As I sit here finishing up the final edits of my Master’s thesis, I had this thought:
The Right tends to argue that our social welfare system provides incentive for single women (a.k.a. “welfare mothers”) to pop out children left and right. This constitutes an abuse of the system.
I’m not saying that’s at all true (and actually the stats on this “phenomenon” are rather skewed: the number of kids women on welfare have is about the same as the general population), but take their argument and consider this…
Yet there are a slew of tax breaks for families with children. Does this not also constitute an incentive to have kids in order to receive unearned money (one could call it welfare, sure!) for those kids? Yet I don’t hear anyone on the right complaining about those..in fact, they usually want to raise them! Yet why should “we” subsidize “their” children?!
Curious, huh?
I guess so-called “incentives” are OK for the “right” kinds of families…
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But the right is generally against paid family medical leave, so they're not entirely consistent on this issue.
The right and the left alike are supportive of these tax breaks because having kids is hugely expensive, but people with kids tend to vote, so everyone tries to keep them happy with tax breaks and such to defer some of the expenses.
1. Our economy depends on new workers entering the stream.
2. Kids of stable (financially and otherwise) tend to be a net gain for society, whereas kids from less stable families are frequently a net drain in terms of various kinds of resources.
Believe me, these tax breaks don't even begin to cover the costs of having kids. All they do is help lighten the load.
To quote Obama, "This nation's children aren't 'those' children, they are OUR children."
The thing that always gets me about things like this is that people refuse to understand that when someone in our nation is suffering, we all suffer. But instead, over the last 30 years we've been teaching each other that it doesn't matter if someone else is suffering, as long as we aren't uncomfortable, so we ignore the poor, the homeless, those whose lives could be made better through education and food that they cannot afford on their own.
2. Kids of stable (financially and otherwise) tend to be a net gain for society, whereas kids from less stable families are frequently a net drain in terms of various kinds of resources.
Believe me, these tax breaks don't even begin to cover the costs of having kids. All they do is help lighten the load."
Thank you Mike. That's it.
I'm all for changing how we deal with generational poverty and giving families AT the "poverty" line and working-poor parents a boost (better benefits, wages, health care, education, etc.), but this is just another argument from the LEFT'S arguments to weaken family planning and responsibility. It pisses me off. (When the last time a Republican of worth actually floated this argument out anyway...or is it just that Reagan's arguments are still conventional non-wisdom on this issue?)
Even right-wing think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation know that women don't simply have children to bump up their benefits---what,$50?--but that that shittily low amount isn't altering their behavior to AVOID getting pregnant with another child, either.
It's f*cked up either way.
Not sure if I was unclear, but I wasn't taking atx-breaks for kids are wrong, but that the right wing espouses them, and doesn't consider them to be any kind of government subsidy or support, or incentive, yet when it comes to welfare, they spew the line that they don't want to pay to raise anyone's kids. My point was to point to this contradiction: because via tax breaks and school taxes, "we" all support middle and upper class kids too. It's just a double standard and is classist: that only the "right" kinds of families should be encouraged and supported.
It's just a double standard and is classist: that only the "right" kinds of families should be encouraged and supported."
Mike said it better than I could.
"Kids of stable (financially and otherwise) tend to be a net gain for society, whereas kids from less stable families are frequently a net drain in terms of various kinds of resources."
It's not as simple as assuming those "unstable" families were necessarily always unstable (depends on whether we're talking about families who are on welfare for a spell after a divorce or a blow in family savings or a "family" where the sole parent is barely employable and may be just out of high school...potentially not mature enough to raise her kid, not without expecting HER parents to help out.)
It might be classist, but having children DOES have to do with social class b/c part of being a parent is taking account of your obligations as that child's primary material and emotional provider (thus is deals with financial obligations)--BEFORE the government, before the taxpayer, before your relatives. That gap describes at least a portion of people on welfare. (Granted saying money is the only thing important in parenting...unfortunately I can't do much about parents who emotionally abuse and manipulate their kids, not if the law can't...you'd think they'd at least do something about child beauty pageants.)
Again--I HATE the repugnant, aggressive moral hypocrisy of the right--anti-family planning on the one hand, "marriage-is-panacea/we're not expanding S-CHIP" on the next. I have a big problem with our shitty welfare/ healthcare problems.
But they're not the only ones capable of being dishonest when it comes to the discussion on the balance between a potential parent's "rights" and their individual responsibilities...no matter what class background they have.