To wonder what it would be like if things were equal, benefits vs working wise?

[hm32]

If you had a basic wage (as a single person) and your employer (or the government) paid you a set amount more for each child you had, more if the child (or you) had a disability.

If housing worked so that without those top-ups could afford 1 bedroom, then with each top-up for a child you could afford one more (depending on the sex/ages of the children).

If childcare was free for all, so everyone could afford to go to work (perhaps employer-based creches, or government run nurseries?).

If the advantage for working was performance-related bonuses on top of the basic that everyone got? Perhaps linked to how well the company was doing, with extra for outstanding contributions or something?

Just a random thought really. Perhaps then, professionals would have children at a younger age, and would have more of them. Perhaps no one would resent those on benefits. Perhaps working actually would get you a better quality of life. Mums could stay at home if they wanted, until their children were at school, then work. Or work from the beginning and put their child into nursery.

Just a random thought.

random thought? can tell!

Shouldn't work be rewarded for the quality and abilities of the employee rather than the number of children a person has? Why should a hard working, childless employee be worth less than an equally hard working employee with 5 children to the business they both work for?

Sounds a bit shit to me, but I have no children.

By the way - where is your question of unreasonableness?

Hummm just sounds like we'd all be better off having as many children as possible. Not sure that's the best plan for a society.

How would the housing work? Because one two-bedroom place might be a LOT nicer or more desirable than another.

Yawn

Why am i only going to be paid according to my ability to reproduce? What if people are infertile?

Vague aspects of communism and/or socialism I think.

Generally I think this sort of system is known as Communism. Great in theory, doesn't work in practice, mainly cause the people with power are arseholes.

I don't think that's socialism. Socialism would treat everyone equally. This system rewards reproduction above everything else it seems. So i would earn less than the person who has had years off to have 4 children even tho i had actually been there working. Don't think that's socialism.

You covered breeding women nicely - do men get a choice to be at home pumping out babies too?

Everyone would take the easy option, sit on their arse at home under the guise of 'child carer'.

You miss the point of 'professionals' having later babies (and why would anyone want a gaggle of children?) - they get established in their profession and have the requisite number of children. It is far easier to educate and maintain a standard of living with less children than more. ah but of course in this Utopian society I guess the shelf stacker is getting paid the same as the neurosurgeon?

And exactly how is the state going to manage to fund all this lolling about?

Is that not the point that hm32 is making though? Today, looking at the "benefit culture", it pays to breed however that obviously wouldn't (and shouldn't) work in the working world.

As a single childless person, how much would the government pay me when I decide to take a career break?

Socialism would be more like everybody paid the same and given allocated housing based on need. All healthcare and child care free. That would not explicitly incentivise having loads of children but would care for children that are there. You would need food allocation too.

I don't think people with more children should be paid more, it's your choice what to spend your wages on, it might be 5 kids, it might be 1 kid and a fancy car. Neither is better, but it's a choice you make.

Everyone would take the easy option, sit on their arse at home under the guise of 'child carer'.

That doesn't sound like an enjoyable option to me.

There is definitely an issue of people with children being pushed into poverty. Weren't poverty organisations saying that the consequence of the cuts being that most people with children would now be living in poverty? It can't be right to create a society in which there is a two tier system that makes people who don't live with children collectively wealthier than those who do. I would not want people in general to have a nice adult life as a consequence of most of them spending their first eighteen years living in poverty.

Rather than sorting it out by giving money, I would rather see house prices reduced and more social housing available so that decent housing was more readily available to everyone. I do think more childcare should be freely available. I also think there should be a social expectation, rather than a legal one, that people not raising children contribute to unpaid caring work. Generally the people I know without kids do unpaid work with children or with people, the elderly or with serious disabilities. I think we have to put care at the heart of society, rather than the life of NT able bodied working age adults at the centre and tell everyone else to stop being inconvenient.