in the costs of goods and services that would boost the average menial worker’s pay enough for them to afford decades of private schooling for their children? Remember, the affordability of your middle-class lifestyle depends largely on the fact that lots of working-class people are supplying you with goods and services for very low wages. Are you prepared to pay, say, $25 for a fast-food burger or $5 to use a public restroom or $50 for a pack of socks, so that the average working-class person can afford to have kids?
It’s all very well to make unrealistic demands that the Personal Responsibility Fairy should wave her wand and fundamentally alter human nature, but you need to consider the practical consequences. Militant pay-your-own-way-dammit individual libertarianism doesn’t really work for real-world societies that have real-world proportions of poor people in them—not to mention real-world rich people who object to paying middle-class wages for poor people’s work.
While the thread was hibernating the USA’s birthrate also managed to dip below that of many European nations, including France. America and Europe - Since there are some groups in the USA which have a lot of kids, it must also mean that there are more women than in Europe who have just one, or no kids at all.
Quite possibly. However, I think the tax exemption should stop after 2 kids. Replace yourselves and no more.
As half of a childless couple, I am perfectly happy to subsidise schools just so kids aren’t out robbing me. The education bit is just gravy.
Did I miss this somewhere? Children get exemptions for the same reason everyone else in America gets them, because they are human beings.
Some people (the elderly) even get extra exemptions just because of, well, it isn’t clear to me why. Show me how giving still more money to the wealthiest, least productive segment of the population helps our overall society/community/neighborhood and we might be closer to understanding why the future generation might be allowed a small piece of the pie.
…but enough about Romney.
I keed, I keed!
Exactly. Kids don’t get more tax breaks. They get the same tax breaks as everybody else. The people who do specifically get extra tax breaks, in terms of additional exemptions, are the blind and the elderly. And I bear no grudge against them.
Children do not pay income tax. What is there to be exempted from?
(I’m referring to younger children, not older children with jobs. Obviously a 15-year-old with a part-time job, for example, should be treated in a fashion similar to other wage-earners regardless of age.)
You get the same exemption as any child does. Keep in mind that a child who is claimed as a dependent (and thus gets the exemption) by his/her parents subsequently loses pretty much any right to a “standard deduction,” although I think they are allowed to make a certain amount in bank account interest and stock dividends without paying tax on it.
As I understand it, their exemption is intended to ensure that the (parental) income that goes to provide for their fundamental necessities isn’t taxed. See Polycarp’s explanation above.
They are exempt from paying normal taxes on a few thousand dollars, just like everyone else in America, even those who don’t happen to earn a normal wage. Yes, in this case, like many others, the caregiver gets to take the benefit of the person they support.
Is the worry here that some minimum wage earner somewhere is getting away with our hard earned tax money by having children? Remember that an exemption doesn’t give the tax payer money, it only reduces the amount he has to pay taxes on. So, if he is already in a low tax bracket another child wouldn’t allow him to fleece the rest of us that much, if any. Those with huge earnings get the greatest benefit from having more kids…but enough about Romney.
If someone want to pass a law that says each human must file their taxes separately and only use the wages and deductions that apply to them alone, good luck. I’ll support that law.
A certain amount of income is exempted from tax for each dependent, whether that dependent is 2 ,15 ,23 or 64 years old. If my income is supporting me- one exemption. Add my husband and its two exemptions. Add two kids and it’s four. Forget the kids- add my husbands mother and mine and it’s still four. Anyone over 65 gets two exemptions (I don’t know why)
And BTW, if that 15 year old gets a job, either he can take an exemption for himself or his parents can , same as either my mother or I can take an exemption for her, not both.
Doesn’t the standard exemption apply only to people who don’t itemize? In that case, the double exemption for over 65 would make sense, in that more of their income goes to exempt expenses. Don’t they?
No, that’s the standard deduction - completely different from exemptions. My standard deduction would be the same whether I had two kids or none.
BTW, “over 65” is not the same as poor. You could certainly assume that poor people spend a higher percentage of their income on necessary items than wealthier people do, but my pension is going to be more than a lot of people earn working.
Ah, thank you. Let’s talk about deductions, as I seem to be better informed …
I did not conflate over 65 with poor; people over 65 spend more on medical care, even with medicare, for example.
I misunderstood what you meant by “exempt expenses” . But medical costs aren’t the reason for an extra exemption- that’s handled by itemizing deductions instead of taking the standard one.
They get the extra exemption because they vote a lot.
I’m not going to deny that you do have valid points…
First, human reproduction is probably the strongest urge the world over replete through every culture since the beginning of time. I get it. However, we do not live in a “rural” culture or in the forests of New Guinea where one can bear several children without having to consume so much additional resources. In our modern culture, more children necessitates additional funds for education, transportation, medical care, etc… these are things one is required to have access to survive in this culture. With this great gift of plenty also comes great responsibility. We have the capacity to stave off procreation, indefinitely if we wanted, with the smallest of efforts (not magical). There simply is no excuse in the USofA for anyone, ever, to have children they are not financially prepared to provide for in every sense of the word.
I do understand your model of current and future tax payers contributing to a system that funds the needs of others… However, this model requires an ever expanding “next generation” to generate the revenue necessary to uphold the expanding balloon. The system is geared towards overpopulation, which is a legit concern unlike your under population fear mongering. Encouraging as many people as possible to keep the rate at which they produce children in direct equilibrium with their ability to provide for them is not only common sense, but absolutely necessary.
Furthermore, some of the side effects of having to mass produce to meet the demands of a population that is out of control are: factory farming, convenience foods, genetically modified foods. Populations of this size no longer rely on local growers/farmers for their consumables. Huge demand drives mass production and the quality of supply suffers greatly, which has a domino affect on the out of control population. Poor diet, adulterated food replete with antibiotics and pesticides = skyrocketing disease rates (the affects of which are abundantly clear).
You want to talk about decreasing tax revenues… I think you should focus on decreasing availability of clean water to drink and the damage done to land and air via factory farming. Your ever expanding model of “more tax payers” is inherently doomed.
It’s just common sense for humans to keep their birth rate down at this point and governments should be encouraging that by allowing parents to bear the full brunt of the financial responsibility for the children they CHOOSE to create.
By the way, I’m a 32 year old female and there was no magic at all involved in my not producing any children. It was quite easy actually.
Farming is a business, so unless people are into raising children for profit, I’m not sure how the two related.
I like the idea posted about where someone said to just make the first $x of income non-taxed and get rid of personal exemptions entirely.