Are You Sure You Don't Want Kids? What If We Bribed You?

[Jilly_in_VA]

There have been some recent news stories about conservative lawmakers’ borderline wacky schemes to get the birth rate up. I call the schemes wacky because they do not seem like they were cooked up with the input of anybody who is on the fence about wanting kids (or wanting more of them).

Scheme One originates (where else?) in Texas, where conservative lawmakers introduced a bill last week that would give massive property tax breaks to straight couples who owned property and had many, many children. H.B. 2889 would give heterosexual couples with four children a 40 percent break on their property taxes, and all the way up to a 100 percent property tax break for families with 10 or more children, provided the parents were married.

I’m no tax expert, but it seems like that sort of law, in addition to being homophobic and creepy, would make it so that a theoretical school district containing only families with 10 or more children would have a property tax base of $0 with which to operate its public schools. Conservatives have made no effort to hide their hatred for public education, but until some pretty seismic shifts in the legal system occur, public schools still must exist. Again, I’m not an accountant, but it seems like a bad idea!

So, who is this incentivizing? I cannot envision a world in which avoiding paying property taxes would be worth the physical and emotional toll that having 10 fucking kids would have on me.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/are-you-sure-you-dont-want-kids-what-if-we-bribed-you

Note: No tax breaks to people who adopt, or gay couples who have or adopt kids. Adoption is strictly off the table. Nothing for single moms, either.

[Polybius]

1. The only way to bribe me is to have someone I find attractive knock on my door and ask

[spooky3]

2. If they could figure out how to restrict it to white people, they would. Nt

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Same conservatives call it welfare when

it involves children of African-Americans and immigrants.

[Beartracks]

4. Welfare moms: Bad. But welfare couples? Good!

Sounds like Texas.

==============

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Pickup line in a bar

"So, uh, Sweetie, would you like to start 10 kids tonight?"

[Kath2]

6. So disgusting.

Shame, shame, shame.

[Ilsa]

7. 40-50 years ago in south TX, they were complaining about

"the Mexicans" having too many children and it costing too much to educate Hispanic families. Now the Quiver-full religious group wants special tax treatment, thinking it'll encourage higher birth rates. I was never financially motivated to have or not have children. But I suppose the men are all good with the idea.

[Aristus]

8. Right-wingers are terrified of having a labor deficit.

If there are more jobs than workers, then workers have the advantage in negotiating higher wages & salaries, and better benefits packages. This means less money for do-nothing executives and greedy shareholders.

They're trying to perpetuate and grow a labor surplus, where workers have to compete for remunerative jobs, and have less power to bargain for higher wages. Greedy bosses want to be able to gleefully tell underpaid, overworked employees: "You don't like it? There are 100 people outside wanting to get your job!"

The Black Plague of the 14th Century killed so many people, the resulting labor deficit essentially created the middle class. A middle class with money to spend on education, art, science, and social reform created the Renaissance.

Right-wingers don't want a labor deficit, and they sure as hell don't want another Renaissance.

[CousinIT]

9. No. They need to develop Ectolife since women are just incubator machines to them anyway.

Let them create machines to do it instead of enslaving women: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/is-ectolife-artificial-womb-real_uk_639858a2e4b0c28146469016

I don't really approve of any of this (women having beaucoup children the natural way or the ectolife way), but if damn male asshole gynoticians are going to worry that they can't force enough women to have white babies then they can get machines to do it since they consider women machines/male service units/domestic slaves anyway.

Of course that would mean the future is full of people who came from ectolife pods - whatever your imagination leads to with that.

American Taliban - IDIOTS.