To think women with 3+ kids should pay less taxes

[WhatTodoALL]

All parties will have to deal with the increasing number of old people and low fertility rate. They use this fact to justify big numbers of net migration. I was wondering if we as a country should actively provide economical benefits for women to have more than one child? In some countries like Singapore there are a lot of economic incentives to have more than 2 kids. I have 3 kids myself and I don't know anyone in my friendship group who would have more than 2. In fact, most don't want to have even one child citing economical reasons.

AIBU?

This makes sense. Surely technology will take over many jobs so a falling population is a good thing? I guess society will look very different in the future due to this.

This.
Also planet is dying because of being overpopulated

I actually think people with no children or adopters should be paid more benefits and I'm a third child.

But this would only benefit women who are paying tax. So a woman on benefits can only have two children but someone working and earning good money would benefit most.

A family with 3 or 4 children where mum is a SAHM would not benefit.

Good, free or cheap childcare would benefit all families and by extension society.

Why? The ones with no children don't have children to feed and clothe? It wouldn't make sense. The government obviously agree with me.

I do think free childcare for working mums would be the most effective thing. It’s the biggest cost by far, it would mean women who want to/have to continue working could do so, it takes some of the motherhood penalty out of having kids. Often it’s the lower earner who ends up dropping out of work when a couple figure out that nursery fees are more than their wage and that is often women.

I’m a SAHM and DD went to nursery which we chose to do but I didn’t need it as such since I was home.

Given it would be an expensive policy I think it is right that it only be available to parents who actually need it. Those who are SAHP and want to use a nursery have the option to pay for it.

I also think we need to look at education again. With dropping numbers of children there is no reason why school classes can’t be smaller and more aggressive interventions on behaviour and achievement can’t be introduced. If we need a workforce for the future we need one that can cope with the demands of the future. We should be expanding apprenticeships and be taking them seriously and respectfully as paths into work.

Exactly. But if you cast your mind back to the ‘golden Blair years’ so often talked about on here…. there were incentives to have more children in the form of unlimited child benefit and other tax credits - and many of those kids were born into low economic situations with mothers who were hoping to increase their income and who already couldn’t afford the kids they had… and I don’t think those children went on to become contributors to the tax system - they were the second generation in a family who hadn’t had a job and they’ve gone on to create the third, tying up social housing in the process. It is those people who gave a bad name to anyone who truly needed benefits and fucked the system up for everyone else in the process because it became impossible to discern actual need. It is those same people who were caught out when the child benefit system changed and discovered to their horror that like everyone else they’d have to get a job.

I have literally never heard anyone refer to the 'golden Blair years' on here, or even voice that sentiment.

I suggest you try the ‘what was life like under Labour’ or any of The GE threads. Apparently it was a nirvana. Which is a surprise to a lot of us who were graduating, working and starting families during that time.

People who have more children should pay fewer taxes, since they are working to guarantee the next generation of taxpayers is going to be around to pay for all the stuff everyone wants/needs. (Basic economics!)

Was that why you had children? To create future taxpayers?

If taxes pay for schools then perhaps the childless should get a tax break instead.

I don't mind people having lots of children but I've seen how tight the budget gets when you've more than three. And I genuinely do feel that over ten is possibly something you should plan for financially rather than vaguely having another one.

Some of these responses are bonkers.

Firstly, public services and benefits are needs-based not contributions-based. This is necessary to ensure that we live in a decent and humane society which cares for the vulnerable and those in need.

Second, most people would probably want our society to have a future. That means children are necessary, though there may be disagreement on the optimal number of children. Most people would probably think that raising children was on balance a socially useful activity, even if they couldn't or didn't want to have any themselves. That's not to knock those who are child-free in any way. Of course there are many socially useful activities which don't involve children in any way.

Thirdly, the way our society is set up is that the middle chunk of society (tax-paying workers) fund a good proportion of the top and the bottom chunks (children and pensioners). So if the middle chunk is continually depleted because there is insufficient investment in the bottom chunk (children), the top chunk will grow continually in proportion to the rest of the population and we'll reach a point where providing humane care for the elderly is unaffordable.

What a strange viewpoint. The planet is already overcrowded with humans, the last thing we need is people being encouraged to produce even more.

I was ready to down vote you but I read your argument and found that actually yes, I agree.

I've also read it and it's a ridiculous argument

The government only agree with you because more children means more voters and more voters means more power.

Sorry my brain melted reading this. You know election votes are counted as a % right...?

The power of a nation is measured by wealth and size-it has nothing to do with percentages. Politicians are purely interested in wealth and power.

Oh gosh wow. It might have worked like that in the past – especially during territorial colonisation / imperialist times, or when industrial production depended on the size of your manpower labour force – but it doesn't work like that anymore.

Things like sovereign funds, national assets, advanced technology and soft power determine a country's relative wealth and political power. Many of the top 10 most populous countries in the world are 3rd world countries.

I know it's an arbitrary ranking, but take a look at the top 10 passports in the world (as a measure of how these countries are politically regarded): Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Finland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, etc usually feature at the top. All extremely small population wise – most have less than the population of London alone.

It's true that some countries become powerful by default, because of economic and historical factors in combination with a large population. However, the UK is never ever going to churn out enough babies to rival America, India or China, so I doubt that's part of the politicians' great imperialist masterplan...

I'm not saying the perception of a bigger population is better politicians is correct-but if you look at policies concerning children and marriage you can clearly see that is the belief, they have hugely boosted the population by allowing a huge amount of immigration over the last 50 years-if they didn't want a bigger population why would that be the policy?-we are a very small crowded island.

They want immigration (human capital) to fix something called structural unemployment, not to beat Russia and China in a Cold War era throwback population dick size contest.

Now you can debate on whether immigration is indeed a solution to structural unemployment, and whether the drawbacks are worth it, but the "amassing our cannon fodder in a population contest" theory is totally wacko.

What on earth is structural unemployment? They do it to keep wages as low as possible , it is also the whole reason we have a "housing crisis" which is ripping up the green spaces we have left. Structural unemployment (I just Googled it ) is nonsense people already here can be easily be trained for technical jobs, it's just cheaper to bring in people already trained-if you want a strong economy training has to be top of the list, I've no idea why you are referencing the Cold War-it's irrelevant now (and then )from an economic point of view.

I agree. It seems like according to some people, very soon AI will be looking after increasing numbers of elderly people whilst staffing the NHS, without much human input.
It’ll also have to keep updating itself, because there will be fewer and fewer new engineers and developers.

Perhaps AI can create some humans?

Erm not sure about your passport example.

Too passports currently are Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and Singapore.

Japan’s population is almost twice the size of the UK! Spain, Italy and Singapore are smaller, and the first two not by much. South Korea is only slightly smaller than the UK.

www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/2024-power-passport-visa-free-travel/

I never mentioned depopulating-we have a far higher population than we have ever had-it is not sustainable, the idea nothing can be done without positive pressure on the population is nonsense-nothing can be done REALLY CHEAPLY without it, that's the difference. There is no reason why people who have always lived in the UK can't be trained to do practical jobs, but wages must rise, and there must be far more investment infrastructure and the huge rate of immigration must stop, or we truly are finished -with or without AI. We need a small population with far greater investment like the countries you cited-Norway,Denmark etc, that is the key.