'NO KIDS choose, or deserve, to lack decent winter coats.'

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post ''NO KIDS choose, or deserve, to lack decent winter coats.'':

It's far from just economics tho, why people don't have children

Proof is Scandinavia, where deluxe arrangements have been there for parents - health care, child care, generous maternity leaves, all sorts of support ... and yet it is largely non-European migrants in Scandinavia making use of these programmes

Secular, liberal, atomised societies and social groups, seem to simply implode in diminishing child numbers. The child-incentive projects in Hungary, Poland and Russia work a bit better, likely because they have more residual religion.

Israel another example. Secular Jews - originally the Israeli vast majority 1940s 50s 60s - did not have many children. Whilst various religious Jewish groups on the Israeli dole, had huge numbers of children, and are now Israel's majority, some extremists we see on the news amongst them.

Migrants in the West on meagre welfare arrangements often have many kids ... but for old-stock European-heritage types, it seems the bar is that of being rich enough to be able to have a nanny ... so the parents can still pursue careers and interests

Elon Musk with his 12 kids, nannies allowing him plenty of time for posting X Twitter nonsense whilst running multiple companies too

EU head Ursula von der Leyen with her 7 kids and nannies and chauffeurs, so she could climb the political ladder, grift with the war industry as German Defence Minister etc

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Unknown commented on "'NO KIDS choose, or deserve, to lack decent winter coats.'"

Even in 'self-centred' terms -

Children grow up and some of them help pay our pensions. They grow up to manage the societies in which the rest of us grow older. If we want a good future for ourselves, children in general - even those of other people - are a top priority.

Children are a public good as much as anything. We all indirectly share in nourishing youth - as they say, 'a village to raise a child' - even if we do not have children of our own. We must not neglect or slight them.

There is indeed an implicit 'contract between generations'. We all are gifted from those who came before. And obviously we are here to help those who are born after us.

As many childless people know - there are moments when a kind or wise word or gesture, has a great impact on someone else's child, quite uniquely so. You see it in the child's eyes.

And sometimes one reads on forums, that a young person was saved from suicide or despair, when finding some word of kindness or truth amidst the anonymity of the internet

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Unknown commented on "'NO KIDS choose, or deserve, to lack decent winter coats.'"

Utopia sounds great, however I don't recognise any of that 1950s Hicksville, USA that you describe. In an ideal world what you have described would be great.

Let's return to the world we have been given and helped create where having 'rights without responsibilities' and have helped in our very own destruction and demise.

We pay our taxes so we can live in a state of perpetual war where the Government sends troops and planes to murder other peoples children in lands most people couldn't point to on a map. Thankfully the depleted uranium we leave behind should keep them warm in winter.

We pay our taxes so the Government can murder the elderly in care homes (so called) during a fake pandemic. This will help focus the minds of the frightened civilians. Now they will take their children to the "death camps' to be systematically destroyed (one jab at a time).

We pay our taxes so boat loads of foreign criminals can wash up on our shores or walk over non-existing borders invited by our Governments and given shed loads of free things that could have been spent on our own local population (including removing the benefits cap!).

We pay our taxes so children can be 'fast tracked' to Autism. 75 Childhood vax for the American kids and 38 for the UK before school age. We love the dear little things so much in our civilised society we decided to fill their little bodies full of poison. If the jabs didn't get them, we'll send them to the dentist instead for more toxic chemicals and ultrasonics. If they have survived those 'treatments' we can then send them to their 'indoctrination camps' to be mentally poisoned with toxic ideology to ensure the job is done.

Rather than nourishing the children with a healthy diet, better to fill them with highly toxic processed food, gmo, trans fats, refined sugars and toxic chemicals sprayed on the crops. If any of that makes them thirsty they can always drink the tap water that is full of 'forever' chemicals, chlorine and aluminium sulfate.

We pay our taxes so cities all over America have slums and dire poverty, crumbling infrastructure, no go neighbourhoods, low life expectancy, rampant crime from people who would murder you in 1 second and share none of Hicksvilles values. Where civility is replaced by crime, welfare is spent on fentanyl and hopelessness is an aspiration of many - being a step up from despair.

We pay our taxes so the Governments can control us, humiliate us and abuse us. We pay our taxes so the Government can allow the like of Jimmy Saville and Jeffrey Epstein free reign to (*insert as appropriate*) the kids knowing they'll never be brought to justice.

We pay our taxes whilst the Corporations prey on us by special invite and ensure they pay no taxes to boot. When WW3 starts and the orgy of destruction begins again (lest we forget), just remember why we actually pay our taxes and what they are actually used for.

I'm so glad we can agree the hallmarks of a civilised society and offer hope to many and a standard of living, healthcare and education that allows us to flourish in so many different ways.

Arguably though, a true indicator to a civil society is how we treat our elderly and children. I challenge anyone to change my mind that we, as a nation, are civilised or indeed, treat and care for our children and elderly as we should.

DO NOT RESUCITATE!!!

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Anonymous has left a new comment on 'Rachel Reeves is planning to raise taxes, cut spending and get tough on benefits':

“As someone who is childless, I fail to see why (hypothetically) I should pay for someone else to have kids.”

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With respect, you’re entirely missing the point.

NO KIDS choose their mother and, or their father.

NO KIDS choose, or deserve, to lack decent winter coats - to lack regular dental and sight checkups - to live in a house with dampness and mould - to depend on unpredictable rations from food banks.

Whether this type of situation arises because the kids’ mother and/or father are ignorant, lazy, bad, wrong, selfish, self-entitled, feckless, irresponsible, spendthrift (insert your favoured adjective here)… entirely misses the point.

The two-child benefits cap punishes blameless CHILDREN.

CHILDREN who did not choose their parents; who were not responsible for their parents’ choices, however reprehensible they may be.

Impose a child benefit cap on the low-income parents with more than 2 kids and you punish those kids; kids who have already been punished by life and circumstance through no fault of their own.

Is it galling that sometimes — (although the majority of the taxes we pay go to fund things we probably approve of like firemen, doctors, parks, streetlights, pavements) — a percentage of our taxes assist individuals of whose choices or lifestyles we very much DON’T approve?

Absolutely.

It sucks.

We pay taxes for costly medical treatments for professional boxers who punch each other, by choice, into oblivion.

We pay taxes for costly medical treatments for people who choose to put their lives at risk by driving at 120 mph on their motorway, then crash and kill other motorists or pedestrians.

We pay taxes to incarcerate, nourish, keep healthy, and even educate, cold-blooded murderers and rapists, sometimes for decades, in prisons that are at least intended to be safe, clean, and warm.

We pay our taxes to remove the litter, repair the vandalised bus shelters, and replace the torn-down street signs and broken street lamps, in places whose adult residents repeatedly destroy the public environment out of ignorance, boredom or malice.

Because that is what civilised societies do; civilised societies take care of the children, the elderly, the sick, the homeless, and yes — even the lazy people, the greedy people, the bad people, the criminals, the antisocial thugs the prisoners, the rapists, even the worst serial killers.



Civilised societies guarantee and ensure that whoever you are — be you ever so rich, or ever so poor, ever so good, or ever so bad — you WILL have a humane standard of living, with proper nutrition, civilised shelter, civilised level of schooling, dental and vision care, proper clothing, sufficient heating, excellent medical care, etc. etc.

All world religions teach it, and it is also obvious that when we intentionally or unintentionally degrade other people (whoever they are), we degrade ourselves.

When other people are dehumanised, for example through poverty or poor living conditions, you and I are dehumanised.

When other people are damaged, I am damaged and you are damaged.

The alternative to paying our taxes to help everyone in need, regardless of their moral and ethical failings — to say that we will only permit the taxes we pay to be used to assist those fellow citizens of whose moral & ethical choices we approve — would quickly turn our shared public environment into a dangerous slum, in which crime and social problems rise precipitously, and no one feels safe or comfortable.

But again, I come back to the primary point, which is that punishing the children to express disapproval of the parent(s) is to be profoundly unjust to those kids who did NOT choose to be malnourished or poorly clothed, and who did NOT choose their parents.

Sometimes, there is no good solution, only a least bad one.

The least bad option is for the state to do everything it possibly can to prevent any child from suffering malnourishment or poor housing or inadequate clothing or missed dental and vision care or lack of a warm winter coat.

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Anonymous comments on ''NO KIDS choose, or deserve, to lack decent winter coats.'':

Very touching discussion with important points above

Having children, is a quite different affair from other household 'economic decisions', such as irresponsibly going into debt to buy a too-expensive car because you want to show off

To step back for a wider perspective, attitudes about children, and having children, are heavily affected by governmental and media policies

Sometimes these are explicit - 

Hungary and Poland now offering strong bonuses and incentives for families to have multiple children

China long had a 'one child policy' (some exceptions e.g. for rural farm families) with penalties for Chinese who did not obey ... and now the reverse, the Beijing government is shaming women not married by their late 20s, China's government praising and incentivising births

But sometimes the policies are veiled -

Partly economic & legal arrangements, making it difficult or easy to have children

Partly what is highlighted and pushed by media, especially films and TV ... are people led to admire having families, or more having careers or indulging themselves?

This is what we have seen in the post-1945 West, effective 'social engineering' which is subtle, but powerful ... with the result that child-bearing by Western (and wealthier East Asian peoples) has plummeted to levels endangering cultural survival

This is not 'random' or 'free market' forces ... this is social engineering by elites who know how to 'push' humans to behave in one way or another, and who choose what they push

1946 United Nations Genocide Convention, Article II:

"Genocide means any of the following acts ...

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group"

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide

Elon Musk promotes 'natalism' and has fathered 12 children, but with his billions he can afford them and all the divorce etc expenses

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/elon-musk-s-12-children-what-we-know-about-them/ar-BB1oOlCC

All across the West, young people are so limited in economic opportunity, many still live at home in their 30s with older parents, the young not seeing how to reasonably make a new family ... the policies that created this, whilst the rich fatten their portfolios, are they perhaps 'genocide' under the UN Convention?