To think women with 3+ kids should pay less taxes

God that's simplistic. Fascists charged tax and gave speeches too. We shouldn't do either of these things as well?

Most countries in the world offer some kind of birth incentive now: Singapore, Finland, Luxembourg, Australia, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Canada, and the list goes on. It's to help out with the inevitable costs of having a child (food, education etc til 18 y/o) and remove financial disincentives to giving birth.

I agree that it is a complex issue.
Regarding Russian women, I watched a documentary the other day about women in Russia and their everyday lives.
From what they were saying, I’m not surprised they’re currently not overly keen to have lots of kids.
One of the women interviewed said she felt the state just wanted them to produce future soldiers cannon fodder.
Several others talked about high levels of domestic violence, alcoholism and a generally very patriarchal culture.

for now you are a huge drain on resources, not to mention the long term environmental footprint. and you want to be rewarded for that? really???

Women with 3+ children barely pay any taxes because they usually do not work.

Amazed but also not that surprised you cant find support for this idea on a FORUM FOR MOTHERS

Because motherhood needs to be a choice, not forced. As mothers we, or at least most of us, understand the importance of women's bodily autonomy.

Especially perhaps those of us with daughters. I really want to be a grandparent one day but I would never tell my daughter that. I'd obviously be very supportive if she wanted to have children but I'd never made her feel pressured, or less loved and valued if she didn't want or couldn't have any.

Do you seriously think women should be reduced in status to 'baby making machines', forced or heavily pressured to have lots of children?

Do you think that would be good for the children of women who didn't want but felt forced to have them? It really isn't. Even if they aren't as open in their resentment as my friend's mum was, kids pick up on that sort of thing.

Errr yes it will.

Not if the ones pumping out the kids are the ‘economically inactive’ who have families of ‘economically inactive’ young adults sat around gaming, smoking weed and expected a handout every fortnight. They won’t be much use to the economy really.

I was thankful we were able to have one child but we couldn’t afford two or more. Birth it, pay for it.

I actually think we should embrace a falling birth rate. The economy is more than just a giant Ponzi scheme crating more and more people to pay for the generation above. People should be rewarding people for have less than 3 children, gradually reducing the population. This will, I accept, cause problems for the generation which is top heavy and I don’t doubt there will be challenges but in 100 years the population will thank us on behalf of overcrowdedness plus the environmental benefits of a smaller population.

@Pookerrod

I agree. If you are saying working from 16-67 (51 years) why then are we funding state retirement for potentially half of that on top for the majority of the population if the life expectancy is 80?

In this tech era where we can work much later why should the retirement age be so low?

I am looking at causation, not correlation hun

I saw poster get lots of support a few weeks ago for complaining about the money we spend on maternity wards.

Yes please! Backdated of course

I think the way to combat paying for an increasingly elderly population to is drastically increase the retirement age. Current levels no longer make sense.

When the state retirement age was introduced in 1908 it was set at 70 when the average life expectancy was 50. It was reduced to 65 (men) and 60 (women) in 1940 when the life expectancy was 60.

Life expectancy is now around 80 yet state retirement age is only 67.

That together with the dawn of the digital revolution therefore people are more than capable of working beyond 67 as most are not working physically demanding jobs means that the only answer is to increase retirement age to closer to 80.

Why should my kids have to slog their guts out and pay more tax so that I can retire from my desk job at 67 and lounge around for 20 years?

Noooooo

I believe better investment in childcare and elderly care would be more beneficial. Make it financially make sense for women to return to work thus more money from taxation. Use the extra to fund adult and elderly social care. The elderly are living longer with chronic conditions. Create more community hospitals as a go between from hospital back into the community stopping city hospital bed blocking and allow more beds for surgery and acute patients

Very generalised view but I don't think allowing the rich and well off more tax breaks is the answer

I think if anything you should pay less. If we were to go down a super individualistic road, which isn't good for society cohesion. You definitely shouldn't have to pay more though.

@PeachHedgehog That was a problem, true. There would need to be a change in society and employers attitudes. Parenting should be more valued and if someone's taken time out to be a SAHP (by choice, as it shouldn't be forced) society and employers should recognise their transferable skills, and welcome and support them back to the workplace.

I'm not sure we will necessarily reach this equilibrium because I think smaller families are here to stay. If there are less children, and then they have fewer or no children, the population will continue to decline. Although with the death of the baby boomers, the pyramid will become less inverted.

This is the problem.

As soon as you start a dialogue about this, people think you're some sort of murderer who wants to compulsorily bump off the over-80s.

Although that's not what anyone sane or compassionate would be advocating, there's no doubt that a large part of the problem we face is that not only are we living longer, but a lot of us are living longer in expensive, miserable ill-health.

And while you are at it, also look up the correlation between Nicholas Cage movies and deaths from drowning in swimming pools...

There are no holes in my argument. It’s a pressing issue for most developed countries who are all scratching their heads over the impending demographic crisis.

Without most women choosing to birth tiny future taxpayers, we don’t have a taxpayer base and so in the future we no longer can afford to live in a society where we enjoy healthcare, state pensions, police, schools and other basic social benefits.

I apparently pay more tax than a very very significant percentage of the population; doesn’t mean I can’t see that we need people to raise children to protect our way of life.

As a single, childfree woman should I pay more tax @WhatTodoALL ?

I agree. I think all public services would have to be better though. It would annoy me to see well off middle class people getting free childcare and paying school fees and for private medical care, when I can't even get a dentist.

while I understand the economic argument that more kids=more tax collected, I think the environmental reasons not to encourage lots of children are very strong

@Againname I partially agree with you. But that is what happened in the seventies and eighties. It lead to lots of single mothers never working again.

And I'll still be paying quite a bit of income tax when I retire.

That would be interesting to know.
People on MN also write outraged posts when someone suggests childcare should be free/ heavily subsidised (“It was your decision to have kids!!”), yet many other countries are doing exactly that.