It would be great if employers paid everyone enough – or the cost of goods were low enough that people could afford to raise a family without state assistance but sadly this is not the case.

If the gay couple ( who could have children if they so wished – their are ways and means ) were being as critical of help being provided to these families on the basis of I don’t have kids I can’t get it then indeed I would consider them selfish snots.

You raised the issue of the current world’s population when the context is in relation to NZ’s aging population and the children in this country. These children are our future citizens / workers / employees / employers / artists / singers and so on. Of course their are always those who rise above poverty and abuse and hardship to thrive / survive but many do not. Trying to endure they are at least well fed and provided for and educated and feel part of everyday society – the world they live in – at last lifts the prospect of them becoming good citizens later on.

The alternative is eventually throwing them in jail.

In the absence of a clear policy to have immigration as a means of looking after our aged population then clearly replenishing our population is the other viable option. I’m excluding such aspects as euthanasia / exporting them ( you know like Japan does with old cars ) / accepting a lower standard of living and so on. I also happen to favour looking after our own children first.

The language used reflects quite clearly how I feel about the language used against people with families and people on benefit. Too often these labels go unchallenged e.g. bludger so throwing some labels back now and then I don’t see as a problem.

Lastly in dealing with reality people do have children, they do have them young and it takes a society to raise them not just the parents. We either value them or we don’t. They have little choice in the matter.

The market makes a perfect totalizing enemy: it is impersonal, has no particular location and legitimates itself through a myriad of democratic practices of buying and selling. . . . The problem is that . . . the market is a democratic institution aggregating the decisions of whomever participates in it. When all is said and done, complaints about the market are nothing but complaints about the people themselves.

Paul Piccone

If you want to look at consumerism and mass production you should examine the state’s role in their development. Try this for starters – Mass-Production industry as a Statist construct

I’s all reality and no theory and what i know is aint nuthin free bout the market. You gots to pay if you wants to play. It’s like, Polynesians aren’t socialist, capitalist, left or right. We got our own systems and ways of dealing with shit…ya feel me ? and it carries over from generation to generation! It’s that whole ‘take the boy outta the jungle but you can’t take the jungle outta the boy’ steez.

So y’all can turn a blind eye to whats goin on in the street and in the hood but all them jobless younguns out there grindin and hustlin on the real aint nuthin to be fucked with and sooner or later they’s gonna rise up and there wont be enough jails to hold em. Sheeeit, we cain’t all be playin sports and rap singin. Sure a playa needs sum book learnin but that shit costs and we is some broke ass n*ggas.

Here, let me break it down for ya. Idle hand make the devil’s work and all that handiwork ain’t invisible if you know whats to look for. Jesus aint gonna save us…..nahm sayin ?

Apologies for the vernacular i’m just catching up on ‘The Wire’ but the sentiment stands

As to that piece I don’t support any coercive measures to stem population growth and I support completely open borders. In fact I don’t support the stupid notion of borders or nation-states in the first place.

If they can find a way of doing capitalism in which “we’ really does mean “all of us’ and “equality’ means just that, we will welcome it with open arms: they will have achieved socialism.

They have it’s called the free market. You might find that interesting

you might find this interesting…or not

“Too many of whom, and too much of what?”
What the new population hysteria tells us about the global economic and environmental crisis, and its causes.
http://dustormagic.net/NOII/TooManyOfWhomJan10.html

Is it really your opinion that people who don’t have children are selfish? Do you think gay couples who don’t have children are just ‘selfish snots’? You should know your gracious host on this site is childfree.

Personally I think it is nauseating to read vitriolic comments propounding heteronormative and conservative family-centric values about the importance of being a breeder.

I myself plan to remain childfree like the selfish libertine I am.

There seems to be a regular anti WFF line that comes through, partly on the basis that it doesn’t target only the very poor. Those who have studied social policy dynamics know that society is more accepting of welfare being available to those who most need it, if there is assistance available to the better off when there are stresses on their purse, and providing children’s needs is indeed costly.

Also there is the administrative point. It is not as expensive to administer a universal scheme with perhaps income steps, than if people have to apply and be screened with interviews, paperwork etc to see if they are eligible.

Personally I think it is nauseating to read some of the resentful comments about parents and children and resenting assistance to their parents in any way. It is like hating life, like being so sophisticated that such people have forgotten what life and being a human involves.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1692027,00.html
Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves–and were never intended to. Harvard professor Greg Mankiw, chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, even devotes a section of his best-selling economics textbook to debunking the claim that tax cuts increase revenues.

The Laffer curve is, quite simply, a joke.

What you’ve said is just more of a the usual delusional rightward spin that we’ve come to expect from you. The only people getting a tax cut are people with incomes over $200k – everyone else will have their taxes increased to pay for them.

Discriminatory is a red herring.

What you are really saying is that help shouldn’t be provided to people with kids cause those without kids can’t get it.

Which then leads to you shouldn’t have kids without being able to afford it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if you don’t have kids and replenish the population you’re a selfish self serving snot. I don’t see why my kids should work for you, serve you in the shops, wipe your bum when you get old. You’ve chosen not to contribute to the population and begrudge any support that those who have get. You portray having children as a selfish act when the reverse is true.

In the real world most people have children when they are young, before they are economically established. Given the real reduction in wages in NZ through the 80′s they need support then and I for one am happy for them to have it.