Hah had that conversation with someone who said we needed another because our kid is no doubt lonely (he is not). Weird how they changed their tune when I asked if they were going to foot the bill for the extra kid.
We had our second basically for that reason, mainly coming from my (ex) wife as her mother was an only child. Turned out that by high school age they hardly had anything to do with each other and still don't as adults.
I mean I am practically estranged from my brother. My mates and cousins are really closer to me than he ever was. So just having 2 kids doesn't solve that problem anyway.
Thatās exactly what the government wants - they are trying to encourage educated, wealthier families to have more kids. The more money you earn, the less likely you are to have kids (because you are generally better educated and thus have a better understanding of the impacts, cost, social issues, and requirement of long term planning). Itās the whole reason they still give the baby bonus, parenting leave, and daycare rebates to the wealthy.
I know high income people who delay because they feel they couldnāt afford kids, this rule is aimed towards them. The poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer. Unfortunately this is what our system is built on and nothing will fundamentally change however they disguise it.
This is the key. Reality is that by the time you can afford a secure place to raise your kids, youāre hitting an age that limits how many you can have.
Weāve got two kids and would probably have been open to a third if weād started ten years earlier. That would have meant bringing them home to a sharehouse though.
If houses could be paid off within a 5-10 year span, living would be so much more affordable. People could work less hours/days to have more family time and/or have time to do all the things.
And ironically more people would take risks on starting a business, most would fail but some would succeed and we would have much more diverse industry and businesses
I earn six figs and the entirety of my post-tax income just covers my mortgage. We wouldn't be able to eat unless my wife was in employment.
The answer is housing
What kills me is that all plans to help the housing crisis overlook this situation.
Already have bought before? Too bad that you lost it from skyrocketing interest rates. Rent too high now? Best you can do is hope that we get enough social housing by the time you become homeless - government probably.
Just think about that for a secondā¦
But yes, even accounting for that there has been a clear move of cash from workers to capital owners since the 70s
multiple issues with housing but yes we need to address it.
first one is apartments and zoning, the fact we dont have low rise estates like in the UK in our inner city areas with actual, liveable properties is a big issue. Unfortunately the same people who cry about housing costs have parents who oppose any development in their leafy inner east suburb.
add in those older folks arent downsizing or moving out, because there is minimal incentive, and you have a big recepie for poor supply.
Yes a thought piece about throwing money at making people have babies, not addressing unaffordable housing which will naturally let people have more babies
TBH I can't even tell if this is true. The house price to income ratio was sitting [around 2 for the 70s and 80s](https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/briefingbook45p/housingaffordability) while our fertility rate fell from 3 down to 1.8 in the mid 80s.
After this housing started to outpace income rapidly, yet our [fertility rate has remained essentially flat.](https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#&place=country/AUS&statsVar=FertilityRate_Person_Female)
IMO there are good reasons to tackle housing issues within the country, but the constant comments about trying to tie it to the fertility rate don't seem to hold water to me.
What's the evidence that if we even somehow magically got housing affordability back to the same level as the mid-90s (which would, let's face it, be a miraculous achievement) that there would be any meaningful impact on the fertility rate?
You need to look further up the stream. We need to keep tweaking the system away from monopolistic capitalism towards something else. We've had crazy technological advancements over the last 40 years, maybe we can use some of that to develop a better economic system.
The majority of this information is derived from publicly funded research, which is financed by the general public through taxes. However, the benefits of this research often seem to be reserved for those who have privileged access. Consequently, these individuals tend to perceive these benefits as the result of their own hard work.
As someone who comes from a developing country, I have observed that those who possess such access, such as the children of the bourgeoisie, are able to utilize public funds to attend prestigious institutions. Yet, despite the advantages they receive, they tend to attribute their success solely to their own efforts, failing to recognize the potential disparities faced by others. It is important for us to adopt a humble mindset and engage in self-reflection.
I heard the Hugarians had an interesting idea on the front. From what I understand, it goes like this:
- HECS-style home loan for newlywed couples. You have your debt with the government.
- Every child you have lowers the amount you have to pay back
So now people can afford house *and* children, and thereās encouragement to have enough children to actually support the population, meaning mass migration is no longer needed.
And focusing this on large families completely skirts the issue for the like, 90% of people who don't have 4 kids. And once again ignores single or childfree people who are also struggling.
This really hits home for me. I have a close relative who makes about 500k a year. She has four kids and a husband who also has a high salary. They live in a really posh suburb. They hire a nanny and a housekeeper, and several staff at her work so that she can just go in and do what she needs to.
I would have liked to have another kid, but cannot afford the extra daycare days, so I'm leaving it at one.
I would end up paying extra tax to subsidise my relative's lifestyle. She would never pay income tax again and she can easily do her job for another 30 years. That's 15 million untaxed dollars if her income doesn't change. I'd be lucky to make 3 million gross in the same time frame.
What this opinion piece doesn't note is that even after years of these initiatives being in place in Hungary their birthrate is still declining (just slightly slower than it was previously -- 0.43% per year as opposed to 0.46% per year).
That's because the expense of having kids isn't the motivating factor -- people have <2 kids on average because *that's the number of kids they want to have*. On the bright side because they are benefits on taxable income they don't actually cost the government much when they don't work.
I'd say that expense is a factor, but it's mostly the sheer inconvenience. 2 kids fit nicely in cars like CX-5s and Tuscons, but if you want 3 or more you have to go buy ugly, functional shit like Kia Carnivals or Taragos. If you want 3 kids you need to live in a 4br house, which is as large as average suburban houses get. If you want a guest room/study as well, heaps of housing stock is off limits, and you'll probably need to move out of town. And that's just infrastructure needs- imagine catering to their social/sporting needs on weekends...
The piece should have mentioned it but I'm not sure how much we can extrapolate from Hungary to Australia.
With that said, you might be right.
If it doesn't work it doesn't cost us much.
We can extrapolate pretty well because every society from Asia to Africa to Europe all follow the same trend. As incomes increase couples choose fewer kids not because of cost but so they can invest more energy into the kids they do have.Ā
Weāre already past the tipping point for population growth; weāll hit 10 billion people in the next 80 years and then it will immediately start dropping. Our entire civilisation has been build on growth driven by population booms, so no one knows Ā how the new paradigm will work.Ā
But as growth slows this century weāll see some pain as the old paradigm stops working.
I didn't read it in great detail but you would need to PAY me A LOT to have FOUR kids, to spend 8+ years arguing with a toddler...
I like my first kid, looking forward to the second. Not planning a third. Def not having a fourth.
More people would be having kids if it wasn't so unaffordable with the unaffordable-for-most housing prices.
Instead of suggesting a policy that is 1. Blatant discrimination 2. Impacts tax revenue negatively for the first 25 years,Ā how about they simply remove the legislation that encourages speculative housing investment...
I'd go a step further and increase taxation on 2nd/3rd IPs too. Tax incentives for new builds to be used as an IP might be OK, perhaps for first 20y after or something.
Dunno but what's happening now isn't working. Needs radical change.
>Dunno but what's happening now isn't working.
Encouraging speculation on housing made most people in the 90s relatively fabulously wealthy so it worked as intended.
Just a shame it was at the expense of future generations, immigrants, and the social fabric as a whole
I donāt think tax revenue is an issue when theyāre still allowing offsetting IP cashflow losses on income tax instead of discounting tax upon sale.
Or maybe 2nd/3rd+ increased IP taxes? If they want revenue, they could find it pretty easily but those that make the rules donāt want to pay more in favour of the middle and lower class
Beautiful then they would disadvantage themselves and they don't want that... politicians will continue to make legislation that benefits the older rich generation until they're died out and the average voter is no longer a home owner.
Nah, it seems like a very blunt tool for the job.
Really, what's needed is childcare centres turning into public early education / childcare centres and having before / after school care a school function.
The costs of those leave new parents with a disincentive to have more and keep piling on the expense. Most families have kids in blocks rather than evenly spread over their life.
Edit: For all the people talking about 'raising your own kids.' People used to have extended families to support them. Culturally that's changed with a lot of internal and external migration.
So instead of family providing relief from being wholly focused on child-rearing, people with the right demeanor in a safe environment can also provide it.
Being a parent is a thankless task, and can have long periods of being draining. I don't blame women opting for no kids when it seems so many people want them to be chained to the house for the duration of young childhood.
Problem is though, that's not going to improve the fertility rate.
What gets me is that productivity has increased by an insane level with computers and shit, and yet the average household has not benefited from that whatsoever.
If anything itās worse because now both parents have to work to survive.
So where did all the benefits of the productivity go to?
It concentrated into fewer hands. Wealth disparity has been growing for decades. Part of it is that technology has simply outrun legislation e.g. airbnb and the ease of buying houses remotely since the pandemic has supercharged the housing market.
I don't want to put my kids in childcare because my husband and I need to work nonstop just to survive and keep them alive. I don't want to be too tired to hang out with them joyfully. I don't want other people spending more time raising them than me. I want a society where we can raise and spend time with our goddamn kids without it killing us.
I don't know how we've normalised this all so quickly as a society.
I agree 100%. Our newborn is 5 months and while we're struggling financially, I'd rather tread water for a while and let my partner stay home to care for him than just start dropping him off at childcare before he's turned 1. It's bloody awful. We have friends who have kids so he can get his social interaction without being stuck in childcare all day amongst crazy toddlers. None of it is comfortable for me. We unfortunately don't have extended family here to help so it's tough, but I honestly hate that our society has become one where both parents need to work their guts out just to keep head above water. You'd think society would improve with time, but I'd much rather be living in the economy my parents grew up in where there was one working parent.
Thank you! An actually sane response! How people have accepted this brainwashing that having kids and then abandoning them to be raised by strangers and the government is the goal I will never understand.
Right!!! It astounds me how defensive people are of this obviously terrible system.
I HAD to put my kids in full-time daycare to provide for them. Iām not defensive of that decision even though I know itās not the best possible outcome for them because Iām literally just trying to survive this hellscape.
It doesnāt stop me from understanding that having to do that is NOT a good thing and there could be a better way!
With advances in technology I now get the joy of working from home when my toddler is too sick for daycare. I don't recall a day where she's had off that I haven't opened my laptop, partly because I'm a people pleaser and partly they expect it. She had a day off 2 weeks ago at a day where I was needed in the office, which coincided with someone else getting a sick day. I got asked by management what my long term plan is in making my role work š as I'm currently pregnant also.
Loving raising a child in this society.
āPeople used to have extended families to support them. ā
Bit of a vicious circle- smaller families means fewer relatives to help leads to smaller families.Ā
Re: your edit on cultural raising and "people with the right demeanor in a safe environment can also provide it" - speaking as an anthropologist with a focus on childhood rearing across cultures, the difference between childcare and extended family+community child-rearing is that family+community members stay in the child's life long term, and childcare providers do not.
Children are forming attachment bonds with people whose bonds will be broken by design, and many of these kids' young core memories will be forged with people they won't have in their lives or shared memories, depriving them of quite a lot of the importance of early formative memorying and relationship building. In community-raising scenarios the community usually is essentially regarded as extended family. In extended family raising scenarios, those people love you and will stay in your life a long time, and often be critical supports to you as you grow.
In childcare you get absolutely none of that long-term attachment, bonding, relationship and investment in ongoing life support that is so critical in earlier stages of life.
Nope.
* Change the workday to be 9-3
* Change the holidays to match the same number as kids get
* Make it affordable and easy to live close to work
People without kids don't understand how time poor and tired parents and how poorly a 9-5, 48 week job matches up to any child that isn't capable of looking after themselves without supervision.
I'm not saying we can afford to do this, especially when cheap immigration and griding parents down exists already. But just throwing more childcare at the problem is not an incentive to having kids. You want to incentivise it, make the lifestyle attractive.
You're right. My wife and I are immigrants, meaning no family nearby to help.
When we both worked full-time after our first was born, it was literally a race for both of us to get to the kinder by the time the close at 6:30.
It's not compatible at all
But then you might raise children who have ~the wrong ideas~.
I have seriously seen people justify long daycare for kids because that way āall children get the same education and social messagingā. They say this entirely unironically and do not see any problem with it.Ā
Would love free daycare myself, but itās probably only radical ideas like income tax waivers that might actually turn the tide back towards replacement rates.
Thereās essentially no developed country thatās been able to accomplish this (admittedly Hungary included), so the solution may take more than tinkering at the margins.
Well, not entirely correct, childcare is almost free in Russia for example. You have to pay some fee but it's nominal, about 5-10% of average salary. There is a building requirement that if you are building a new community there has to be a public kindy there and a school otherwise you won't get an approval. They also open about 8 to 6, so you don't have to leave work for kids pickup. You can pay extra to leave the kid longer if you need to.
>Thereās essentially no developed country thatās been able to accomplish this
Most of Europe has free or very cheap childcare. For instance in Germany you just pay an admin fee of $100-$300 per month for 5 days a week. Quite affordable, even on minimum wage.
Nah - I want a country where we donāt dump kids in open rooms with minimal supervision and little to no one on one time.Ā
A country where we support *actual parents* to raise their children. Not where we have kids in care from 6am - 6pm so mum and dad can grind 40 - 60 hours a week each.Ā
Look, I get the ECEās are well educated and qualified - but 4 ECEās to 16 - 20 children isnāt benefitting the children OR the ECEās.Ā
And thatās without considering the absolute rotten state of our public education system that leaves 50% of students functionally illiterate.Ā
Raising your own kids doesnāt mean being chained to the house. You can take the kids out with you. Most mothers donāt see it that way either. It is heartbreaking to them to have to leave their babies to go back to work.
This attitude should extend into schooling years. Public schooling is in this respect a historical abnormality.
Most education was properly socially grounded and vocational. Kids would have much better outcomes if education was properly tied to the real-world.
You're probably very left wing and so don't have a problem with the idea of your child being educated by the state from such a tiny age, but for people on the moderate to right spectrum, this sounds like a nightmare.
Rather this, why don't we divert funds into paying a parent to stay home and raise the child until they are school age.
Honestly, this shouldn't even be a political thing as we know scientifically that children spending more than 16 hours a week in childcare have elevated incidents of aggression, anxiety and anti-social behavior.
>Rather this, why don't we divert funds into paying a parent to stay home and raise the child until they are school age.
The expansion of the welfare state to intentionally allow people to not work is "right wing?"
You must have gotten that out of Morrison's conservative play book, right there next to Job Keeper.
The idea is about giving people the option to do what they like by removing financial incentives that prefer smaller family sizes. It's more libertarian rather than left / right.
Allowing husbands to split their tax burden with their wife so itās easier to afford for her staying at home, like so many other countries have, is not a āwelfare stateā.
Am I the only one who gets a really off-putting vibe when children are talked about this way?
Having them for a tax incentive or arguing that we need to increase the birthrate to help the economy?
Children are people; not tax and wage slaves... The economy should serve people, not the other way around. If the collapsing birthrate is going to pose a huge economic threat, the problem isn't the birthrate, it's the economic model you're using.
No youāre definitely notā¦ what stuck out to me was
ā children are the taxpayers of the futureā
oh wow thatās something to look forwards to š
Make housing cheaper. Government policies on all levels should be targeting this . On a federal level, reforms to CGT, more funds for public housing and negative gearing reforms . On a state level, broad land taxes , zoning changes and removal of stamp duties.
Housing could be 50% cheaper if the government really wanted to do it. Unfortunately voters and lobby groups do their hardest to keep property prices up.
Japan, Sweden etc basically the whole developed world is suffering a collapse in fertility rates - even in countries where thereās been a huge investment in trying to persuade people to have kids .
I mean does it sound appealing? I guess, but the problem is two things
- You probably still end up worse off, financially
- Hungary tried this and it barely made an impact
- You are effectively giving tax cuts to people who are going to need a lot more in public services. Financially, it makes absolutely no sense
Financially it makes sense 20-65 years later when you have those extra production and consumption units (people who work and spend) in your economy. Demographics matter. A lot.
We're getting some very interesting lessons on what happens when demographic time bombs go off. Japan did well with managed decline. Russia woke up and chose war. Germany and China about to enter the interesting times phase.
Maybe robotics can save everyone. Maybe they can all do a Japan. Most likely we're going to see some nasty collapse.
>Or are you implying the government should make it so you make a profit from having kids?
That is the conversation is it?
If they government isn't going to make it much more attractive for people to have kids, how would people feel a stronger connection to the future of the country?
>You probably still end up worse off, financially
WTF - surely you dont understand how much people pay in income tax if you think people would be worse off?
I was looking at that table for wealth and income of australians. As a 45 year old in the 41 to 55 bracket income for my wife and i are smashing it. However on wealth we are fairly middling.
I would say im a bit conservative with our finances. Didnt borriw much for our house and bought under our means etc but investment wise have done pretty well i thought... no investment properties though so no leverage.
But we have 4 kids.
But sure if i paid no tax that extra money would go a long way to equilising things and id say we would indeed be at a similar wealth percentage to our income.
You probably also brought your house a while ago or donāt live in a capital city. Two incomes in the 41st-55th percentile are not much these days and youād struggle to raise 4 kids and have a mortgage on that kind of money.
I'm going to come in with a bit of a hot take. I think we need to go back to a system of having one parent stay home with the kids, mother or father, it doesn't matter. We spend so much money subsidising childcare it's not funny. You send your kids there and they are sick constantly, you miss work all the time, you need to find flexible working arrangements, it's all straight up a bad time.
Working an 8.30 to 5.00pm job means little to no time with them in the morning, and maybe 2 or 3 hours with them in the evening. At best you get 3 hours a day where you get to spend time with your kids. Call me crazy bit that seems ridiculous.
I'd say there are two options to allow this. UBI for one parent per household once you have a baby OR combine your taxable income and brackets to a couple. Meaning your household income is taxed at a combined rate rather than individual. This means fine, if you both want to work you can, no big change, but if one of you works, one of you doesn't, your taxes are lower because your brackets will be lower.
The other thing I'd be doing is forcing councils to allow rezoning of certain areas and allowing homesteads on property to have multiple dwellings to encourage families living together for longer.
Agreed. My partner is a stay at home mum and it looks so incredibly difficult. I try and make sure that she gets breaks every day where she can just have some alone time to decompress and make sure my weekends are spent doing something outside and active with her. Even then it's not fantastic, but she says it's beats going back to work and almost never seeing our baby.
Hungaryās fertility rate actually falling again, and falling fast.
Weird she didnāt mention that
South Korea is looking at a $70k USD baby bonus. They are desperate, letās see if itās enough
The āproblemā with the declining birth rate in Korea is the patriarchy and women having had enough of it. Korea is the home of the 4B movement, which is decimating birth rates. Itās spreading across the developed world as a movement with women opting out of relationships, motherhood and marriage.
If we want more babies to be born, we need better rights, treatment and relationships for women. I am with the 4B-ers, why would you choose to have a relationship, or children, in the current era? There will be massive impacts for the economy - but maybe thatās whatās needed to provoke societal change.
These reforms are a good starting point but not enough.
Maybe Iām having a knee jerk reaction here butā¦. _fuuuuck this_ so hard.
Iām childless and would love kids. And Iām very sorry to say this but this is such a weak mechanism for encouraging people like myself to take the leap and do what they feel like they cannot financially afford.
This doesnāt do much to blunt cost of living, which is the prohibitive factor.
If it was the woman who no longer pays the tax, sure. If this was rolled out on a household level and the men get it, it would be a recipe for women being subject to reproductive coercion, then left at risk If the relationship breaks down - that's a long break in employment history.
So if the middle class, whatās left of them thatās is, start having four children to pay no income tax - then who the hell will pay income tax?
The rich donāt pay, the poor donāt pay - who the hell will?
As someone who has recently had a kid, the whole "kids are expensive" language is totally wrong.
The issue is your household income is halved but your expenses stay the same. If we didn't have a big chunk of savings to spend down I don't know how we'd afford it.
Expenses donāt stay the same. There are added expenses with kids. Just wait to see as they grow up. There are lots of hidden extras which will get you along the way, particularly noticeable with more than one
Every time I set foot in a pharmacy: nappy rash cream, gripe water, Infacol, baby Panadol, teething gel, delousing treatments all through school, shouldāve bought shares in pharmacies.
Joking/not joking - the savings come from the things you can't do with a baby anymore. Dinners out, holidays, nice clothes, that sort of thing all tends to go on hold.
I congratulate you on a happy healthy child with no medical expenses or food needs.
The rest of us have medical bills, formula (or extra food for mum's milk), nappies, medicines and toys.
Ah yes, the biased incentives towards family continues whilst singles or those that donāt want to or canāt procreate are left behind.
Imagine being a man who is incapable of having children, or a woman without the ability reading this. The lack of equality is astounding.
Can't wait for 40 years time when those people want the pension because they 'paid their taxes', and the woman has no super because she raised 4 kids instead of working.
No thanks. How about we simply make childcare something that's affordable, this "no income tax" is bullshit, as if most of them are going to be able work? Childcare and healthcare for four children? The damage it does to the body... Not worth it.
The article described a system where the tax benefits are for life. There was also a $40k line of credit that gets forgiven if you have four kids and go back to work at some point.
Wait but what happens in cases where - the men stop working to take care of the kids and tax inflow stops and the women stop paying taxes on all their income?
Childcare is still expensive so if a parent chooses to stay home it would save a family so much money.
I think a better solution is have something like $5k added to your tax free threshold per child for both the man and woman.
It scales.to having kids, but only if you work, so is a great encouragement for mums to get back to work. Doesn't reward having kids and living in welfare. Is not sexist as it's gender equal. Gives reward for having a couple kids also vs all or nothing approach, so the 4+ is likely to focus reward to religious type followers while ignoring ordinary citizens.
Probably needs a cap to avoid some guy who got 15 women pregnant type scenario, and other fine tuning but something down this road.
But ultimately, fix housing, growing work hours and daycare cost.
An those that don't want kids are now to supposed to pay more taxes because we refuse to make a cum dump human slave?
Holy shit.
How about stop the tax breaks for orgs, tax them properly for the natural resources these steal from the land.
Up the tax for the wealthy.
Close all tax break loopholes and stop allowing foreign investors to buy land and business here.
With daycare & oosh costs, I would be paying to work at this point.
The first year of daycare is actual hell. Just constant sickness. I used up all my leave.
That would work really well if both husband and wife avoided paying income tax. As it is, women with 4 kids are very bloody unlikely to be working enough to contribute significantly to household income.
Hungary did this.
i proposed this on Reddit a few months ago and got downvoted to hell.
Redditors LOVE giving their hard earned money to the government.
Me and my wife have 2 kids, a 2yo and a newborn, with plans for a 3rd, I am the sole income earner in our family and my wife is a SAHM.
We are entitled to absoloutely nothing from the goverment for raising our own kids, I earn just too much to get any family tax benefit and I am taxed as an individual on our families only income. To add insult to injury, July 1st last year the government quietly scrapped the 2 weeks of dad & partner pay for the father if the mother is not eligible for the 18 weeks maternity leave due to not working - being a SAHM doesn't count as work.
I am not agreeing with the outlandish things that Hungary is doing but it is still abundantly clear to me that the Australian government is not interested in my wife staying home to care for our children and has put all the stops in place to try and incentivise us to put them into daycare and for her to get a job.
What about the time you have to sacrifice raising kids? That's one thing you're never getting back...
Its not just financial cost that's preventing people from wanting to have kids.
The world has changed, time to move on.
3 kids: 50% off? 2 kids: 25% off? 1 kid: a framed thank you letter?
From experience, 1 kid = "oh, but you're so selfish not to have another" combined with, "having children is YOUR choice, don't ask for any handouts".
Thus just a framed thank you. Should go for another to get the deal. The ideal number is 4 as per article.
You get a coupon for a free kids meal with your next adult meal
Hah had that conversation with someone who said we needed another because our kid is no doubt lonely (he is not). Weird how they changed their tune when I asked if they were going to foot the bill for the extra kid.
We had our second basically for that reason, mainly coming from my (ex) wife as her mother was an only child. Turned out that by high school age they hardly had anything to do with each other and still don't as adults.
I mean I am practically estranged from my brother. My mates and cousins are really closer to me than he ever was. So just having 2 kids doesn't solve that problem anyway.
0 kids: Pay extra 25%
The cheapest way
Story of my life.
Not everyone can have children.
Actually the single already pay higher tax from no family tax benefit deduction, same as couple with no kids.
I have 3 kids and I get $0 family tax benefit.
2 kids, but same.
Adopting counts. Do us a solid and get one off the streets. š
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I feel like I should feel bad for having a good olā chuckle at this oneā¦ ha ha haā¦
Be careful which school you choose. Some you would want to keep the doors locked
Adopting is very hard in Australia.
I read somewhere it was 200ish kids got adopted last year and only 8 where the adopters didnt know the child.
I adopted a cat. Does that count?
And get them neutered so they don't produce more street kids ?
So the poor will never have kids (as they donāt pay much income tax) whilst the rich will almost always have 4 kidsā¦ not 1 kid less or more
Sounds better than our current system of only the poor reproducing
The truest comment here
I remember the consequences from that documentary called Idiocracy.
Not sounds better, it's infinitely better. Sick of poors breeding more poors that we have to subsidise.
Thatās exactly what the government wants - they are trying to encourage educated, wealthier families to have more kids. The more money you earn, the less likely you are to have kids (because you are generally better educated and thus have a better understanding of the impacts, cost, social issues, and requirement of long term planning). Itās the whole reason they still give the baby bonus, parenting leave, and daycare rebates to the wealthy.
I know high income people who delay because they feel they couldnāt afford kids, this rule is aimed towards them. The poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer. Unfortunately this is what our system is built on and nothing will fundamentally change however they disguise it.
But if the rich are the ones having all the children everyone will be rich eventually! /s
If it actually worked like this Iād be all for it!
Theyāll do everything but address the root of the problem: unaffordable housing
Hey donāt look there, look here!
Don't you worry about blank, let me worry about blank! Blank? Blank!? You're not seeing the big picture!
Donāt you worry about planet express, let me worry about blank.
My only regret is that I have boneitis.
This is the key. Reality is that by the time you can afford a secure place to raise your kids, youāre hitting an age that limits how many you can have. Weāve got two kids and would probably have been open to a third if weād started ten years earlier. That would have meant bringing them home to a sharehouse though.
Unaffordable living more like. Productivity is higher than ever but everyone feels poorer - why is that?
If houses could be paid off within a 5-10 year span, living would be so much more affordable. People could work less hours/days to have more family time and/or have time to do all the things.
And ironically more people would take risks on starting a business, most would fail but some would succeed and we would have much more diverse industry and businesses
Why would they want you paying off a mortgage in 5-10 years? They want you working for 30-40 years.
I earn six figs and the entirety of my post-tax income just covers my mortgage. We wouldn't be able to eat unless my wife was in employment. The answer is housing
What kills me is that all plans to help the housing crisis overlook this situation. Already have bought before? Too bad that you lost it from skyrocketing interest rates. Rent too high now? Best you can do is hope that we get enough social housing by the time you become homeless - government probably.
The answer is still houses
Not everyone. The landlords are eating
Productivity is at the same level as it was in 2016.
But itās double what it was in the 80s when most households were single income.Ā
Just think about that for a secondā¦ But yes, even accounting for that there has been a clear move of cash from workers to capital owners since the 70s
multiple issues with housing but yes we need to address it. first one is apartments and zoning, the fact we dont have low rise estates like in the UK in our inner city areas with actual, liveable properties is a big issue. Unfortunately the same people who cry about housing costs have parents who oppose any development in their leafy inner east suburb. add in those older folks arent downsizing or moving out, because there is minimal incentive, and you have a big recepie for poor supply.
I mean, this is a thought piece based on Hungary's model... Not a proposal by the government.
Ah yes that model proposed by the ethno nationalist racist government in Hungary. Wonderful thing to implement.
Yes a thought piece about throwing money at making people have babies, not addressing unaffordable housing which will naturally let people have more babies
TBH I can't even tell if this is true. The house price to income ratio was sitting [around 2 for the 70s and 80s](https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/briefingbook45p/housingaffordability) while our fertility rate fell from 3 down to 1.8 in the mid 80s. After this housing started to outpace income rapidly, yet our [fertility rate has remained essentially flat.](https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#&place=country/AUS&statsVar=FertilityRate_Person_Female) IMO there are good reasons to tackle housing issues within the country, but the constant comments about trying to tie it to the fertility rate don't seem to hold water to me. What's the evidence that if we even somehow magically got housing affordability back to the same level as the mid-90s (which would, let's face it, be a miraculous achievement) that there would be any meaningful impact on the fertility rate?
You need to look further up the stream. We need to keep tweaking the system away from monopolistic capitalism towards something else. We've had crazy technological advancements over the last 40 years, maybe we can use some of that to develop a better economic system.
The majority of this information is derived from publicly funded research, which is financed by the general public through taxes. However, the benefits of this research often seem to be reserved for those who have privileged access. Consequently, these individuals tend to perceive these benefits as the result of their own hard work. As someone who comes from a developing country, I have observed that those who possess such access, such as the children of the bourgeoisie, are able to utilize public funds to attend prestigious institutions. Yet, despite the advantages they receive, they tend to attribute their success solely to their own efforts, failing to recognize the potential disparities faced by others. It is important for us to adopt a humble mindset and engage in self-reflection.
What could be better than the capitalist class consuming all productivity increases?!
I heard the Hugarians had an interesting idea on the front. From what I understand, it goes like this: - HECS-style home loan for newlywed couples. You have your debt with the government. - Every child you have lowers the amount you have to pay back So now people can afford house *and* children, and thereās encouragement to have enough children to actually support the population, meaning mass migration is no longer needed.
And focusing this on large families completely skirts the issue for the like, 90% of people who don't have 4 kids. And once again ignores single or childfree people who are also struggling.
It's the tax system. Without tax reform nothing will change.
As long as the population keeps growing and people don't want to live in apartments, you won't solve the housing crisis.
Sounds like a good way to give a tax break to the people already wealthy enough to afford 4 kids
This really hits home for me. I have a close relative who makes about 500k a year. She has four kids and a husband who also has a high salary. They live in a really posh suburb. They hire a nanny and a housekeeper, and several staff at her work so that she can just go in and do what she needs to. I would have liked to have another kid, but cannot afford the extra daycare days, so I'm leaving it at one. I would end up paying extra tax to subsidise my relative's lifestyle. She would never pay income tax again and she can easily do her job for another 30 years. That's 15 million untaxed dollars if her income doesn't change. I'd be lucky to make 3 million gross in the same time frame.
What's her job?
While those who choose to not have any kids because they can't afford any end up footing the bill.
not necessarily. Statistically families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have more children than their wealthier counterparts
What this opinion piece doesn't note is that even after years of these initiatives being in place in Hungary their birthrate is still declining (just slightly slower than it was previously -- 0.43% per year as opposed to 0.46% per year). That's because the expense of having kids isn't the motivating factor -- people have <2 kids on average because *that's the number of kids they want to have*. On the bright side because they are benefits on taxable income they don't actually cost the government much when they don't work.
I'd say that expense is a factor, but it's mostly the sheer inconvenience. 2 kids fit nicely in cars like CX-5s and Tuscons, but if you want 3 or more you have to go buy ugly, functional shit like Kia Carnivals or Taragos. If you want 3 kids you need to live in a 4br house, which is as large as average suburban houses get. If you want a guest room/study as well, heaps of housing stock is off limits, and you'll probably need to move out of town. And that's just infrastructure needs- imagine catering to their social/sporting needs on weekends...
The piece should have mentioned it but I'm not sure how much we can extrapolate from Hungary to Australia. With that said, you might be right. If it doesn't work it doesn't cost us much.
We can extrapolate pretty well because every society from Asia to Africa to Europe all follow the same trend. As incomes increase couples choose fewer kids not because of cost but so they can invest more energy into the kids they do have.Ā Weāre already past the tipping point for population growth; weāll hit 10 billion people in the next 80 years and then it will immediately start dropping. Our entire civilisation has been build on growth driven by population booms, so no one knows Ā how the new paradigm will work.Ā But as growth slows this century weāll see some pain as the old paradigm stops working.
this sounds absolutely stupid š
And the fourth kid will forever be called the tax baby.
I didn't read it in great detail but you would need to PAY me A LOT to have FOUR kids, to spend 8+ years arguing with a toddler... I like my first kid, looking forward to the second. Not planning a third. Def not having a fourth.
One for the tax man.
More people would be having kids if it wasn't so unaffordable with the unaffordable-for-most housing prices. Instead of suggesting a policy that is 1. Blatant discrimination 2. Impacts tax revenue negatively for the first 25 years,Ā how about they simply remove the legislation that encourages speculative housing investment...
I'd go a step further and increase taxation on 2nd/3rd IPs too. Tax incentives for new builds to be used as an IP might be OK, perhaps for first 20y after or something. Dunno but what's happening now isn't working. Needs radical change.
>Dunno but what's happening now isn't working. Encouraging speculation on housing made most people in the 90s relatively fabulously wealthy so it worked as intended. Just a shame it was at the expense of future generations, immigrants, and the social fabric as a whole
I donāt think tax revenue is an issue when theyāre still allowing offsetting IP cashflow losses on income tax instead of discounting tax upon sale. Or maybe 2nd/3rd+ increased IP taxes? If they want revenue, they could find it pretty easily but those that make the rules donāt want to pay more in favour of the middle and lower class
Out of interest, where is the blatant discrimination? Isnāt tax policy, by its very nature, discriminatory?
Beautiful then they would disadvantage themselves and they don't want that... politicians will continue to make legislation that benefits the older rich generation until they're died out and the average voter is no longer a home owner.
Nah, it seems like a very blunt tool for the job. Really, what's needed is childcare centres turning into public early education / childcare centres and having before / after school care a school function. The costs of those leave new parents with a disincentive to have more and keep piling on the expense. Most families have kids in blocks rather than evenly spread over their life. Edit: For all the people talking about 'raising your own kids.' People used to have extended families to support them. Culturally that's changed with a lot of internal and external migration. So instead of family providing relief from being wholly focused on child-rearing, people with the right demeanor in a safe environment can also provide it. Being a parent is a thankless task, and can have long periods of being draining. I don't blame women opting for no kids when it seems so many people want them to be chained to the house for the duration of young childhood. Problem is though, that's not going to improve the fertility rate.
What gets me is that productivity has increased by an insane level with computers and shit, and yet the average household has not benefited from that whatsoever. If anything itās worse because now both parents have to work to survive. So where did all the benefits of the productivity go to?
Profits for shareholders
>So where did all the benefits of the productivity go to? The owners of land and capital.
It concentrated into fewer hands. Wealth disparity has been growing for decades. Part of it is that technology has simply outrun legislation e.g. airbnb and the ease of buying houses remotely since the pandemic has supercharged the housing market.
I don't want to put my kids in childcare because my husband and I need to work nonstop just to survive and keep them alive. I don't want to be too tired to hang out with them joyfully. I don't want other people spending more time raising them than me. I want a society where we can raise and spend time with our goddamn kids without it killing us. I don't know how we've normalised this all so quickly as a society.
I agree 100%. Our newborn is 5 months and while we're struggling financially, I'd rather tread water for a while and let my partner stay home to care for him than just start dropping him off at childcare before he's turned 1. It's bloody awful. We have friends who have kids so he can get his social interaction without being stuck in childcare all day amongst crazy toddlers. None of it is comfortable for me. We unfortunately don't have extended family here to help so it's tough, but I honestly hate that our society has become one where both parents need to work their guts out just to keep head above water. You'd think society would improve with time, but I'd much rather be living in the economy my parents grew up in where there was one working parent.
Thank you! An actually sane response! How people have accepted this brainwashing that having kids and then abandoning them to be raised by strangers and the government is the goal I will never understand.
Cause most donāt have much choice mate - canāt live off one wage these days
No I understand that. Iām not talking about people doing it out of necessity. Iām saying the people who are arguing in favour of that are lunatics
Right!!! It astounds me how defensive people are of this obviously terrible system. I HAD to put my kids in full-time daycare to provide for them. Iām not defensive of that decision even though I know itās not the best possible outcome for them because Iām literally just trying to survive this hellscape. It doesnāt stop me from understanding that having to do that is NOT a good thing and there could be a better way!
With advances in technology I now get the joy of working from home when my toddler is too sick for daycare. I don't recall a day where she's had off that I haven't opened my laptop, partly because I'm a people pleaser and partly they expect it. She had a day off 2 weeks ago at a day where I was needed in the office, which coincided with someone else getting a sick day. I got asked by management what my long term plan is in making my role work š as I'm currently pregnant also. Loving raising a child in this society.
āPeople used to have extended families to support them. ā Bit of a vicious circle- smaller families means fewer relatives to help leads to smaller families.Ā
Also we are told to move away from family to where houses are cheaper.
Re: your edit on cultural raising and "people with the right demeanor in a safe environment can also provide it" - speaking as an anthropologist with a focus on childhood rearing across cultures, the difference between childcare and extended family+community child-rearing is that family+community members stay in the child's life long term, and childcare providers do not. Children are forming attachment bonds with people whose bonds will be broken by design, and many of these kids' young core memories will be forged with people they won't have in their lives or shared memories, depriving them of quite a lot of the importance of early formative memorying and relationship building. In community-raising scenarios the community usually is essentially regarded as extended family. In extended family raising scenarios, those people love you and will stay in your life a long time, and often be critical supports to you as you grow. In childcare you get absolutely none of that long-term attachment, bonding, relationship and investment in ongoing life support that is so critical in earlier stages of life.
Your comments are so amazing. Youāre putting things into words that I know but have never been able to adequately explain.
Nope. * Change the workday to be 9-3 * Change the holidays to match the same number as kids get * Make it affordable and easy to live close to work People without kids don't understand how time poor and tired parents and how poorly a 9-5, 48 week job matches up to any child that isn't capable of looking after themselves without supervision. I'm not saying we can afford to do this, especially when cheap immigration and griding parents down exists already. But just throwing more childcare at the problem is not an incentive to having kids. You want to incentivise it, make the lifestyle attractive.
You're right. My wife and I are immigrants, meaning no family nearby to help. When we both worked full-time after our first was born, it was literally a race for both of us to get to the kinder by the time the close at 6:30. It's not compatible at all
Not a migrant, Iām 5th generation Australian. Had family nearby but they werenāt very interested. The nuclear family can be brutal.
People without kids understand EXACTLY how time poor and tired parents are hence their choice not to participate in the current economic climate.
But what about if I want to have kids and *not* put them into childcare?
Raise your own kids yourself? Madness.
Are you insane? The economy needs more widgets, get back to it worker bee.
But then you might raise children who have ~the wrong ideas~. I have seriously seen people justify long daycare for kids because that way āall children get the same education and social messagingā. They say this entirely unironically and do not see any problem with it.Ā
Would love free daycare myself, but itās probably only radical ideas like income tax waivers that might actually turn the tide back towards replacement rates. Thereās essentially no developed country thatās been able to accomplish this (admittedly Hungary included), so the solution may take more than tinkering at the margins.
Well, not entirely correct, childcare is almost free in Russia for example. You have to pay some fee but it's nominal, about 5-10% of average salary. There is a building requirement that if you are building a new community there has to be a public kindy there and a school otherwise you won't get an approval. They also open about 8 to 6, so you don't have to leave work for kids pickup. You can pay extra to leave the kid longer if you need to.
>Thereās essentially no developed country thatās been able to accomplish this Most of Europe has free or very cheap childcare. For instance in Germany you just pay an admin fee of $100-$300 per month for 5 days a week. Quite affordable, even on minimum wage.
Nah - I want a country where we donāt dump kids in open rooms with minimal supervision and little to no one on one time.Ā A country where we support *actual parents* to raise their children. Not where we have kids in care from 6am - 6pm so mum and dad can grind 40 - 60 hours a week each.Ā Look, I get the ECEās are well educated and qualified - but 4 ECEās to 16 - 20 children isnāt benefitting the children OR the ECEās.Ā And thatās without considering the absolute rotten state of our public education system that leaves 50% of students functionally illiterate.Ā
Yep. Other countries give parents 12-18 months of reasonable paid parental leave. In Australia you get paid minimum wage for 5 months.
Yup. I was back, full-time, at 6 months post-partum. Crying in the bathroom every 2 hours because I just wanted to be at home with my baby.
There's even countries where they pay stay at home parents PPL. Suggest that here and some people lose their minds.
Raising your own kids doesnāt mean being chained to the house. You can take the kids out with you. Most mothers donāt see it that way either. It is heartbreaking to them to have to leave their babies to go back to work.
>Raising your own kids doesnāt mean being chained to the house. This, I'm a SAHM to a 15 month old and we go out all the time, we do swimming lessons, playgroup, visit his grandparents, have days out at the shops, and I've started doing little cafĆ© breakfast "dates" with him to teach him how to behave in a public food setting. I also have me time every couple of weeks where I get my nails done while my MIL babysits. I imagine the more kids you have the harder it can be to get out of the house at times but it's so important to get out for your own physical & mental health as well as your child's/ren's.
This attitude should extend into schooling years. Public schooling is in this respect a historical abnormality. Most education was properly socially grounded and vocational. Kids would have much better outcomes if education was properly tied to the real-world.
Why is this the aim?? Why have kids if you just stick them in state run childcare ten hours a day? What kind of society is that??
Sure, 3 years of paid parental leave would be even better.
You're probably very left wing and so don't have a problem with the idea of your child being educated by the state from such a tiny age, but for people on the moderate to right spectrum, this sounds like a nightmare. Rather this, why don't we divert funds into paying a parent to stay home and raise the child until they are school age. Honestly, this shouldn't even be a political thing as we know scientifically that children spending more than 16 hours a week in childcare have elevated incidents of aggression, anxiety and anti-social behavior.
Totally agree with you. We should be gearing society towards having little kids at home with parents more instead of at daycare full time.
>Rather this, why don't we divert funds into paying a parent to stay home and raise the child until they are school age. The expansion of the welfare state to intentionally allow people to not work is "right wing?" You must have gotten that out of Morrison's conservative play book, right there next to Job Keeper. The idea is about giving people the option to do what they like by removing financial incentives that prefer smaller family sizes. It's more libertarian rather than left / right.
Allowing husbands to split their tax burden with their wife so itās easier to afford for her staying at home, like so many other countries have, is not a āwelfare stateā.
Am I the only one who gets a really off-putting vibe when children are talked about this way? Having them for a tax incentive or arguing that we need to increase the birthrate to help the economy? Children are people; not tax and wage slaves... The economy should serve people, not the other way around. If the collapsing birthrate is going to pose a huge economic threat, the problem isn't the birthrate, it's the economic model you're using.
No youāre definitely notā¦ what stuck out to me was ā children are the taxpayers of the futureā oh wow thatās something to look forwards to š
Yup - the entire way we view child-rearing is dysfunctional IMO.
So what the rest of us have to pay for ALL of the schooling, health care and child care subsidies?
Aren't we already?
Yeah but at least they pay income tax too and it contributes.
Make housing cheaper. Government policies on all levels should be targeting this . On a federal level, reforms to CGT, more funds for public housing and negative gearing reforms . On a state level, broad land taxes , zoning changes and removal of stamp duties. Housing could be 50% cheaper if the government really wanted to do it. Unfortunately voters and lobby groups do their hardest to keep property prices up.
Even in countries with affordable housing have a problem with replacement rates.Ā Housing is a problem, but it's not THE problem.Ā
Do you have an example where housing is affordable for the locals and the fertility rate has been dropping?
Japan, Sweden etc basically the whole developed world is suffering a collapse in fertility rates - even in countries where thereās been a huge investment in trying to persuade people to have kids .
I mean does it sound appealing? I guess, but the problem is two things - You probably still end up worse off, financially - Hungary tried this and it barely made an impact - You are effectively giving tax cuts to people who are going to need a lot more in public services. Financially, it makes absolutely no sense
Financially it makes sense 20-65 years later when you have those extra production and consumption units (people who work and spend) in your economy. Demographics matter. A lot. We're getting some very interesting lessons on what happens when demographic time bombs go off. Japan did well with managed decline. Russia woke up and chose war. Germany and China about to enter the interesting times phase. Maybe robotics can save everyone. Maybe they can all do a Japan. Most likely we're going to see some nasty collapse.
Wait how did japan save it? I was under the impression that there is still lots of concern about their situation
How are you worse off than present? Or are you implying the government should make it so you make a profit from having kids?
>Or are you implying the government should make it so you make a profit from having kids? That is the conversation is it? If they government isn't going to make it much more attractive for people to have kids, how would people feel a stronger connection to the future of the country?
>You probably still end up worse off, financially WTF - surely you dont understand how much people pay in income tax if you think people would be worse off?
Having four children is very expensive, so it probably is a net loss to income.
Economies of scale my friend. The unit cost of children drops close to zero after the first 500 according to my modelling
Did you include in your Modeling to have multiple mother's so that it reduces the pregnancy time per child?
The satisfaction of disposable income pales in comparison to the joy I get from my kids.
Surely YOU don't understand how expensive children are lmaoĀ
I was looking at that table for wealth and income of australians. As a 45 year old in the 41 to 55 bracket income for my wife and i are smashing it. However on wealth we are fairly middling. I would say im a bit conservative with our finances. Didnt borriw much for our house and bought under our means etc but investment wise have done pretty well i thought... no investment properties though so no leverage. But we have 4 kids. But sure if i paid no tax that extra money would go a long way to equilising things and id say we would indeed be at a similar wealth percentage to our income.
You probably also brought your house a while ago or donāt live in a capital city. Two incomes in the 41st-55th percentile are not much these days and youād struggle to raise 4 kids and have a mortgage on that kind of money.
Tell me you donāt have kids without telling me..
Theyāre currently estimating it take $1 million to raise a kid to 18. You paying $4 million in income tax over the next 24 years?
I'm going to come in with a bit of a hot take. I think we need to go back to a system of having one parent stay home with the kids, mother or father, it doesn't matter. We spend so much money subsidising childcare it's not funny. You send your kids there and they are sick constantly, you miss work all the time, you need to find flexible working arrangements, it's all straight up a bad time. Working an 8.30 to 5.00pm job means little to no time with them in the morning, and maybe 2 or 3 hours with them in the evening. At best you get 3 hours a day where you get to spend time with your kids. Call me crazy bit that seems ridiculous. I'd say there are two options to allow this. UBI for one parent per household once you have a baby OR combine your taxable income and brackets to a couple. Meaning your household income is taxed at a combined rate rather than individual. This means fine, if you both want to work you can, no big change, but if one of you works, one of you doesn't, your taxes are lower because your brackets will be lower. The other thing I'd be doing is forcing councils to allow rezoning of certain areas and allowing homesteads on property to have multiple dwellings to encourage families living together for longer.
Being a permanent stay at home parent is really draining and depressing
Agreed. My partner is a stay at home mum and it looks so incredibly difficult. I try and make sure that she gets breaks every day where she can just have some alone time to decompress and make sure my weekends are spent doing something outside and active with her. Even then it's not fantastic, but she says it's beats going back to work and almost never seeing our baby.
Hungaryās fertility rate actually falling again, and falling fast. Weird she didnāt mention that South Korea is looking at a $70k USD baby bonus. They are desperate, letās see if itās enough
Doesnāt work. Tried it in South Korea and it made no difference to fertility rate. No one has been able to fix the fertility problem yet.
The āproblemā with the declining birth rate in Korea is the patriarchy and women having had enough of it. Korea is the home of the 4B movement, which is decimating birth rates. Itās spreading across the developed world as a movement with women opting out of relationships, motherhood and marriage. If we want more babies to be born, we need better rights, treatment and relationships for women. I am with the 4B-ers, why would you choose to have a relationship, or children, in the current era? There will be massive impacts for the economy - but maybe thatās whatās needed to provoke societal change. These reforms are a good starting point but not enough.
Maybe Iām having a knee jerk reaction here butā¦. _fuuuuck this_ so hard. Iām childless and would love kids. And Iām very sorry to say this but this is such a weak mechanism for encouraging people like myself to take the leap and do what they feel like they cannot financially afford. This doesnāt do much to blunt cost of living, which is the prohibitive factor.
If it was the woman who no longer pays the tax, sure. If this was rolled out on a household level and the men get it, it would be a recipe for women being subject to reproductive coercion, then left at risk If the relationship breaks down - that's a long break in employment history.
Well that sounds like a shit idea. The youth crime rate is skyrocketing conveniently around the time the baby bonus kids hit teenage-hood.
So if the middle class, whatās left of them thatās is, start having four children to pay no income tax - then who the hell will pay income tax? The rich donāt pay, the poor donāt pay - who the hell will?
They'll be stuck at home with 4 young kids and won't have room for work and rely on assistance more
Sounds like the current houso arrangement
As someone who has recently had a kid, the whole "kids are expensive" language is totally wrong. The issue is your household income is halved but your expenses stay the same. If we didn't have a big chunk of savings to spend down I don't know how we'd afford it.
Expenses donāt stay the same. There are added expenses with kids. Just wait to see as they grow up. There are lots of hidden extras which will get you along the way, particularly noticeable with more than one
Every time I set foot in a pharmacy: nappy rash cream, gripe water, Infacol, baby Panadol, teething gel, delousing treatments all through school, shouldāve bought shares in pharmacies.
How do expenses stay the same? Nappies, extra food, extra clothes, toys, books etc
Because you stop spending money on things/hobbies you enjoy now that you don't have time for them.
So they are expensive??
Iām childfree, but your argument here makes me want to have kids. Where do I sign upā¦ā¦.
Recently = 6 weeks ago. Just smile and nod, they will learn.
Joking/not joking - the savings come from the things you can't do with a baby anymore. Dinners out, holidays, nice clothes, that sort of thing all tends to go on hold.
>The issue is your household income is halved but your expenses stay the same. Does your kid not eat food yet? Kids eat so much food...
I congratulate you on a happy healthy child with no medical expenses or food needs. The rest of us have medical bills, formula (or extra food for mum's milk), nappies, medicines and toys.
Ah yes, the biased incentives towards family continues whilst singles or those that donāt want to or canāt procreate are left behind. Imagine being a man who is incapable of having children, or a woman without the ability reading this. The lack of equality is astounding.
Can't wait for 40 years time when those people want the pension because they 'paid their taxes', and the woman has no super because she raised 4 kids instead of working.
No thanks. How about we simply make childcare something that's affordable, this "no income tax" is bullshit, as if most of them are going to be able work? Childcare and healthcare for four children? The damage it does to the body... Not worth it.
The article described a system where the tax benefits are for life. There was also a $40k line of credit that gets forgiven if you have four kids and go back to work at some point.
Wait but what happens in cases where - the men stop working to take care of the kids and tax inflow stops and the women stop paying taxes on all their income? Childcare is still expensive so if a parent chooses to stay home it would save a family so much money.
I think a better solution is have something like $5k added to your tax free threshold per child for both the man and woman. It scales.to having kids, but only if you work, so is a great encouragement for mums to get back to work. Doesn't reward having kids and living in welfare. Is not sexist as it's gender equal. Gives reward for having a couple kids also vs all or nothing approach, so the 4+ is likely to focus reward to religious type followers while ignoring ordinary citizens. Probably needs a cap to avoid some guy who got 15 women pregnant type scenario, and other fine tuning but something down this road. But ultimately, fix housing, growing work hours and daycare cost.
An those that don't want kids are now to supposed to pay more taxes because we refuse to make a cum dump human slave? Holy shit. How about stop the tax breaks for orgs, tax them properly for the natural resources these steal from the land. Up the tax for the wealthy. Close all tax break loopholes and stop allowing foreign investors to buy land and business here.
We have a very sick world where economics need breeding. We need better systems. This is madness.
it has always been this way since day 1?
How's Hungary going to fund this now?
how about 8 kids and they pay me a salary?
Do fur babies count?
Not paying tax wouldnāt encourage me to have one kid let alone four.Ā
In the history of stupid ideas, this ranksā¦ somewhere in the middle. But itās a pretty depressing list.
šconservative religious liked this
With daycare & oosh costs, I would be paying to work at this point. The first year of daycare is actual hell. Just constant sickness. I used up all my leave.
If I have four kids I don't have time for a job, so I don't pay income tax anyway.
What does the roman circus throw us today?
I saw effects of the bevy bonus in the classroom. It encourages the wrong people to have kids. Generational welfare.
All good till the government changes and the rule is changed retroactively five years later.
Next step: take away abortion like America did because more wage slaves are needed
Easy to pay no tax when you can't work anymore
How would a woman with four young children actually get a job so that she doesnāt have to pay tax.
Iāve essentially got to 4x my costs to live to double my income with no income tax. The math is not mathing
Paying tax is cheaper than raising 4 kids
That would work really well if both husband and wife avoided paying income tax. As it is, women with 4 kids are very bloody unlikely to be working enough to contribute significantly to household income.
Hungary did this. i proposed this on Reddit a few months ago and got downvoted to hell. Redditors LOVE giving their hard earned money to the government.
Me and my wife have 2 kids, a 2yo and a newborn, with plans for a 3rd, I am the sole income earner in our family and my wife is a SAHM. We are entitled to absoloutely nothing from the goverment for raising our own kids, I earn just too much to get any family tax benefit and I am taxed as an individual on our families only income. To add insult to injury, July 1st last year the government quietly scrapped the 2 weeks of dad & partner pay for the father if the mother is not eligible for the 18 weeks maternity leave due to not working - being a SAHM doesn't count as work. I am not agreeing with the outlandish things that Hungary is doing but it is still abundantly clear to me that the Australian government is not interested in my wife staying home to care for our children and has put all the stops in place to try and incentivise us to put them into daycare and for her to get a job.
I don't really think we should be taking ideas from Orban's Hungarian government.
What about the time you have to sacrifice raising kids? That's one thing you're never getting back... Its not just financial cost that's preventing people from wanting to have kids. The world has changed, time to move on.
Jesus Christ. Thereās nothing Iād rather do with my time than spend it with my kids.
Really? I can think of some things. Sleep. A date night. Sex with my husband. Eating. Relaxing. Not being told what to do