Thursday, August 27, 2009

"the more kids you blow out of your uterus, the more cheques harper will write to you"

xm 301 wrote this comment on our dear north americans: stop breeding post, and i thought it was fitting so i want to post the entire comment.

"While I agree that from an environmental perspective, we need to get family sizes under control, we also need to reconcile the fact that many people wish to raise their own children.

Part of the problem is Canada’s current model - penned by the Conservative government - provides direct financial incentives for having children: The more kids you blow out of your uterus, the more cheques Harper will write to you. (Please consider the hyperbole as not an anti-feminist statement, but rather a slag on current policy.)

This is wrong-headed policy that fails to acknowledge global overpopulation. More disturbingly, it is essentially a backdoor Conservative incentive to keep women out of the workforce. As women statistically earn less than men, it makes more sense for the wife to stay at home and raise children in “traditional” families. In other family dynamics, such as single-parent homes, this policy still does not provide enough money to properly provide child care.

Instead, government should be providing incentives and funding for early childhood learning and childcare spaces. There is no shortage of research that indicates early childhood learning and properly-funded school programs have a net benefit to society. These policies allow equal access, along with incentives for all to enter the workforce. Further, they do not provide a monetary incentive to overpopulate the world.

We’re likely not going to be able to legislate family sizes in Canada, but we can rewrite policy to ensure rational behaviour with healthy consequences."

being one of my smartest friends, xm 301 is right. probably you should just go here and read everything else he's right about.


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