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Notes -
Italy’s birth rate is decreasing further to 1,2:
https://archive.is/T6thJ
The article notes that Meloni is herself a single child, but fails to mention that she also only has a single daughter. Still the low birth rate is a core issue for her and her right-wing coalition, but as in leftwing governments elsewhere they can’t find policies to reverse course.
I will solve the childlessness problem hypothetically (amounts and currencies can of course be adapted to a country):
65% (deductible) federal income tax for all income over $50,000 for anyone over 30 with fewer than one child. The tax drops by 15% per child for the first three children, with historic deductions so that people who still have 3 kids but do so late can claw back some of what they paid. Child deductions only available to couples married at (or within six months of) birth.
Capital gains tax is doubled for those over 35 with fewer than two children, normal above. Normal rate only available to married or widowed people.
Death/estate tax for childless people is 60% marginal on estates over $1m in net worth, falling by 20% and rising in threshold by $2m for each child until the fourth.
75% of roles on boards of directors must go to married parents of at least two children. 50% must go to married parents of at least three children. The same applies to Congressmen and women and to senior positions / positions of responsibility in all regulated industries, and to all cabinet positions in the executive. 90% of senior positions in the military, state department and justice department must be occupied by parents of at least two children.
Divorce comes with a 10-year additional tax penalty except in cases of (convicted) domestic violence or other abuse (in which case all marital benefits can continue for the victim).
To qualify for any tax credits, a movie or television production must show or imply that at least 65% of characters with more than 10 minutes of screen-time described or implied as over the age of 27 have children. The same, in real life, applies to cast members with the same screen time threshold.
Entry to any selective schools (specialized high schools, gifted programs etc) requires a child to have at least one sibling. Priority is given to those with two or more siblings.
For every child after and including the third under the age of 18, graduates of four-year college degrees can receive $8,000 per year in student debt forgiven. This stacks for married couples where both partners have student debt, and for graduates of medical schools or STEM programs at top-50 (US News) universities, it rises by an additional 50%, meaning that some PMC professional couples could have hundreds of thousands of dollars of college debt completely wiped out, never paying anything, if they have three or more children. (Two doctors with 4 kids under 18 would see $48,000 per year of college debt wiped off).
A 10% state levy on home sales by childless adults over 30 funds mortgage subsidies for married parents of three or more children on a variable basis depending on the money raised the previous year. Married parents of 2 or more children who have had a child within the last 48 months pay no capital tax on primary home sales.
White House, senate and congressional internships, state-funded scholarships, Supreme Court clerkships and other prestigious positions for young people are limited to those with at least one sibling. A core part of pushing up birthrates is convincing parents of only children to have another, so it has to be stigmatized.
For constitutional reasons, exemption from some policies is available for those “constitutionally incapable” of having children. These exemptions must be filed for with a $10,000 processing fee, do not apply to inability to bear children related to any decisions taken by the individual (eg. gender transition, voluntary castration) above the age of federal criminal responsibility (12), or to psychological or material conditions like ‘asexuality’ or just being ugly. All decisions have to be approved unanimously by a panel appointed 50% by congressional republicans and 50% by congressional democrats. The presumption is that in cases of genuine medical infertility that is likely from childhood (ie not discovered later in life) the state will know about it years before any exemption may be needed.
I am sure that Canada would love for the US to adopt this policy. Are you prepared to go full Walter Ulbrecht to make it stick?
I am totally sure that knocking down the Chesterton's Fence of no-fault divorce will totally not have any negative side effects. Not.
Sure, a few people might get stuck in an abusive relationship because they can not prove to the standards of criminal justice that their partner is abusing them. But really serves them for marrying the wrong person, right?
And a few others might have a huge incentive to frame their partner for abuse to out of the divorce tax.
And I am sure that little Timmy will have a great intact family home if his parents are forced to stay together by economic necessity. Yes, perhaps there might be a lot of yelling, fighting and weaponizing kids, and perhaps both of his parents will bring their boyfriends/girlfriends home, but at least he will not be scarred for life by having to endure a divorce.
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If you pass all these laws by some miracle, here is my business idea:
The company aims to provide tax benefits for people who are disinclined to raise children. For maximum benefits, unmarried men and women are sorted by state and will marry (potentially over zoom) in a minimal civil ceremony. Subsequently, a fertility clinic will be create a number of embryos from the germ lines of the couple, three of which will be implanted in surrogates in Mexico. After the births, the 'couple' will become the legal guardians of the children, getting full tax credits. As the parents, it is their legal right to task others with helping them to raise their kids, so they can just pay a Mexican orphanage to raise them. When they come of age, they will be US citizens who may or may not be eager to come work in the US. The parents pay the costs for the surrogates and however much it costs to raise 1.5 kid in rural Mexico.
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Seriously, if you want to lower the costs of having a child to zero, I am ok with that. If you want to specifically incentive people who earn well to have kids (perhaps because you expect that by nature or nurture, their kids are more likely to be productive members of society) by also compensating them for lost earnings, I am okay with it.
But using tax cuts to bribe or bully people into having more kids feels deeply wrong. I believe that kids deserve parents who actually want to have them instead of parents who put up with them as an unfortunate side effect of some tax optimization scheme.
No-fault divorce isn't a Chesterton's fence, it's what we got by knocking down the Chesterton's fence of requiring grounds.
We've had it since the 1960s. Please recalibrate what are proposed radical changes to long established norms.
No-fault divorce still loses on long enough time-frames.
That's an easy assertion to make. But I have no reason to think that is better than the previous norm of a married couple working together to contrive a fake at-fault divorce.
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