My opinion is no. Assuming we need children today, in order to have tax-paying adults tomorrow, parents are already doing their share. What are childless people doing?
Nothing.
Why should parents have to pay double?
Not sure if any had seriously proposed it. That said, it hardly matters. One way or another you pay for it, and I’d prefer to incentivize the pitter-patter of little feet.
What an idiotic notion the OP proposes. Let’s turn it on its head: no one without a child should have to pay for schooling children, since that’s socialism, pure and simple. Want a smart child? Go get your own education!
We educate children as a society because we decided in the late 1700s and early 1800s that our society would be better off if most of its adults were educated at some level. The cost of educating children is bourne by society as a whole (which is why those who want to avoid the tax cost of educating children not their own, and those who want to treat the pro rata cost of educating a child as “their” money, since “they” paid it in for “their” child are equally out to lunch). And from a practical standpoint: if the only people who ended up paying for the cost of education were those who never had a child, that would make it damned near impossible to provide a decent education.
One problem is your theory ignores the strain they put on the system in the mean time. If we really need more taxpayers we could probably get them from all over the world and even charge them for the privilege if we wanted.
They’re not just future taxpayers, they’re part of the community and the descendants of those who came before. They carry on the culture and traditions of the community.
Are you serious, or is this a parody of the thread about whether people without children should have to pay taxes for schools?
I would object to essentially being made to pay an infertility tax.
Of course everyone should pay. Even ignoring the fact that a la carte government doesn’t work, you are forgetting that everyone benefits from the positive externalities that come from mandatory education. You may not think educating kids helps you in any way of you don’t have kids, but you won’t be saying that when those uneducated kids are robbing your house every other week when you are at work, or when your employer goes under because they can’t find any qualified people.
The OP says that people without kids should be the ones paying taxes for schools, and the parents should not have to.
First there was the argument that people ***without ***kids shouldn’t have to pay school taxes. Now we have an argument that people ***with ***kids shouldn’t have to pay school taxes.
Maybe the damn kids should pay for it themselves. :dubious:
Given equal incomes a couple with two kids does pay less in Federal income taxes and State income taxes, because they are eligible for tax credits the childless couple is not. So in a sense we already have adjustments in place that help to alleviate some of the cost difference between having kids and not having kids.
I’d argue that it’s not realistic to make raising kids cheaper than not raising kids, nor should that be a policy goal.
Sorry, I misread the OP. Please disregard the last part.
So the proposal is that a childess couple pays the school tax until the day they produce offspring, then the tax stops? Sorry, that makes no sense to me and I have kids. We have enough population on Earth, parents aren’t doing society a favor by reproducing.
If you consider the taxes you pay for public school to be tutions for the free education you got all those years ago then it all makes sense, to me anyway, that each person should pay.
Considering how much money the government is borrowing, I suspect that they will.
Or, if you want to play some logic games, you can suggest that kids do pay for it themselves, by paying school taxes as adults. If they happen to have children, those kids will pay when they are adults, and so on.
There you have it. Every child runs up a bill, payable as tax withholding in the future (or through military service).
Not sure what to do if the kid never can pay it off - has anyone ever tried some sort of prison for debtors? That might work…
But yeah, Cheese hit it on the head. Every adult (with the obvious exceptions of immigrants and private-school weenies) benefited from schools as a child, and therefore they pay for it as an adult through their taxes. Obviously the ones that benefited the most pay the most in taxes, because they have the best jobs and the largest homes.
But what about the parents who raise mentally retarded chidlren, severely disabled children, or children that grow up to be incarcerated or institutionalized as adults or adults who rely on social services to survive. Those parents have produced non-tax-paying resource costing adults. Should they be expected to pay double? Triple? Even more?
I haven’t read all the responses yet so:
Think of school taxes as paying for your own education instead of your kids or not having kids…
You’ll feel much better about paying.
Ever see the movie Idiocracy?
I don’t think the OP is that silly if we refine it a bit. I think reproduction should be subsidized to a point. After the third (say) kid, you start paying tuition.
Reproduction is subsidized to a point. There are all sorts of tax deductions around kids and their associated costs.
Unless, of course, they decide to have children.