Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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I’m not too worried about dysgenic effects at this juncture, we have so little children that I’d take even lower class stock. Besides ,such subventions already exist in a similar form with dysgenic effect, in germany we have ‘children’s money’, which is at 255 euros/month/kid for the poorest (297 if you work), then you get the same in tax credit as you go up in income.
Of course, most of those subventions are officially justified on the grounds that every child should have a “minimum” to live on, which some courts and left-wingers keep increasing like they do every other minimum. And when the right’s at the helm, they increase it for more natalist and family values reasons.
So it’s hard to get a big part of that into a randomized payout, but it kind of ruins the bonus psychological effect of gambling if it’s just tax credits over years.
What I want to do is psychologically trick people (the ultimate decision lies with women) into having kids. Not pay them the full cost, and even less enormous sums in tax credits so that rich women in banking and medicine who understand opportunity costs have children, just cheaply manipulate them for cents on the dollar.
(I’m trying to keep this fun for the thread’s sake, but I can’t help veering into the culture war, broadly defined.)
Side-note:
You could say the lower class are true risk-takers, mavericks and entrepreneurs, not scared bean counters like the middle class who insure everything and buy bonds despite having a stable job.
And yet, usually less risk aversion is correlated with higher economic status:
Although I’ve also read that it’s U-shaped, with the middle class most risk averse, like the cliché above. In that perspective, it’s likely that a randomized bonus has a stronger positive effect than a fixed sum, ie more bang for your buck, also and especially for the rich.
I was discussing the, imo, incoherent, common view of risk a few days ago. I don’t think you can call the risk averse “those with a modicum of future time orientation” – The main distinction between losers and winners in this game is: how much are they willing to pay for their risk aversion, or for their risk taking? Buying insurance or a lottery ticket both make you a sucker, of opposite risk aversions.
No thanks, I wouldn't wish this on any country, including Germany. If you're already in a hole, stop digging.
I'm not. Hence my wording of "The payout over five years has the added benefit of selecting for those with a modicum of future time orientation" to separate future time orientation from risk aversion.
I explicitly was discussing relative negative risk aversion (i.e., positive risk-seeking) and not just merely low or high risk aversion. Although come to think of it (even assuming no positive risk-seeking), I'd prefer the society I live in to have high rather than low risk aversion, for all else equal it would increase the expected returns of my portfolio into which I'm still contributing.
As a side note, the Frontiers family of journals has a reputation for being pay-to-play and shady, even by the standards or "standards" of the field of psychology. Possibly there are diamonds in the rough when it comes to any individual paper, but in general when submitting to Frontiers, academics have to weigh the costs/benefits of adding a publication (and any citations that may result) to their CV versus the Scarlet Letter of having a (or an additional) Frontiers publication.
Germany's problems are not dysgenic fertility. They are: low fertility, and terrible immigration policy. Why does the alt right conflate everything together? It does not matter that the lower class is reproducing more than the higher class if both are not at replacement level. Dysgenic fertility is a first world problem, so to speak – our problems are far more serious than dysgenic fertility. It’s like worrying about disproportionate drowning in the desert.
Why would all else be equal in high risk aversion world? It’d be a wasteland. People would almost never change jobs, or create companies. Capital would be far less productive, it’d be all tied up in swiss bonds. It’s true as the one-eyed in the land of the blind you would personally do very well. Hell, you could even become the world’s richest man by exploiting all the riskophobes, ie selling insurance (buffett reference).
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