This is why we can't have a reasonable eugenics debate

[mencken]

Natural selection is eugenics. We just need to stop leftist attempts to redefine strong as weak and beautiful as ugly.

Quite ironic given the implicit leftist endorsement of positive eugenics (at least for such valued traits as promiscuity and indolence)

Not leaving people to starve in the streets for being worthless lazy sluts or the children thereof='positive eugenics,' apparently. Slink off back to /pol/ where you belong, fash.

I would think that taxing those that are better able to plan for the future to fund those that cannot (and providing more money for each additional kid) is the very essence of "encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits"

The purpose of these policies, you vile piece of sh**t, is to ameliorate the situation caused by the fact that these people are already having these children. Sure, you can argue that the effect of the policies is to tacitly encourage poor women to have 'too many' children--if you assume that the working poor of this country are Hugolian mauvais pauvre who value children and their lives based on how much sweet sweet welfare moolah they're 'good for'.

The problem with economic ignorance is that those who possess it cast every observation as a moral judgement of its practitioners. Economics is decided at the margin, and ceteris paribus someone on the fence about any activity is going to be more likely to partake if it is subsidized and less likely to partake if it is taxed.

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Yeah, pediatric malnutrition, that's certainly a grave problem in the United States*

*I can already anticipate the boilerplate argument: "Eating too much is a symptom of malnutrition. They live in food deserts!" Give me a break. Even someone on a budget could eat reasonably well if they so desired. Enough whole milk and soybeans to feed a family is not going to break the budget, although it certainly will not be as pleasurable as hypercaloric quantities of fried chicken and cheeseburgers.

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By its very nature any cultural meme that encourages reckless procreation is going to be very successful.

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Perhaps such efforts might be better suited by working to support herself and save up a nest egg until her mid-twenties when she can more objectively revisit her decision to have children? She could still have the same number of kids as she would otherwise, just with a head start so they can have a better livelihood.

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Child morality had already shrunk considerably by the middle of the twentieth century, which I will choose to attribute mostly to vaccination against previously endemic illnesses rather than to Great Society programs that came fifteen years after the fact.

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I guess the livelihood of children of the upper-middle classes do not count? Or the worldly achievements thereof? I guess improving the quality of life is not nearly so precious as improving the quantity.

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Have you actually read Mencken in non-negligible quantities, or just basing your impression on secondhand accounts from resentful third parties*?

(*Nevermind I already know the answer to that question, and I acknowledge that is it not an entirely fair line of attack. I have not read Das Kapital, yet I know most of its economic prescriptions are fallacious. Still, I am not going to go so far as to attack Marx as, say, a "vile piece of sh*t")

My train of thought while reading the above posts.

"This seems like a good graph supporting the elimination of welfare cliffs, I wonder why Nathan is so upsAW  HELL NO!"

Not much to add to what Nathan said except that Mencken's views are a horrifying glimpse into what our culture could very well look like if it continues down it's managerial, anti-natalist path.

If opining that it might generally be a better idea for people to become more mature and experienced before having children is managerial and anti-natalist, then so be it. I hardly see how such a picture qualifies as "horrifying" though, considering that is the default state.

[Devout Centrist]

Eugenics is the moronic notion that, 'everybody's an idiot except for me'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I guess it is apt that someone who names themselves after H.L. Mencken should have horrendous politics. Actually the worst thing, the very worst thing, about the election of The Donald is seeing American Liberals find a sort of comfort in Mencken's nasty sneers about ordinary people. Not very encouraging...

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Hypothetically, "welfare cliffs" could constitute a problem when constructing welfare policy. In practice, no one receives all of the benefits that they are entitled to, there are severe problems with that chart because, as far as I can tell,it isn't based on empirical evidence. Further, the middle class actually, on net, benefit from tax and transfer programs as well. We have a number of deductibles and tax credits that flow to those who make over 60k a year. So, even accepting that this hypothetical made a degree of sense, it's misaligned with what public policy achieves in the US.

This is what real incomes of ordinary people look like, after taking taxes and transfers into account:


I'd note that incomes are clearly substantially higher for those who do not have young children so, uh, no, our meager welfare system does not give the poor the incentives to have children. The cost of raising a child has been estimated to be at around 10,000 dollars per year (this is an average cost based on empirical evidence so you cannot claim "ah, well, it is possible to spend less than that"; i'm sure it is but that doesn't occur very often in practice) and this does not take emotional labor or unremunerated labor into account; from an economic standpoint, it's better to not have kids than to have kids if you're only concerned about your standard of living.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The tl;dr of my post is that it takes a special sort of stupid to believe that "welfare cliffs" are public policy problems. No, no one who is impoverished is afforded that standard of living; unless you grew up in a gated community, this is unbelievable nonsense. The bureaucracy does everything in its power to avoid paying out benefits that are entitled to people, few poor people are aware of the extent/scope of social welfare policy and, even if they are aware, they're smart enough to know that applying is often a waste of time etc. There are exceptions; SNAP is easy to access in most states but, even then, that's a restricted kind of cash transfer. It can be exchanged for cash but only at a pretty sizable discount. It's not easily fungible.