From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal: Illegitimate-conception Tax
Organization: Who, me???
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 16:07:55 GMT

In article <1jl8beINNf5m@mirror.digex.com> adric@access.digex.com (William Johnson) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan17.042429.16551@rotag.mi.org>, kevin@rotag.mi.org 
>>(Kevin Darcy) writes...
>>>Relatively short and sweet, primarily directed at those folks who keep mixing 
>>>up the economic and biological aspects of the paternity child support issue...
>>> 
>>>PROPOSAL:
>>> 
>>> [The biggest load of horse crap I've seen in a while]
>>> 
>>>ADVANTAGES:
>>> 
>>>	o  Gender equity, at last
>
>Are you kidding?  This just gives one MORE reason for less ethical men to
>skip out or disclaim paternity.  

The Tax is bound to be significantly less of a burden than the current 
paternity child support awards, therefore I see _less_ of an incentive for
men to "skip out" than currently.

>And the cost of all the paternity tests to prove otherwise would be high, 

As I believe it to be the case currently (?), men who fight paternity and 
lose, end up paying for the tests. The cost to the taxpayer is therefore
minimal. 

>...even assuming it were legal to FORCE such a privacy-invasive test on 
>someone.  

Oh, it's legal, all right. How do you think paternity is determined NOW?

>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.

>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?

>Or take the case of myself and my fiancee.  We had a wedding date all picked
>out and were just getting around to sending out invites (was supposed to be
>June 5).  We had planned to start a family immediately.  Whoops, turns out
>we're starting it just a bit earlier than planned.  No problem, we move up
>the date of the wedding a bit, just to make it less of a hassle later in
>the pregnancy, and life goes on almost exactly as it would have before, just
>a few months early.  But wait, now you want us to have to pay a goodly sized
>tax.  And for what?  We're not contributing to anyone else's tax bills.  
>We're paying all the costs ourselves, no welfare, no medicaid, no anything
>which costs anyone money.  In fact, the only result this tax of yours would
>have would be to either deprive our child of some of the things it needs
>(as with most newly starting families, we don't have much extra income
>over the baby costs), or else to cause us to have to GO on welfare to support
>the child after all.

William, you are part of the so-called "irresponsible" segment of the 
population who conceive a child out of wedlock, and decide to carry it to term.
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.
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.

>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.

>>>	o  Taxpayers who are not subject to the "Illegitimate-conception Tax"
>>>	   would see their tax bills noticeably DECREASE, since now all 
>>>	   welfare payouts for illegitimate children would come out of that 
>>>	   Tax instead of the General Fund
>
>But the whole point of welfare, if you buy into it, is that the haves help
>to support the have nots.  There has never been any concern before about
>fairness, in so far as those of us who go out and work for a living paying
>a percentage of our taxes to someone who prefers to live on welfare and not
>BOTHER getting a job.  Sure, many people NEED welfare.  But many could do
>without it, if they'd just TRY.
>
>Your tax just punishes those who are not part of the problem anyway, and 
>narrows the scope of people paying the welfare money until it becomes an 
>unshoulderable burden on the few instead of a moderate one on the many.

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.

>>>	o  Even for those subject to the Tax, the larger taxpayer base would 
>>>	   probably mean smaller payments per taxpayer than the current amounts 
>>>	   assessed against non-custodial parents as paternity child support
>
>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.

>>>	o  Graduated taxation wouldn't "bite" low-income taxpayers as much as 
>>>	   the current system
>
>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?

>>>	o  Would create strong economic incentives for fertile men and women 
>>>	   to use birth control (if they're not using it currently), or more 
>>>	   effective birth control, and/or for sexually-active couples in long-
>>>	   term relationships to marry each other, in order to avoid the Tax
>
>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.

>>>	o  The friction between custodial and non-custodial parents should
>>>	   be eased somewhat, since the child(ren)'s standard of living will no 
>>>	   longer be dependent on the timely making of full payments by the non-
>>>	   custodial parent; hence less motivation, for instance, for a 
>>>	   custodial parent to use withholding of visitation as blackmail 
>
>You are still assuming that this tax only applies to custodial/non-custodial
>pairs, even though you made no exception.  

Um, no, I'm not assuming that...

>You said every couple who 
>conceives a child out of wedlock.  I don't expect any friction between me
>and my fiancee/wife, at least not due to support payments.  Oh, and I
>might add that neither of us believes in divorce, so we are getting married
>NOT because of the child, but because we wanted to anyway, and once we do,
>we're gonna STAY that way.  So we won't EVER be a burden on the system.

Okay, then that bullet item doesn't apply to you. But it DOES apply to a lot
of illegitimate births, and therefore it's an advantage of the proposal.

>>>	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.

								- Kevin