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Theo
@theojaffee
This means for the US to return to 2.1 TFR, we need about 925,000 more births per year * $300k incentive per woman = $277.5B per year, similar to the budget of HUD, or about a tenth of the annual cost of Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid. Doable, if we had the will to do so.
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Robin Hanson
@robinhanson
"For transfers at birth to new mothers in America, for every $300k we spend, we should expect to get roughly one additional birth." x.com/TheZvi/status/…
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Ben Podgursky 🧬 👶
@bpodgursky
The challenge of course is that you can't on a practical level incentivize only the *marginal* births, the credit is far too large to structure as a cliff or even a phase-in.
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Grog Bogan
@GrogBogan
We need to be very careful about how we allocate these incentives or we're going to see TFR gains entirely from the most dysgenic subpopulations
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Al-khwarizmi's 7th cousin
@surelyagerbil
Not so fast guys: 1. Numbers are a bit large to assumes a flat supply curve. 2. There is likely to be a bit of a selection effect and other knock-ons here almost any way you do this... 3. Probably a ton of other issues not thinking about
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Love
@leadtheloomlove
Numbers are clear but miss the deeper truth: money can't buy meaning. Real solutions blend support systems, community care & cultural shifts. My friend Sarah in Minnesota chose parenthood because her workplace offered 2 years flexibility -
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Philip
@Philip_DT
Or we could just auction off green cards and and spend ~ $-30,000 for each additional member of the population
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David Holland
@DavidHolland
Financial incentives for out-of-wedlock births would be a catastrophe. Father's matter. We got an explosion of fatherless births in the 70s and 80s, and generational poverty/permanant underclass was the result. We need pro-natal AND pro-marriage policies and incentives.
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Political Guyentist
@poliguyentist
How true are the “facts" I’ve seen thrown around about illegal immigration (from Elon et al.) that it “costs the US $175B annually to house/support” yada yada. Presumably, most of this is incurred by the state and local govts for edu/healthcare. If that is indeed true, it would
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cubs2016
@booklov78
I wonder if paying more for the second kid, more than that for the 3rd would work. I’d probably have had one more but it financially wasn’t in the cards. And 3 college tuitions is a lot.
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aeon
@AeonCoin
There is no way you can identify the marginal "new births". You'd have to pay all women in the US giving birth which is 3.5 million per year, plus the added 925k, so around 4.5 million = $1.35 trillion per year.
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Prefix
@Polysticks
The numbers completely break down when you consider that people will start withholding children unless they are paid the incentive. Why should 1 woman get 300K and another 0? You would have to pay it it for every birth.
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Daniel Kaulmann
@dw692_DK
Better to just stop stealing from men (via taxes) to subsidize women who only become more picky in return. If women want to be supported by men they should have to marry them, not get the state to steal from them.
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Unpopular Consensus
@mal47873
Just as historically a lot of men didn’t have children, this is becoming the norm for women. Women will divide between worker bees and mother bees
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Buddy Redman
@Buddy_Redman
The unwarranted confidence in stupid ideas that’s been on display the past month confirms that most people are idiots, regardless of their political affiliation.
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Matt Story
@Matthewocono
Except the current social security + Medicare + Medicare budget is driving the deficit (largely). But agree. Massive pare back in the budget of all 3, replaced with the cash incentive, is do-able and would change the economy and culture for the better.
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Majorian
@MajorianRevival
You should not want to pay people to have kids. You should create financial breathing room so people who do want them can have a lot of them. Thereby genetically filtering your gene pool for it.
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Crémieux
@cremieuxrecueil
It's pretty simple: 1. If your cartel restricts entrance into a profession to keep prices high 2. The profession deserves to have its prices capped Associations like the AMA, ASA, ASRM, or whatever want #1 and don't want the government or insurers to say "no" (#2)
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Ryan Moulton
@moultano
Insurance companies are sin eaters for hospitals. They let hospitals maintain the image that they're righteous non profits and should also be allowed to charge whatever they like.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Ohhhh so people think the disease in the healthcare system is due to individual cackling bad villains and not due to layers of perverse incentives and backfiring regulations, I see
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