Even as a child I was able to reason out that if you pay stupid people to breed they will. I even wrote a paper on it in grade school. Of course I worded it more politely but that’s the basic premise. If you want to get rid of poverty then tax people fairly and that means taxing labor hours and not income.
If you have the same understanding of a concept as an adult that you did as a child, you almost certainly don’t understand it.
What’s odd is that if you actually look at the evidence, there’s an inverse correlation between government welfare programs and child birth. Look at Europe. They have more generous social programs than we do, and yet their birth rate is below the replacement rate.
Look at the statistics for the poorest parts of Africa. They are some of the highest on the planet, and yet there’s no welfare checks to incentivize them. Why is that?
If I promise to get a vasectomy and never have a child, would you be cool with me getting a guaranteed income? 
It’s one thing to compare fertility rates between rich countries (with social welfare programs) and poor countries (without such programs), where the well documented conclusion is that higher wealth and education means lower fertility rates.
But have you considered the demographics within countries with social welfare programs?
This paper found that the key factor in lowering birth rates was the availability of a public pension plan
http://www.pensiondevelopment.org/394/the-impact-pension-systems-fertility.htm
This pdf is rather long but interesting
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/workshops/international/archive/pdf/fertility.pdf
I don’t know how common place it is, but there have been problems with the foster care system where people abuse it by taking in more children to get more money from the system.
I was trying to find birthrates in the US listed by income brackets and ended up finding these two articles
http://itsteatime.net/blogs/blog4.php/2009/10/01/birth-rates-by-income
They are most likely junk sites, but make the claim that those receiving welfare have 3 times the birthrate as those that don’t.
I’m trying to find a better site with some real data. Does anyone know how fertility rates in the US break down by income?
I think with the threat of global warming looming over us, and technological advances which have greatly reduced the amount of labor neccesary to secure the basics of life for all, we should seriously re-examine our Protestant Work Ethic. The notion that “those who don’t work shouldn’t eat.”
The problem isn’t that people in America aren’t producing enough stuff. It’s actually that we (and the other industrialized countries on Earth) are producing too much stuff. At the present time, it may be in the best interests of humanity to pay a certain segment of the population to “do nothing” and live on a bare minimum subsistance level, neither producing nor consuming much more than they need to keep themselves alive.
Isn’t that technically what we do with social security?
And wouldn’t the obvious problem be that in 50 years there won’t be enough people working to support the people not working?
As mentioned earlier: what ever guaranteed income you set, $6000 or $14000, as more people cluster into that income the market is going to follow. There will be lots of money made from people living for free. Cars, tvs, apartments, restaurants, will all adjust to milk that cow.
If you thought the income disparity was bad now wait until a few generations are born knowing nothing but government paychecks. Now, obviously this is a good idea, no question there. But what happens if in 50 years it turns out to be a not-so-great idea, changing it would be a million times worse than trying to alter Medicare and Social Security at the same time.
Well, essentially that is what we do now - if you don’t have any children, there isn’t anything out there after unemployment runs out. This is one reason why people have children when they are dirt poor - it’s the only way to support themselves. Well, legally anyway.
I’m going to be way behind on this, since I only have internet access once a day for now!
Neither would I but I used to live among folks who lived on far less than that and were satisfied with it.
Sounds like high unemployment rates are going to be the thing of the future then.
The folks I mentioned above didn’t seem to care. Many of the men were hopeless alcoholics, which of course doesn’t help, and I guess the women didn’t think much of themselves because they not only stayed with these men, they bred with them. Their kids were damn near feral.
Um, many rich people don’t work, so they’d end up paying no tax.
How about some stats like that for the good ol’ USA?
Heh, as tempting as it is to say yes, the answer is still no. Well, may if it was a small income?
You are of the opinion that so many people are going to live off the bare minimum that the economy will collapse. If the the only thing that keeps people working is the threat of starvation, that may be the case. But I have a better opinion of human nature than you do. I think people work for a host of other reasons besides not starving to death or being homeless. Self mastery, the esteem of peers, impressing an attractive member of the opposite sex, the sheer enjoyment of accomplishing something, and other factors will induce people to work even though they don’t technically have to.
This brings up an interesting question: what happens if a person is independently wealth, and can report income low enough to qualify for negative income tax?
A person with millions in savings could set it up to earn $8k in interest, then get $6k from the government, and dip into savings when he wants something big. If his mansion and Ferraris are paid for his cost of living is pretty low.
Yep. And as cold and ruthless as you might profess to be, eventually people simply won’t accept letting such a high number of people starve in the streets. We’re going to have to find a way to make a minimum subsistence allowance work; certainly not now, and probably not in the next couple of decades. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens in my lifetime.
In science fiction the valve for this problem is usually space travel. All those people who’d otherwise be jobless can instead choose to colonize a new planet. I don’t think we’re going to be lucky enough that that’ll be an option any time soon, though.
I just assumed unemployment would be next to zero with this system. Essentially the government is paying people not to work, so employers that want to hire will need to compete.
I was just responding to curlcoat. Ever-growing unemployment rates will drive the need for this system, and this system will drive unemployment rates down for the reason you describe.
It also seems that a parent who stays home to raise children will want to remain unmarried, so as to file “single” with no income, thus discouraging marriage.
One cool this about this though would be that it’s essentially a guaranteed scholarship. I only earned $1000 per month during grad school and that felt like a ton of money. And looking back to undergrad I worked my ass off all summer, then part time through the year, still making less than $13k. Getting $14k a year would have been luxury, and made going to school a hell of a lot easier.
Since I’m about to get tossed out of this free wifi, I’m going to go with your summaries of these links and point out that this - “those receiving welfare have 3 times the birthrate as those that don’t” - is what I’ve been saying all along and what I am afraid of should we start paying people to not work. What else are they going to do but have babies?
Producing too much what stuff?
I have never professed that. There are those that assume it about me merely because I don’t like children.
So you think continuing to hand them a living, as we have been doing, is the answer to taking care of this problem?
I assume it about you because you’ve professed similar ideas before. Nothing to do with children.
What’s the alternative? Let them starve in the streets? Re-enact The Lottery?
I think Blalron’s idea of getting a salary for having a vasectomy is probably the most workable solution in order to gradually reduce population to sustainable levels, but I foresee a lot of resistance to that idea.
Just to give a little context, the basic canonical model that supports this idea is Meltzer & Richard;s classic 1981 paper, A rational theory of the size of government. You can find it here. The conclusion you want to read is on page 12.
Sure it can work as long as you put a progressive income tax on top of it.
I don’t think you understand how this is supposed to work.