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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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Everyone claims their punitive, coercive, redistributive tax is somehow more fitting than the ones they don't like.

Is military spending punitive and coercive?

You're not proposing to tax the childless to pay for their own retirements [...] you're straight up proposing to tax them to pay for the other people's children.

These are the same thing. The parent's children are who will perform labor necessary for childless retirement. I'm not saying people should subsidize the life choices of people who selfishly want to be parents, I'm saying in your own self interest you need them to be parents, it's a bargain for your future self to not have to live in a demographically collapsed society just like funding the military is a bargain for your future self to not have to live in a conquered society.

Of course the effect this can have is limited; as with any sin tax, if it actually reduces the sin it also reduces the tax base.

I'm not framing this as a Pigouvian tax, but if you insist it is one then to the degree it shrinks the subsidy it is a pareto improvement, not a self defeat.

These are the same thing. The parent's children are who will perform labor necessary for childless retirement.

They certainly are not the same thing. The children will naturally expect to be paid for the labor they do for the retirees (childless and otherwise). You're proposing to tax childless people to pay the parents of those children, then charge them again for the labor. Two different charges.

The market wage compensates the child. It doesn't compensate the parent for the investment. It's like a communist who sees a laborer use an expensive machine to turn $1 worth of materials into $2 worth of finished goods and demands $1 is the fair compensation. Or bemoaning that when shipping a package you must pay both for the road out of your taxes and pay the delivery company to move the package over the road. They're different payments for different services rendered, both of which are necessary for the end result.

Just have most of someone's FICA be earmarked to their parents. It shifts the framing from punitive to a benefit. More or less eliminate Social Security for people who don't have kids (maybe give them a couple hundred of dollars a month or so); if you don't have kids, you have more opportunity to earn income anyway, so you don't have an excuse not to have saved for retirement.

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