Jean Marie, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
In the Dutch parliament there was commotion today because it happens to be the case that parents can apply for some EXTRA day-care allowances (state subsidized) when they want to go on holiday WITHOUT their children. As a matter of fact: the tax department explicitly draws their attention to this fact.
Here is a bit more information (in Dutch).
Call me a socialist all you like, but I think that’s a good idea. It increases the incentives to have children – and presumably the Netherlands, like most Western European countries, have too few of them born to support the pension system (externalities!). I’m up for it!
Wouldn’t it be even better to stop subsidizing (or providing for free) contraception if you want to encourage more kids? Why have a policy to counteract your policy?
What’s the question?
HC
The idea of subsidizing the creation of consciousness with tax-payers money is criminal. Not surprisingly, petty nationalists and racists of all sorts engage in it. We don’t “need” more people to “support” older people. We are individuals that plan our own lives as we please. Truly one of the more disgusting things government does: influence procreation through redistribution.
Distortions one way or the other with respect to children aren’t desirable because I don’t see a population size problem in developed countries. As a matter of note, most have barely positive, stagnant, or slightly negative population growth.
Technological growth is manifesting itself in higher automation processes and broader machine intelligence. The reliance on purely human intellectual capital can/is/likely will be offloaded to these non-biological platforms, thusly reducing our primary dependency on human minds as a driver of GDP growth (per capita and total).
This is well covered by Kurzweil and others, to more or less optimistic degrees.
The link to the Dutch information is broken. If you use this version: http://www.geencommentaar.nl/parlando/ you can post links that do work. Unfortunately, I could not locate the information you wanted to link to.
Is there some kind of reciprocal agreement on this?
Even better, do you have a campaign in mind to get all OECD countries with the programme?
Trevor is right. Chirac governmnet understood taht and tried to ban condoms ads
“they want to go on holiday WITHOUT their children”
That would do more to save the instution of marriage than banning Gay marriage.
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I need more the information
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