We have this already. It’s called dependant deduction.
Taking a page from Putin’s playbook. Anything but to alleviate the cost of living crisis, which is the main reason for people not having children. It is also a thinly veiled attempt to reassert dominance on women.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, can convince me to have a child.
And air fryers are the new plants.
He understood us.
What if we trapped JD Vance in the body of an immortal baby you could endlessly neglect?
I’d like evidence he isn’t currently an immortal baby.
He sure is an immoral one.
He is clearly going for the “immortal baby” look, I’ll give you that, but it is obvious he is just a poser and not a real immortal baby.
JD is no Danny Devito.
Real immortal babies emerge naked from couches, fake ones try to nakedly penetrate into them.
I would be willing to test the immortal claim with a sledgehammer
See, I’d still have to see, hear, smell the thing.
There is no element of a child under the age of say 10 that I enjoy at all.
That horrible shriek they make, happy or sad sounds exactly the same to me, makes my skin crawl.
No babies, not ever. Death before diapers!
The only thing I like about kids is I can take them to whatever goofy place I want and get them to give it a shot. Got my nephew and niece hooked on hotpot and dumplings.
Being an uncle kicks ass. Would I want kids of my own though? Questionable.
This isn’t how you get me to have a kid. This is how you get me to dodge taxes.
Off to gulag, then.
Oh well that’s happening regardless.
Then we may cross paths again.
Sex gulag?
Yeah, I’ll just start claiming nonexistent dependants. Or I’ll start claiming my pets as my children on all legal documents.
Probably isn’t that hard to get forgeries of all sorts of documentation like birth certificates, etc.
You probably don’t even have to try very hard. My cat, which I had when I was a kid and died of old age decades ago, regularly gets preapproved credit card offers sent to my father’s house. Still.
Yes, literally a cat. Like, furry, pointy ears, tail, and meow?
I have to think it would be fairly trivial if I put my mind to it and had larceny in my heart to eventually build up enough documentation to get at least some state entities to believe my dead cat is actually a living human, and then do any old thing with that identity.
I may be misremembering… because we’re in the process of “correcting” our history but:
Wasn’t “no taxation without representation” kinda a foundation on which this nation was formed? Just sayin’
Unless you live in a US territory or DC, you have representation.
Depending on where you live, “representation” means less than the paper it’s written on.
Do you oppose AI-powered surveillance in your local city? Golly, that’s swell and all, but they already made up their mind months ago! Everything else is just a formality, and they’re more than happy to make it as difficult as possible for you to be heard during public meetings.
This genuinely does parallel early american colonial plights surprisingly well. Also: I’m not sure if you picked that example intentionally - but I have to say it’s pretty topical ;) 📎
Argue against representative democracies, then. Claiming it doesn’t exist is just wrong, though.
Your comments have a certain vibe about them, don’t they?
They hold elections in Russia.
Based on your logic - I imagine they have a great deal of choice then, as well.
Breathe easy! I don’t expect a response:
Government is flawed in all forms and corruption can fundamentally prevent any flavor of it from working as intended.
There are infinite circular arguments that can spin up from nitpicking any obvious issues… available to anyone seeking the low hanging fruit. Your comments here do a fine job of providing examples.
“Vibes” are not evidence, and “Bad thing exists that claims to do good thing, so good thing must actually be bad!” is not a reasonable argument. I never claimed any democracy is perfect, or even suggested as much.
If you hate being “nitpicked” over your unfounded arguments, maybe don’t make them, then.
… and if you have something meaningful to add to a conversation or post: I’d suggest something more substantial than “Nuh, uh - prove me wrong” or some other equally low effort form of trolling. It’s practically textbook. At least attempt to mask it.
I digress.
Topically - I enjoy discussion. With that said: only one of us attempted to polarize an observation into a black and white topic. Curious. Vibes seem to check out.
“If you have an issue with the tea taxes please direct your concerns to your representative in the house of lords”
Did colonists get to vote on their representative every 2 years? No? Ok, not the same then.
It should be noted that the colonies did have their fair share of English apologists. Thank you for offering up an example that can be used in the present day.
While “ack-shu-ally” history does not repeat itself - it does tend to rhyme.
Feel free to explain how anything I’ve said qualifies as being an “apologist”.
Families and having dependents already gives you tax breaks, ergo not having kids already is taxing childlessness.
Ok. So let’s talk about the two scenarios here if you can’t afford kids.
-
You’re taxed for childlessness, likely at an amount above the cost of a child or two, to “encourage” you to have children. You are now unable to afford that tax and thus, risk jail.
-
You have a child when you can’t afford it to avoid the tax, and now have to bring up a child you cannot afford to raise in a government that actively doesn’t want to help you in any way.
In short. You’re fucked either way.
-
Counterpoint to JD:
I am autistic.
Surely you don’t want me generating more autists, right?
Don’t worry you’ll be “relocated” soon.
Well, if I go like a month without posting… I dunno, send a recon team to look for me on one of RFK Jr’s psychward/detox/farm labor camps.
Just don’t eat tylenol, apparently.
Right right, my stupid autism brain is still stuck in ‘reality’ where there is pretty strong genetic inheritance, a heritability component to autism.
Ok, so new instructions are… apparently… generate a child by some arcane means, natural or unnatural, BUT, under no circumstances allow the target of my impregnation powers to use any Tylenol for 9 months.
I phrase this as cringily as possible to convey the concept that this is an incel tax.
It is a tax on incels.
…The only way this could even theoretically work is if it was also paired with a uh, Nazi style Aryan broodmother / assigned wife type program.
So, I guess, get ready for that soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn
Somewhat of a sticking point:
The Nazis aborted pregnancies from the racially impure and those suspected to be born with a disability.
So… not quite sure how the theocrats will feel about that.
…Eat?
Yes. No. … Kind of.
Yeah, it has no nutritional value.
I can assure you this is directed at white able bodied “normies”
I’m a minority with a professional degree in a profession that has more job openings than candidates, especially in rural areas like JD had grown up in. I know in my heart he would deport me without question, regardless of if I were American born, to the homeland of my ancestors. I’d imagine he would find my humanist values quite disturbing.
They want an Aryan nation as Hitler envisioned it. They’re convinced it will be utopian. If not, it’ll at least allow them to deify themselves as the white people they’ve sold the “master race” lie to are loyal to them to the point of self immolation.
Yep.
This is for white incels.
All other hues and tones of incel can gtfo or die trying, or be made into literal slaves, one way or another.
Yeah.
Yep, that’s basically their plan.
Totally horrifying.
Would be neat if people uh… did something.
To resist that.
tell me when someone important to the fascist movement comes within 300 miles and we can start (don’t actually tell me that i fight with music not actual fighting) i’m not pulling an astronaut style road trip
tell me when someone important to the fascist movement comes within 300 miles and we can start (don’t actually tell me that i fight with music not actual fighting)
No see it’s fine as long as no Tylenol is taken during pregnancy
no worries your mom just popped a tylenol.
This sort of America-centric analysis neglects the fact that birth rates have also dropped to well below replacement in other countries with governments and cultures very different from those in the USA, and that neither expanding the welfare state nor attempting to restore traditional values has reversed this trend in the countries that tried that. Thus a discussion of either potential causes or potential solutions which focuses specifically on the USA is fundamentally incomplete.
potential solutions
Birth rates below replacement is the solution imo. It may not be wat the rich want, but I think a population of 8 billion is not sustainable.
Global population is still growing, I think I read it’s predicted to keep increasing into late mid century to around 11 billion before it plateaus and starts slowly falling.
The numbers get very optimistic from there will predictions of rebounds and other nonsense that is unlikely but the people claiming it will be long dead.
People who were raised as a single child are far more likely to only have one child so my bet is the population dwindles more quickly than these models indicate.
I agree that the answer to humanity’s most pressing issues is lowering our population, but don’t think it’s a non-issue.
The old keep aging out of the workforce, there’s not enough young to keep a viable tax base, utter collapse. Here’s where someone says tax the snot out of the rich. I’m down with that! But in a shrinking population, they won’t be rich long. Directly or indirectly, all of their money comes from us.
Right, so we’re all going to have to adopt some form of austerity, however, most of us are already down there. So I mean the sooner we scrap those yachts to build schools and homes the better
You say austerity, I say mass starvation. Depopulation is going to be an order of magnitude worse than, “Do with a little less.” And global warming may well accelerate all of that.
Hell ya brother I’m a farmer, you’re preaching to the choir. All my crops died of drought and blight this year.
Humanity is incapable of finding equilibrium with it’s environment. We are killing a myriad of species and destroying our own climate stability. This problem is exasperated by high population numbers. Lower birth rate is a good thing since it’s clear humanity refuses to adapt to its environment. Our greed is unsustainable, especially when coupled with these population numbers or higher.
This comment presupposes that “below replacement rate” is a problem in need of a solution.
Yes, in a few thousand years it might be a problem. However, population growth is a problem for the next few decades at least.
Ahh. Lebensborn. I should have made a bingo card with all the keywords of Nazi Germany. The Trump administration has it all. Censorship, GeStaPo, apartheit against minorities, Reichsparteitag, ignoring the law, using emergency laws to ursurp the rule, concentration camps…
No doubt tax credits for white blonde children.
When the communists got the same idea in Romania, it failed spectacularly, filling orphanages with abused orphans
Yeah, we kinda need to go the other way on this one. A tax deduction for anyone under the age of 30 who uses long-term birth control.
Stop paying taxes altogether, you say?
that’s how I read it…
How? It’s automatically deducted from my pay.
Small government in action.
I have two adopted kids, but no biological children. I had a vasectomy after the adoption was finalized. My wife and i have a theoretical decade left where she can (unsafely) carry a child. We do not want more children. Would I be fucked if this happened? What if you conceive but have miscarriages? Would you be punished for something outside your control?
The answer to all of these is probably “Yes, the cruelty is the point”
So basically all you single people are fucked. Tradcons are a blight on this planet
Losing the incel vote will for go well for them
You know who this punishes more than just childless heterosexuals?
That’s right. Couch fuckers. Unless his Chesterfield gets pregnant with an ottoman… 🤔
