From: adric@access.digex.com (William Johnson)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,misc.legal,alt.abortion.inequity,alt.child-support,soc.men,soc.women
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal: Illegitimate-conception Tax
Date: 26 Jan 1993 22:21:24 -0500
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

You judgemental son of a .....  

In article <1993Jan21.160755.6249@rotag.mi.org> kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy) writes:
>In article <1jl8beINNf5m@mirror.digex.com> adric@access.digex.com (William Johnson) writes:
>>And those men who DON'T and WOULDN'T
>>skip out are not the ones who cause the problem.  
>
>What problem are you trying to address? The so-called "deadbeat dad" problem?
>That's not the problem the proposal addresses.

So you have some religious or other personal philosophical feeling as to 
the worth of marriage which we're all supposed to share?

>>Why tax someone who IS
>>going to keep the child, someone who DOESN'T need welfare, etc?  And why 
>>tax those who find out they made an oops and then get married?
>
>In order to give people an incentive to either a) practice more effective
>birth control, or b) get married BEFORE an "oops" occurs. Is there something
>wrong with trying to discourage illegitimate birth?

You are making a LOT of assumptions here, son.  First of all, why are you the
judge of morality?  Just because your own personal philosophy says that 
marriage should come before children, doesn't mean that's a fact.  I felt
you were trying to find a solution to a real problem, and just (IMO) misguided.
Now I see that the "problem" of which you speak isn't necessarily a problem.

What's wrong with illegitimate birth?  There are many people now who go out
SPECIFICALLY to have children when they aren't married.  Single mothers who
ARE prepared, DO what the children, and AREN'T going to go on welfare.

There are people like myself and my fiancee.  Our oops is NOT a bad thing.
In any way shape or form.  We are having a baby.  We knew it was a chance,
even using contraception.  And we got hit.  But since we planned to have 
children in the first place, I am offended that you feel somehow that there
is something wrong with this child.

>>[My story deleted]
>
>William, you are part of the so-called "irresponsible" segment of the 

According to you.  

>population who conceive a child out of wedlock, and decide to carry it to term.

You would prefer, perhaps, that we killed the child?  I am pro-choice, but
anti-abortion, as is my fiancee.  I prefer a woman to have her choice, but
for myself, I can't and won't kill a child.

>This is not a personal condemnation, just an observation. Your segment of the 
>population is a problem. You create children which are FAR more likely to need 
>welfare, FAR more likely to live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, FAR more 
>likely to get involved with drugs and crime, FAR less likely to complete their 
>education, FAR more likely to be unemployed, (at least, this is my 
>understanding, solid statistics to the contrary welcomed). None of these 
>things may apply to your family specifically, but they do apply to your segment.

You are so full of shit it's amazing.  You CAN'T judge specific cases based 
on general, and yet you are condemning SPECIFIC cases for what SOME do.  You 
claim this is not a personal condemnation, and yet your text DRIPS with 
condescension.  "My segment of the population is a problem".  What exactly is
my section, exactly?  I know quite a number of people who risk children.  
Many of whom have the strength not to terminate, at the same time the will
not to take welfare.  And the love to take care of the child so that he's
not part of any of the problems you mention.  And yet you condemn the entire
segment of the population because it disagrees with your judeo-christian 
view of marriage/children.

Are you a virgin?  If not, you are part of my section of the population.  The
only difference is that my contraception happened to fail.  Period.  To think
anything else makes you a hypocrite.

>The point of the proposal is to discourage the behavior of your segment, i.e.
>to discourage the practice of conceiving out of wedlock. Given all of the
>social ills that come from that behavior, can't you see why it can be viewed as
>a valid social policy decision? Sure, some innocent people such as yourself
>might get overtaxed. Taxes are far from a perfect social engineering tool.
>But, then again, maybe if the Tax existed, you wouldn't even be in the segment.
>You might have practiced more effective birth control, been (reversibly) 
>sterilized, or might have married sooner. No-one can know for sure.

My fiancee and I have discussed children many times.  And the biggest reason
we WERE trying to wait until after marriage was because of what our families
might think.  If I had known then what I know now about how the families would
react, this child might well have been intentional, knowing we were going to
be married, knowing we're both adult enough and responsible enough to take
care of the child, and do it on our own, without welfare.  We decided before
EVER HAVING SEX that if we conceived, we would keep the child, and had totally
thought out the results, probably at least as well as some married couples who
decide to start a family.

And another thing: you are confusing cause and effect.  There are a large 
percentage of single-parent children who end up on the down side of 
society.  There are also a large percentage of poor and inner-city folks
having children out of wedlock.  So, is the problem children out of wedlock,
or is it poor people having children?  (This is not a condemnation of poor
people, just an alternate possibility).

>>And explain to me again why it is you don't think women will just go back
>>to the old "back alley, totally secret, very deadly" form of abortion 
>>that once was so rampant?  The poorer especially.  I can see a poor but
>>honest couple knowing this tax would be just too much for them, opting for
>>a secret abortion, only to have it backfire and kill the mother as well.
>
>Since this is an income-graduated tax, poor women would have little to no 
>incentive to get themselves butchered in this way.

Yes, the poor, who are by and large the biggest of the problems you speak
of, will have very little tax to pay, and hence very little deterrent.  The
tax CAN'T be as small as you believe.  How can a small amount from n people
make up a large amount of payment TO n people?  I just don't see how you 
can feel that n children can be taken care of by 2*n parents and have anyone
pay any less than they would otherwise.  Your plan is FULL of holes, most of
which cause harm to people who are only the problem to someone who is so
biased towards the judeo-christian norm.

>By my calculations, those "few" would number maybe as much as 32 million
>taxpayers, if the proposal was implemented nationally. Given annual AFDC 
>payouts of approximately 20 $billion, this would NOT appear to be an 
>"unshoulderable" burden, even when the administrative overhead is added in.

Ok, so we average $625/year per person.  But you want to graduate it, so 
that poor folks, who are getting the benefits pay little.  People like me
and my fiancee would pay substantially more each.  Probably closer to $2000.
After taxes, that is more than a month's salary.  It would disable my ability
to buy a house, which I want to do for my child.  It would cause me problems
supporting my own child.  And why?  Because YOU feel there is something 
inately wrong with having children out of wedlock.

Another question: what about gay couples who want to raise a child?  Well, I
guess considering your philosophy, you probably don't approve of same-sex
couples anyway.  And your tax would hit them, because by definition, the 
genetic parents of the children would NOT be married.

>>That's great, but what about my case again?  I wouldn't *HAVE* any paternity
>>child support payments, because my fiancee and I are going to be married 
>>before the baby is born.  So instead of saving money on my child support 
>>payments (and I doubt your math here, by the way.  If each instance of a child
>>requires $n in child support, and that comes from n sources, then each 
>>person is still going to pay the same.  
>
>No, no, no. The tax only goes for the extra WELFARE costs. It doesn't directly
>substitute for paternity child support. For the vast majority of illegitimate-
>conceptions, the child probably won't go on welfare. So the costs are vastly
>reduced as well as being spread over more taxpayers.

So you are back to the fact that you are harming the ones who are NOT the
problem.  You want to tax those who AREN'T on welfare, and I would suspect
are likely also the ones who DO care for and love their children enough to 
keep them out of drugs and crime, because you feel marriage makes some huge
difference.  In spite of all the problems in marriages these days, and the
huge prevalence of divorces, you seem to think that the timing of the 
conception somehow makes a huge difference.

>>Ah, so someone like me, who as a professional will probably eventually make
>>a higher than national average income, will end up being bitten all the MORE.
>>Paying to raise TWO or even THREE children when I only have one.  Nice.
>
>At the risk of sounding snide, if a professional is smart enough to make all 
>that money, why aren't they smart enough to avoid the Tax, i.e. by marrying
>sooner, getting reversibly sterilized, practicing more effective birth control,
>or whatever?

You miss the point entirely:  *I AM NOT IRRESPONSIBLE!*.  *ANY* form of 
birth control can fail.  Reversible sterilization can fail.  Admittedly not
as often as some other forms, but then, a significant number of reversible
sterilizations end up NOT being successfully reversible.  So if you want to
have children EVENTUALLY, its' not a good option.

And so I and my fiancee talked.  A lot.  BEFORE we ever had sex, we decided
EXACTLY what we would do under any eventuality.  And we knew that we could
abide by what we had decided.  Why do you insist that it is somehow "smart"
to avoid conception out of wedlock?  What happens that is magical when two
people get married first?  With a 50% divorce rate, not bloody much.

>>Ah, but you see, my example is proof that birth control can fail.  
>
>But the point is that people can always practice BETTER birth control, getting
>sterilized if necessary. Or they can get married. That is what the proposal
>attempts to encourage.

I'll say again, NO FORM OF BIRTH CONTROL WHICH IS REVERSIBLE IS 100% EFFECTIVE.
NONE.  And I would expect that if people started getting married quicker to
avoid the tax, you would find the divorce rate would go up even FURTHER.
Because the same people who AREN'T as carefull as we were to discuss all 
possibilities before having sex won't be as carefull to consider the 
end results of a marriage.  So the same kids will sooner or later end up
on the street with a single parent.

Let's put it this way:  If two inner city types, who can't afford children,
decide to become sexually active, and so just in case, they decide to get 
married first, how is that going to keep the kid off of welfare?  How is
their being married ANY solution?

>>>>	o  Would erase the quasi-feudal class distinctions implicit in the 
>>>>	   current system of support, i.e. that a child with "noble blood" 
>>>>	   (high-income NCP) somehow "deserves" more support than a child 
>>>>	   with "commoner's blood" (low-income NCP)
>>
>>True.  It would now mean that a child with split parents deserved more
>>support than one who's parents stayed together.
>
>Huh? My proposal would result in married couples, who have never conceived 
>out of wedlock, paying LESS taxes, and thus having more income left over to
>support their children.

It doesn't work.  If they get married first, then they STILL are in the same
financial position.  Being married doesn't alter whether they will need 
welfare.

>								- Kevin

Will.
-- 
Copyright (C) 1993 by William Johnson  All rights wronged, all lefts made
adric@access.digex.com                     without benefit of turn signal.
Will Johnson, 307 S. Reynolds St Box P-216, Alexandria, VA  22304
"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have included a quote in your .sig file."
Newsgroups: talk.abortion