Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Procreating Taxpayers

Few topics get people as riled up as fertility and the appropriateness of large families in this day and age. Here is an article about the Duggars - who are expecting child number 19.

Sometimes it's illustrative to read the comments left by readers. This article is a case in point. It's always amazing to see how people's blind rage and prejudice sometimes conspire to override even simple logic.

For example, GK from Maryland writes:

"Two kids are enough to replace a woman and her man when they die. You're crazy if you go for more, and it costs taxpayers a fortune. I have yet to hear about a huge family that also comes from wealth."

Well, given the fact that the Duggar family is self-sufficient, not in debt, and not on any government assistance, it seems that GK's last assertion is wanting.

But the really bizarre leap (or more accurately, lapse) of logic involves the comment about "taxpayers." The argument is that people having large families are bad for the economy as it costs "the taxpayers." But consider the economic issue we now have, where retirees are on the rise. In concert with this demand on the system's resources, employed people, who, in our idiotic mandatory ponzi scheme known by the Orwellian name of "Social Security," are the people paying the pensions of the current retirees, happen to be on the decrease. More people receiving money, less people providing money.

In other words, under the current Big Government paradigm, our economy needs bigger, not smaller, families. I suspect this is why politicians of both parties are winking at illegal immigration. Someone has to make up for the "contraception deficit" that is drastically limiting the amount of money the same politicians have at their disposal to distribute to retirees.

Given this person's bias against reproduction, and his or her indignation on behalf of the "taxpayers," one simply has to ask: "Just where do the "taxpayers" come from in the first place?"

Does G.K. need someone to explain the "birds and the bees" to him or her in addition to Economics 101?

4 comments:

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

See, this is another example of where people don't understand even basic capitalism - you want to find ways to expand the market. Lots of kids is one way of expanding the market. Indeed, think of what our economy would be doing with an extra 30-50 million consumers. . . if we hadn't aborted them.

Peter said...

Great looking family. Wonderful.

Jonathan said...

I'm still glad our 3 come with tax credits! Well, maybe at least for this year before that goes away and we start paying more taxes for kids. Hey, if they can do it to soda pop....

Matthias Flacius said...

More power to them. I don't know how anyone would deal with that many kids but they make it work. Their website is interesting.

We will need a wave of immigrants to pay for all the Baby Boomers' retirement.

FH, did you opt out of "Social Security"? I would if I could.