The issue of people collecting SS/Medicare even though they didn't have the children necessary to pay for it is a real one. However, I think we can all agree that there is a 0% chance anyones benefits are getting cut. And even if there were, the feedback mechanism of "40 years from now you might not get Social Security" probably isn't going to prompt a lot of births.
It makes more sense to reduce/refund payroll taxes to parents today. This will necessitate higher taxes on non-parents if you want to balance the budget, but it's fair. If non-parents provide adequate financial assistance for parents, we can all say we did our fair share and there is no free riding.
The feedback mechanism is also a lot clearer and immediate.
I would propose we just take Line 3 of your W2 (wages applicable to SS) and multiply is by X% per child. We could get cute varying it by age or whatever, but let's just keep it simple for a blog comment. This would scale with income, provide incentives for work, provide incentive for marriage, and overall just be fairer.
I personally think we should raise enough taxes for X% to be significant, perhaps 4x as much for the median family as they receive today from the CTC. Back of the envelope permanent repeal of SALT, Mortgage Interest, and applying SS taxes beyond $400k in income ought to be enough when combined with current CTC funding.
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The issue of people collecting SS/Medicare even though they didn't have the children necessary to pay for it is a real one. However, I think we can all agree that there is a 0% chance anyones benefits are getting cut. And even if there were, the feedback mechanism of "40 years from now you might not get Social Security" probably isn't going to prompt a lot of births.
It makes more sense to reduce/refund payroll taxes to parents today. This will necessitate higher taxes on non-parents if you want to balance the budget, but it's fair. If non-parents provide adequate financial assistance for parents, we can all say we did our fair share and there is no free riding.
The feedback mechanism is also a lot clearer and immediate.
I would propose we just take Line 3 of your W2 (wages applicable to SS) and multiply is by X% per child. We could get cute varying it by age or whatever, but let's just keep it simple for a blog comment. This would scale with income, provide incentives for work, provide incentive for marriage, and overall just be fairer.
I personally think we should raise enough taxes for X% to be significant, perhaps 4x as much for the median family as they receive today from the CTC. Back of the envelope permanent repeal of SALT, Mortgage Interest, and applying SS taxes beyond $400k in income ought to be enough when combined with current CTC funding.
Negative income tax for parents is probably the best pronatal policy