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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Here's my proposal:

10% of what a kid pays in income taxes instead goes to their parents*. Kids can opt out of the program** and just pay regular taxes instead if the want to.

This aligns all incentives pretty well. There's a degree of luck in the program but it doesn't look like the kind of luck people dislike or feel is unfair.

*payments are in proportion to time spent being primary custodian during ages 0-17, to handle adoptees, strange family situations and avoid an adult-adoption loophole.

**opt-out is granular, e.g. you can chose to opt out your dad but not your mom.

That doesn't help at all. People need the money when the kids are kids, not when they have grown up to be tax payers.

If you anticipate future income but need cash now, maybe there could be a bank where you could go to borrow against your projected future income.

Isn't that every bank?

I think the purpose of this program isn't to fund the parents, but rather to provide incentives to the parents to raise their kids as if they love them instead of as if they're meal tickets. I'm skeptical this would be at all effective, partially since receiving money from one's kids in the future seems like a relatively low incentive compared to other factors when it comes to how one treats one's kids. Also, parents most likely to treat their kids in a way that would make their kids prefer to give taxes to the government instead of them also seem likely to have higher time preference and thus less likely to be moved by such a policy.

See also The Unincorporated Man.

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