For you see, single, child-free people are the engines of society. We are what defines a culture and makes it dynamic. We are the ones making the headlines. We are the go getters, the fighters, the soldiers, the entrepreneurs. We are the P-51 Mustangs that protect the bombers, chase and hunt down other fighters, we are the swift and nimble, able to adapt and adjust at a moment’s notice, turn on a dime, and barrel down the opposite direction with the entirety of our preponderance.
And I’d venture to guess that if you look at the majority of inventions that have advanced society, you’d see they were created by and large by single people or married people that did not have children at the time.
Being so free, swift and nimble, we are the envy of our counter-parts; those with children. They won’t admit it, but they envy us and our ability to go and do whatever we want, whenever we want. We can eat sushi once a week and it won’t cripple our finances. We don’t really get all bothered about the increase in the price of gas, because we don’t have to drive little Jimmy to soccer practice and little Jessie to dance class. We just have to drive to the jazz club and back. And without having to pay for childcare or all the fees associated with our children’s activities, we can afford a good, warm, professionally made meal, a martini and perhaps buy a DVD on our way back home. Instead of determining which diapers we should buy, we determine which LCD projector we should get for our home theater. Instead of spending 2 hours to track down a baby sitter so that we may go out 3 weeks from now, we spend 2 minutes on e-mail or the phone seeing who wants to salsa dancing tonight. And instead of giving birth to 5 children, only to destroy your body and have your husband in a retaliatory or indifferent nature get a gut, we run, work out and stay fit and trim so that we may be attractive to one another and please each other sexually not to mention lavish our beloved with untold amounts of chocolate, wine, trips to Europe, massages and lingerie.
And, oh sure, when you ask people “do you regret having children” they’ll say things like,
“My children are the most important thing in my life”
or
“I love my children.”
Or
“Well, they can get on your nerves at times” but will immediately follow up hurriedly, “but, oh, no no, of course not, I don’t regret having them.”
Of course we know most of them to be liars, avoiding the question, and refusing to give a yes no answer, knowing full well they cannot admit to such a horrible thing; regretting they had children…or perhaps it’s because they value their egos more than they do their children and thusly could not sustain the damage in admitting they were wrong.
Regardless, don’t worry, those with children have their revenge. And just like Minnesota Nice people, they exact a toll of revenge silently, behind your back. For they make the single people pay for their children.
Be it the property taxes that you pay for a school that we send no children to, or just the higher rates we get hit with, or the lack of deductions and child credits, and let’s not forget the bevy of social programs all dedicated to kids, oh yes my fellow childless, singlehood brothers and sisters, we pay.
But if there is any consolation, my friends, sleep well at night knowing that although we pay for our freedom, at least we have it.
13 comments:
You're a funny bugger :)
Are you a member of VHEMT by any chance?
No, but I heard about it.
No I want LOTS of people to have kids.
That way they can support me when I'm older. And then I can get old and crankity and have those kids that I paid for their education pay for my Depends.
CC, the place you most expose economic ignorance is this: economics is not in fact a science about _money_. It is, really, about valuation, and motivation: that's what makes work by guys like Steve Leavitt "economics."
If I followed the thinking in this post I'd never see a movie, or make any other purchase that wasn't resellable.
The amazing thing about economics is you can actually put valuations on things: look at, say, how much extra someone is willing to pay for a smoke alarm and his understanding of the possibility it will save his life, and you can say something about what his life is, amazingly, worth, at least in a transactional sense.
You can do the same thing for children. You can try to come up with guesses based on the amazing sacrifices parents seem prepared to make for them, for example. People often go ahead and have children though they're fully aware of the monetary costs involved over a lifetime; you can't argue they have a raw deal since obviously they bought a purchase at a price they found acceptable. But there's a couple obvious economic conclusions one can draw immediately.
One thing that strikes me is, the introduction of large federal child tax credits ---$18,000 or more over the kid's lifetime! --- doesn't seem to've caused a big jump in the American birthrate. As an incentive, it's piss. People were apparently already getting a great deal in terms of what the child cost, and that 18 grand is in the noise, benefit wise. In fact I suspect most people with children would tell you they'd have the kid _without_ the big subsidies you pay 'em --- so, hey, suckers, you're just increasing how much they're up on the deal.
You also have the bizarre tic of imagining things out of existence, suggesting a bizarrely sheltered existence. Not long ago, you "wished" liberals would admit they wantd to redistribute wealth, suggesting you'd never actually, y'know, heard or seen one. Now you say,
"They won’t admit it, but they envy us and our ability to go and do whatever we want, whenever we want."
and it makes me think, what the hell planet do you live on? Have you never actually _met a parent? They admit that all the _time_. I haven't seen a movie in three years, for cryin' out loud! I only go to music shows because I know a lot of performers and producers -- and I have to walk out early! Have you ever walked out from backstage at a McCoy Tyner gig _early_? Do you have any _idea_ how hard that is? If you ever actually talked to a parent, you'd hear crap like that all the time (you may draw weird conclusions if you don't realize that, just because I got a great deal on my car doesn't mean I don't wish it were free).
I'm just sayin', it seems like you like to operate without, y'know, data, at least when it suits.
Applause!!
(From a single, childless, Capitalist male.)
Sanjay!
Dude, man, I'm so freaking busy, like bullet point it or something.
YOu got yourself a girlfriend out in SF yet?
Sanjay, Good post but it was done a lot better a long time ago by George Gilder in his two books, Naked Nomads(1974) and Wealth and Poverty (1986) about why married people get societal and economic preference. The short answer is, “On the average they deserve them.” As Leavitt would point out, it is not what you do, it is who you are. People willing to enter into a relationship, known secularly as marriage and family, on average, are better people than the naked nomads who don’t. As to CC operating without data, I find it more of a case of operating without thought. See: http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2006/03/roi-of-vasectomy-repost.html
If you want to see what the material world actually looks like (it is badly written and will require some work to get through, you might want to print it out for easier reading) check out www.lp-thoughts-philosophy.blogspot.com. Even though you argue well, you are wrong, but young enough to possible learn.
Hi, fred, thanks. Sorry, I must've done a terrbile job the first out: your post is exactly orthogonal to what I meant to say.
Gilder, IIRC, talks about why married parents deserve a subsidy. That's tangential to my point. I don't care whether they do. Children could be a negative externality for all it matters.
My issue is that CC talked about what a raw deal parents are getting --- and, that's obviously wrong. For example, middle class people will now spend well into six figures just trying to get medical help to conceive. Then there's the cost of the kid, which they know up front. So if you try to figure out the "worth" of the child _to the buyer_, you've _got_ to gome up with a figure well north of a cool quarter mil.
So, anyone who answers "yes" to, "would you be willing to miss some movies and temporarily give up some independence and a lot of sleep for a quarter mil?" CAN'T buy what CC says in this post, that parents regret the "purchase" -- in fact, they got a good deal even WITHOUT the subsidies, and the guys giving them the subsidies are poor dumb suckers (this is where the Gilder would come in: he'd say, no, they're not poor dumb suckers, because you'd want to subsidize the married/childed couple, because.... but it's after my point). CC is necessarily wrong. I'm not arguing whether or not parents deserve the subsidy, I'm arguing that they got a good purchase at a good price in most cases.
And in support I noted that he tells what has to be a fib in illustrating his point. I mean, every parent I've ever met bitches ad nauseam about what he/she has given up for the kid and how they envy singles.
I hope that's clearer.
Well do I remember the vasectomy posts! I have some thoughts I'll put in a seprate response below.
So, here's the thing about the vasectomy. CC is also wrong to argue that it was a good investment based on the cost of raising the child. That's because I think it's quite possible that people might've been willing to _pay_ CC _not_ to reproduce at any given time, but now because of the vasectomy that threat isn't hanging over their head. He has effectively deprived himself of a source of income.
Now, the fly in this ointment is that he can't reproduce all on his own (no more details in case children view the blog). And the odds of CC's getting assistance seem, well, a little lower than in many cases, as certainly seems to've been documented here. So his potential earnings might have taken a real hit for basically the same reasons as people will pay much much less for earthquake insurance in Topeka than in San Francisco.
But even then it's a bit of a wash, because you could use the same argument to say he had less use for the vasectomy. I think he should've at least tried to maybe see what he could get via the blackmail route. Priced it out, y'know?
Sanjay,
I indeed misunderstood. What threw me off is CC's screed:
Being a single guy with no children and seeing many of my friends fall to the fates of being married with children, and with the memory of having to check “no, I can claim no dependents” on my taxes and thus my tax bill soared, I thought it about high time to make an ode to single people.
For you see, single, child-free people are the engines of society. We are what defines a culture and makes it dynamic. We are the ones making the headlines. We are the go getters, the fighters, the soldiers, the entrepreneurs. We are the P-51 Mustangs that protect the bombers, chase and hunt down other fighters, we are the swift and nimble, able to adapt and adjust at a moment’s notice, turn on a dime, and barrel down the opposite direction with the entirety of our preponderance.
And I’d venture to guess that if you look at the majority of inventions that have advanced society, you’d see they were created by and large by single people or married people that did not have children at the time.
I think you can see why I thought this was a discussion about married vs. single. What he says is absolutely false. All great men in society were married, most with children. The unmarried men, Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, etc. all turned out to be bad guys. It’s what Gilder documented and Leavitt found in his studies. Married people drive the good in society. No one gets married and has children for the money. People who will be good parents (have the responsibility, self-discipline, courage, tolerance, managing skills, etc. of good parenthood) will be successful in all areas they pursue. Like Leavitt found about books in the homes of well performing children, it isn’t the books themselves, it is the parents respect for the books that make superior students. It isn’t what you do, it is who you are. Think about what it means. Fifty years ago a guy by the name of Deming when to Japan and said, “It isn’t the product, it’s the process.” He, of course, was married with children.
Thanks, Fred. I think I missed the bit where you apologized for misreading what I originally wrote and answered something CC wrote instead, but, while you were wrong, perhaps you are young enough to possibly learn.
I'm distantly familiar with Gilder but not that much; I'm not sure I buy it as I understand it; it seems to me there are abundant counterexamples but as I said I'm hazy so I defer. I'm pretty sure Leavitt hasn't done research quite along the lines you suggest; I might humbly suggest that you are perhaps misreading him as well or strecthing his results regarding good parening (as opposed to the goodness of parents) too far.
I guess inasmuch as I think there's something "good" about parents it's gonna be less of a nice clean economic thing and more a touchy-feely David Brooks thing (and, as I have a toddler, my views are self-serving and suspect). But that approach probably has its virtues too.
Thanks for rereading.
Thanks, Fred. I think I missed the bit where you apologized for misreading what I originally wrote and answered something CC wrote instead, but, while you were wrong, perhaps you are young enough to possibly learn.
I'm distantly familiar with Gilder but not that much; I'm not sure I buy it as I understand it; it seems to me there are abundant counterexamples but as I said I'm hazy so I defer. I'm pretty sure Leavitt hasn't done research quite along the lines you suggest; I might humbly suggest that you are perhaps misreading him as well or strecthing his results regarding good parening (as opposed to the goodness of parents) too far.
I guess inasmuch as I think there's something "good" about parents it's gonna be less of a nice clean economic thing and more a touchy-feely David Brooks thing (and, as I have a toddler, my views are self-serving and suspect). But that approach probably has its virtues too.
Thanks for rereading.
In fact Fred, I'm pretty sure you are overstretching Leavitt. After all, he was able to figure out some kids performed well because of parents' interest in, say, books --- _by comparison against_ other children who performed badly and whose parents _weren't_ interested in books. There's no preference for family guys over singles there: there' just good family guys and bad ones. You cast it as though all parents were the good ones.
As far as I can tell, Leavitt hasn't published any research on the economic (or social) merits of parents vs. nonparents.
Am I being fair in my understanding?
I thought I'd point out that Napoleon, Lenin and Hitler were all married (although Hitler only married days before his suicide). Napoleon was the only one to have kids though.
I don't know what conclusions to draw from this, I'm just stating the facts.
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