The familist redistribution of time
Australia’s leading left-familist academics are at it again today, with a 39 point list of more taxes and regulations, which they call ‘Benchmarks: Work and Family Poilcies in Election 2007′, to enforce their view on family life on the rest of us.
I have criticised much of the underlying analysis in previous posts (eg here, here, and here).
While I have objected to the way familists want to redistribute money to people with children (or to people with children on behalf of children, as backroom girl would insist), I have not emphasised they way they propose to redistribute time.
Given that most taxpayers earn their income via personal labour, some redistribution of time is implicit in the tax system. To get a given amount of after-tax income, the higher the taxes levied to support families the more pre-tax income a worker has to earn, and that means longer hours. Most men prefer to work full-time anyway, so while familist policies appropriate the results of their labour, they probably don’t actually significantly increase male hours. Women, however, are often more sensistive to the financial rewards from working (hence the complaints in ‘Benchmarks’ about high EMTRs) and their part-time work is used to bring household income up to a desired level.
But also important is the redistribution of hours within the workplace. Giving rights to some workers, those with families, denied to others means that those without families suffer the consequences - the total amount of work to be done is unlikely to go down because someone wants to work less or at a different time or to vanish for days or weeks on leave not available to others.
Employers will to some extent be able to manage these problems with casual labour (about which the same group of academics will then inconsistently complain, demanding ‘quality’ jobs) or short-term contracts. But in practice only unskilled jobs are usually easily filled this way, either because the position requires too much employer-specific knowledge or because there are too few workers in the short-term labour market. In other cases the work has to be done by requiring more hours from on-going staff.
This problem affects several ‘Benchmarks’ proposals. For example, it favours denying employers the right to refuse, without first ‘reasonably considering’ them, requests for changes to working hours including quantum of hours worked, scheduling of hours, and location of work (this is phrased as a right to request such changes, but of course employees have always held such a right - the only difference is that some external body will be second-guessing what is ‘reasonable’).
It suggests protecting employees from ‘family unfriendly’ unilateral or arbitrary changes to working hours - but if such changes need to be made, why should only those without families have to work?
Over time the ‘Benchmarks’ academics want ‘an increase in total paid leave available to working parents until households share 52 weeks of paid parental leave, including maternity/paternity and parenting leave’. A year of taxpayer expense and inconvenience to fellow workers for every kid born!
As I have said before about the left-familist workplace agenda:
What’s missing in this … is the sense that an employment arrangement is one of mutual advantage between employer and employee to provide goods and services from which other people benefit - rather than just something to benefit the employee, regardless of its effects on others.
The Australian workplace should continue to be based on arrangements of mutual advantage, rather than the arrangement being dominated by the non-work lives of some employees. It’s possible that those without families will be happy to work extra hours. It’s possible that employers will be able to accommodate requests for different hours by employing new staff. But this should be a matter of consent, not decree.
Much of ‘Benchmarks’ is just a rewrite of the old industrial relations order, not only in its attempts to micromanage every aspect of working life, but in its assumption that non-work life is relevant to the IR rules. In the old days women were paid less because it was assumed they would not be the main breadwinner and had to leave some jobs when they got married. The ‘Benchmarks’ package is little different in making assumed family circumstances and political conceptions of family life important to employment law. Yet again, we have prominent leftists wanting to take us back to the 1950s.
July 10th, 2007 10:29
“To get a given amount of after-tax income, the higher the taxes levied to support families the more pre-tax income a worker has to earn”
That’s a very strange argument from a small goverment person. The usual claim is that high tax rates discourage effort.
Are you saying the income effect outweighs the substitution effect and so the elasticity of labour supply is negative (ie the higher the return, the less people work)? If so, we should tax people heavily to get them to work.
July 10th, 2007 10:37
I don’t think Andrew is suggesting they will actually work, just that they need to.
July 10th, 2007 10:43
Given that the liberal party have been the most egregious enforcers of 1950’s style family policies, I’d hardly call this a movement of the left. More a conservative one. The “familist” label is as fatuous as the “leftist” one too, although the Unabomber didn’t call people familists, so it’s probably safer.
July 10th, 2007 11:42
DD - I was a little vague on that point because I think both effects operate, and I was not sure what the net effect on hours would be. Either way, the tax system distorts work patterns.
DR - I think the familist label is a good one, because it isolates an issue concern - it is like environmentalist or feminist. It can be influenced by different ideological perspectives, eg Howard has tried to make it easier for wives to stay at home (FTB B), while the Benchmarks group propose a level of intervention in the labour market which Liberals would not support (so ‘left-familist’ narrows it down a bit). But both are concerned to promote the family.
Howard’s position shows how conservative policymaking has evolved. Prescription is gone, to be replaced by financial incentives (hence my complaints about ‘big government conservatism’). The left-familists use financial incentives as well, but are happy to use prescription in a way and to an extent not seen on the conservative side.
July 10th, 2007 12:31
The left-familists use financial incentives as well, but are happy to use prescription in a way and to an extent not seen on the conservative side.
I don’t agree with that statement at all. The main reason prescription is being advocated here is to avoid all of the employer-employee relationship being expressed merely as dollars. Funnily enough, it’s exactly the same argument that AWA’s were supposed to be about. Or is Shrekkey making stuff up when he talks about lawn mowing men working at 5:00am to get home for their kids?. Both sides are using prescription, just in different ways. I would hardly characterise the Liberal position as evolved, unless a centralised, slow slide into third world wages and conditions is what is considered evolution.
July 10th, 2007 13:34
David, I think you have a funny idea of what “prescription” means. The fact that, say, in a deregulated labour market, employers can request employees to do something and sack them if they refuse does not mean that employers “prescribe” the way a person lives his or her life. An employee faced with such a situation can always choose to conform to the employer’s request or seek a job elsewhere (or decide not to work at all). This is different from a situation where the Government tells an employee how they must work, how much they must be paid or when they must go home.
As for a “slow slide into third world wages”, I don’t know which country you are living in! France perhaps?
July 10th, 2007 14:27
Rajat Sood wrote:
David, I think you have a funny idea of what “prescription” means.
Possibly - although I would note that most of the positives about AWA’s were described in terms of family friendliness. We didn’t hear anybody talking up the benefits of negotiating away your holidays so you had more money to spend on booze, or negotiating down your salary so you could skateboard more. Of course employers are prescribing how to live your life when they insist you work weekends - how else would you describe it?
The third world thing was a bit over the top, but there seems a distinct contrast between the recent politician pay rise and the niggardly minimum wage rise - not a good look in my opinion and Rudd should have had the guts to oppose the polly one.
July 10th, 2007 16:03
“there seems a distinct contrast between the recent politician pay rise and the niggardly minimum wage rise”
They have one thing in common - they were not set in the market.
Federal MPs work lives are about as family unfriendly as you can get.
July 10th, 2007 16:28
Andrew Norton wrote:
Federal MPs work lives are about as family unfriendly as you can get.
Oh, won’t someone staunch the jet of claret from my bleeding heart. Those poor servants of the public, enslaved to democracy, their daily sacrifice a cruel burden of truly epic proportions. Oh wait, they’re on holiday.
July 10th, 2007 16:49
David, you said:
“Of course employers are prescribing how to live your life when they insist you work weekends - how else would you describe it?”
Um, “insist”? What about just saying “no”?. How about the expression, “You can take this job and shove it”? I believe people resign from jobs quite often and most find other jobs. In fact, I would wager that turnover in low-skill, low-pay jobs is higher than in high-pay jobs, suggesting that low-skill employees are not inhibited about exercising their rights to leave. Prescribing the way we live our lives is something that only the Government has the ability to do.
July 10th, 2007 17:21
Rajat Sood wrote:
Um, “insist”? What about just saying “no”?.
The problem with that argument is that some people simply do not have the same choices that you and I might have. Further, we’re not just talking about the low skilled and low payed. I’ve certainly been coerced into working hours I hated (weekends especially) but needed the job (mortgages and babies have that controlling effect). It’s naive to think that governments are the only entities with the ability to coerce - your employer imposes a raft of behaviours on you that likely you don’t notice are oppressive. From simple things like dress standards and personal appearance to serious problems such as the right to free association (not all employers, but definitely some), recreational drug testing and the routine surveillance of your daily activities? The biggest chunk of your waking hours are prescribed, more so if you are a low-skilled worker.
July 10th, 2007 17:38
As BG has often pointed out, I don’t think people can take on mortgages and children and then sensibly complain that some of their other choices are limited.
July 10th, 2007 17:49
Andrew Norton wrote:
As BG has often pointed out, I don’t think people can take on mortgages and children and then sensibly complain that some of their other choices are limited.
I don’t agree. Arguably, people raising children are doing the most important work of any society (i.e. guaranteeing it’s future). I don’t agree to the extent with which the traditional family is being reinforced (i.e. FTB and baby bonus should go or be far better targeted). Those who choose to raise a family already know their choices are limited - especially women who interrupt careers to raise children. Given the much wider education of women and their importance to the workforce, extending maternity leave to fathers would seem like a sensible productivity measure.
Simply put, your decision not to have children makes you a cross-generational burden.
July 10th, 2007 17:56
FTB and baby bonus do not reinforce the ‘traditional family’, but benefit anyone with kids. Single parents have done well out of them.
July 10th, 2007 18:20
David, on your approach, Ben Cousins (the AFL player) is oppressed because his employer (the WC Eagles) won’t let him play if he engages in recreational drug use. But the guy gets paid nearly a million bucks a year! What about all those poor Mac Bank sods having to wear suits every day? And let’s not forget poor John Howard and Kevin Rudd - having to shave on Sundays to appear on Meet the Press or Insiders. They just don’t realise have bad they have it.
July 10th, 2007 18:38
“Arguably, people raising children are doing the most important work of any society (i.e. guaranteeing it’s future).”
Society as a meta-organism. Interesting perspective - I wonder to what extent people have studied societies as organisms?
July 10th, 2007 20:51
Rajat, Ben Cousins is a perfect example. What business is it of his employer? None - up until the point where he can’t play at the level they expect. If he can play like a million dollar player while stoned out of his gourd and simultaneously texting lewd messages to comely lasses in the crowd, what’s the issue?
July 10th, 2007 22:24
[...] Norton has a superb piece on the unintended consequences of ‘family friendly’ working condition…, particularly when they’re imposed [...]
July 10th, 2007 23:16
“superb piece” Bah! When will this heartless jeremiad against children end? Most people surely agree with me that being able to have a family is a basic human right. But people on ordinary incomes can’t afford to not have both parents working. There is the problem. This problem has destructive consequences for workplaces, relationships and children.
Extending BG’s useful point: the children have rights too, including, I would think, not being dumped into something euphemistically descibed as ‘child care’ on days when they are sick, of having proper food prepared for them, on having the care and attention they need from parents.
Having worked in libraries where 95% of the staff are women, over the period when all the baby boomers were having their children, and returning to work part-time, I can tell you it can wreck an organisation, and stress the mothers (and presumably the fathers and children). It is no solution to say those women shouldn’t have children - the only solution I can see is to make it possible for mothers or fathers to stay out of the workforce, if they choose, until the children are at school.
July 11th, 2007 01:42
People make the decision to have children (and when) or not and then make the choice of consumption and saving. These are all personal choices the state should have no role in. Subsidising one choice as more preferrable to another is plainly unjust.
Expecting others to pay for your personal choices or advocating that some pay for the personal choices of others is immoral.
Programmes like the baby bonus and sole parent pensions may well encourage people into making short term decisions with long term consequences that are incompatible with their own welfare or that of the potential child. Better to let people make their own decisions without state influence.
July 11th, 2007 09:19
Brendan Halfweeg wrote:
Expecting others to pay for your personal choices or advocating that some pay for the personal choices of others is immoral.
Yes the choices are personal. No, that doesn’t mean society should have no interest in children. Without them, you get no continuation. Society becomes a single generation dead end. There is nothing immoral about subsidising this activity, far from it.
July 11th, 2007 09:34
David, my point about Ben Cousins was that he has a choice. If he believes his personal habits are no business of his employer, he can move clubs or change career. I doubt if he plays in order to put food on the table. If you are saying that people like Ben Cousins do not have the ability to opt out of these employer demands, then I think your definition of “prescription” is unlikely to be meaningful to most people.
July 11th, 2007 09:58
“Most people surely agree with me that being able to have a family is a basic human right. But people on ordinary incomes can’t afford to not have both parents working. There is the problem. This problem has destructive consequences for workplaces, relationships and children.”
The idea of the “right” mentioned in the first sentence is very slippery! The ability to have children is biologically true for many women, but you can’t say definitely very much beyond that.
Russell, what’s your “solution” to this “problem”?
July 11th, 2007 10:31
Rajat Sood wrote:
David, my point about Ben Cousins was that he has a choice.
and my point is that not everybody has the same choices as me or your or Mr Cousins. It’s absurd to extrapolate his multitude of choices to everybody. As for my definition of prescription being unmeaningful to most people, I can only assume that anybody who held a “joe job” for any period of time will inherently understand the power that a petty micro-manager has over someone who needs a job. There’s easily a generation of people floating around who have never experienced a recession and who are in for a big shock when they realise the “take this job and shove it” attitude to their job is no longer exercisable for practical reasons.
July 11th, 2007 11:01
David - extrapolation? It was you who suggested that employers prescribe how we live our lives when they tell us what to wear or ask us to submit to drug testing. I was just saying that this applies as much to rich people like Ben Cousins as it does to unskilled workers. Therefore, it becomes kind of meaningless to define “prescription” in this way. On the more bread-and-butter issue of employers demanding employees work certain hours, the point remains that even in a recession, a worker as a choice. As with any choice, there is an opportunity cost in that something must be foregone - in this case, perhaps wages at that firm. But there is a qualitative difference between the exercise of choice under constraints, which all of us do a hundred times every day, and the state compelling us to do or not do something on pain of criminal punishment.
July 11th, 2007 11:27
Rajat Sood wrote:
But there is a qualitative difference between the exercise of choice under constraints, which all of us do a hundred times every day, and the state compelling us to do or not do something on pain of criminal punishment.
Same old libertarian claptrap. Most of us deal with the government once or twice a year, and deal with our employers 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Who is exercising more direct control over your behaviour?
July 11th, 2007 11:54
Well, I have to deal with my wife 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but that doesn’t mean she “prescribes” how I live my life. We’ve both made a choice and negotiate or seek compromises around what both of us want. Often that’s the same thing but not always. It’s the same with a workplace (or any other) relationship. It’s only the Government one cannot negotiate with.
July 11th, 2007 12:27
Rajat Sood wrote:
It’s only the Government one cannot negotiate with.
Your local member is listed in the phone book.
July 11th, 2007 12:50
Thanks David, I’ll remember that next time I get fined for jaywalking.
July 11th, 2007 15:01
Back at comment 19, Russell said:
Russell, your human rights argument was fully debunked on the comments thread of Andrew’s “The maternal state” post of 29 June. By raising it again here, you really are starting to look like Monty Python’s black knight.
The argument is not one against children. Children do indeed have rights and warrant at least some minimum standard of care - both in the emotional as well as the material sense. That might even involve full-time parenting in their early years, rather than being “dumped” in childcare. However, the argument is about who should be responsible for providing for children: their parents, or the childless?
The fact that there are costs involved in removing oneself from the workforce to “mother” (normally) a child is really no different from the argument that there are significant costs in other respects from having a child. There are. But the fact that the choice to do something - in this case to have a childre - has high costs does not mean that others should pay for those costs.
July 11th, 2007 16:30
“your human rights argument was fully debunked” - actually I thought that all we could conclude from that discussion is that human rights are what we say they are, and I’m sure that most people would say that having a couple of kids is a human right.
But, that doesn’t matter, in the sense that we can be sure that people WILL have kids. So what do we do then, as Sacha asked? The children have rights, the employer and other employees have rights. I’ve seen the damage done to all concerned by making it an economic necessity to have both parents working, so my practical solution would be to make it possible for one parent to stay home (in the absence of a volunteer grandparent or someone) until the child/ren are at school, at least. To say people should choose not to have kids is just impractical, silly really.
July 11th, 2007 17:24
Russell, if having a couple of kids is a human right, who is going to give kids to the infertile couple, the gay couple or the single bloke who has a desire to be a father? Have their rights been violated if they can’t have a child, and if so, who has violated them? What if you want children and your wife doesn’t, has she violated your rights? Read what you write and make a reassessment over what you consider are rights. Positive rights make no sense, full stop.
Fertility is a basic biological function and the choice to exercise your fertility requires the consent of an equally fertile member of the opposite sex or the resources to pay for fertility treatment to overcome fertility problems, or egg/sperm donors, or surrogates, or adoption.
Dave, I really think you are over-reacting to say that not subsidising families means a generational dead end. All it means is that parents need to make better decisions about when they have their children and how they will allocate their resources. People were having children a long time before the family rebate has been around, so people are capable of making these choices, even more so now that medicine has given us greater control over fertility.
July 11th, 2007 17:47
“…so my practical solution would be to make it possible for one parent to stay home (in the absence of a volunteer grandparent or someone) until the child/ren are at school, at least.”
How much would this cost the taxpayer?
July 11th, 2007 18:59
Brendan - I said earlier that rights could be looked at as a responsibility that we should do certain things for each other - in this case, not prevent people from having a couple of kids, or prevent kids from getting the parental care they need, just because it now takes two incomes to maintain a home.
If infertility can’t be helped, then it can’t be helped. Sometimes rights conflict. It’s complicated and takes negotiation as views change: look how animals are now being included in our ‘rights’ discussions.
How useless have right-wing economists been in this discussion? Here is a problem: people have and will continue to have children; in the current situation where both parents, if not well-paid, need to work, this creates real difficulties for parents, children, employers and employees. The solution proposed by the right-wingers is to tut tut about irresponsible choices made by the parents. Thanks a lot guys, that’s completely useless. Life isn’t some sort of chess game in which you are supposed to think out the consequences of every move as far ahead as you can, so as to avoid being ” a loser”.
Sacha asks how much will it cost to solve the problem. The answer is: not more than we can afford. “We” as in we all have some responsibility to help each other have a decent life. It does take a village to raise a child.
July 11th, 2007 19:23
Russell, I’m not saying that parents must both work, only that they have to make decisions regarding the mix of the consumption and saving. Life choices are limited, but some parents will choose to both work in order to provide their children with a McMansion and a private education. Others will accept lesser status housing as renters in order to ensure one parent can remain at home. The choices are endless, but there are still choices, no matter what your situation.
I don’t want to prevent people from having children, but not donating money to them to pay for their doesn’t prevent them from having children. How is not wanting to pay for other people’s choices prevent them from having a choice? You are not making sense.
There are multiple ideas that would reduce the pressure on everyone, including families, and increase peoples ability to make choices. A primary one would be a reduction in taxation, allowing working people to keep more of their income instantly gives them the choice of how to use that income, be it for childrearing or vacations in Vegas.
Another idea would be to deregulate land supply to enable more land to be released for housing. This is one of the primary causes of the perceived unaffordability of housing. State governments won’t release land because this means infrastructure and it props up existing home owners and voters property values. I don’t really care about people rent seeking on the back of government land releases, and infrastructure could just as easily be provided privately.
The reduction in housing costs would immediately free up resources to enable parents and others greater freedom to make choices that are valuable to them.
July 11th, 2007 19:34
Russell, thinking about it again, your right to have children as you describe it, isn’t so much a right, as a nice-to-have. By mixing your nice-to-have ideas in with the concept of rights, you are confusing the issue. Negatve rights are not equivalent to your nice-to-have positive rights.
July 11th, 2007 20:15
Brendan - let’s leave the rights discussion. I remain serenely certain that most people, like myself, agree with the UN Declaration of Human Rights that people “have the right to marry and to found a family”.
I’m glad that you agree that people aren’t going to deny themselves children, and so solutions need to be found to the problems we see around us. Opening up more land is expensive too - look at the $2 billion rail line (and it’s ongoing subsidisation) being built to service the sprawl south to Mandurah. I don’t really see tax cuts as ever going to be large enough to allow people on low incomes to do without a second income.
July 11th, 2007 20:33
Perhaps the UN should have said that “people have the right to not be prevented from marrying and founding a family”, which makes a lot more sense. Not that I think the UN is the bastion of human rights defenders when you consider the list of nations who have participated in or chaired their Commission on Human Rights. Human Rights seem to be relative to the cultural history of the countries involved. If it is OK to bomb airliners in Libya, then the UN respects that right and rewards them with the chair to the Human Rights love-in.
The New Metro Rail in Perth will be a joke, empty trains outside of peak period, a giant train set to make politicians and voters feel like they live in a “world class” city.
You seem to think people won’t or shouldn’t be allowed to trade public services for cheaper housing. Well, why don’t we find out and let people decide for themselves? Why don’t you want to let people work it out for themselves? Why do you want to force a bunch of rules and rewards on them, like directing rats through a trap, to the promised land of one income, stay at home parents? You are sounding more like a John Howard conservative all the time
July 11th, 2007 20:57
“why don’t we find out and let people decide for themselves?”
Aren’t they deciding for themselves ? with the two major parties offering much the same benefits, and with the likelihod of more to come. How often do we hear politicians from all parties talk of ‘family’friendly’ policies? There doesn’t seem much support for a private affluence - public squalor party - even the Greens seem more favoured!
July 11th, 2007 21:27
Dear oh dear. What a feeble document. I don’t disagree with every proposal in there, but a bit silly on the whole. The recurrence of the word ‘reasonable’ is quite funny given what we know about the authors.
Part 6 was the most bizarre. Most minimum wage workers are either (financially) junior partners and/or don’t have families - how can a ‘living wage’ be essential to family wellbeing? And what do ‘relativities’ and ‘rewards for skill’ have to do with families? Ridiculous.
Russell - if people want to marry and found a family, who is stopping them? Having a right to do something doesn’t mean having a right to social transfers after you’ve done it. It isn’t a logical argument.
July 11th, 2007 21:44
So Leopold - you don’t think there are problems in the workplace with people trying to be parents of babies and workers at the same time ?
July 11th, 2007 21:51
Russell, you are right of course, both major parties offer basically the same policy package, with very little to choose from. Politics is a popularity contest and an auction house rolled into one, the joke being that voters have let themselves be bribed with theire own coin, while at the same time having even less interest in politics itself. It may as well be coke versus pepsi.
Unfortunately, in a winner takes all environment of parliamentary democracy, there is no room left on the shelf for people who like to drink fanta or passiona. This is a pitfall of a system that is meant to give everyone a voice, but simply drowns out the voices of smaller groups.
You are right though, libertarian voices are small, and they are poorly represented. That doesn’t mean to say that there is nothing to be gained from considering alternative ways of organising the state. Once upon a time no one had heard of socialism, and yet it has become the new paradigm for almost 80 years now, be it the market social conservativism of the Liberal Party, or the market socialism of the ALP, or the plain social environmentalism of the Greens. Everywhere you look socialism, whether you like it or not.
Guys like you depress the hell out of me. I wonder if Clive Hamilton will put together a piece on the happiness index of frustrated libertarians and demand that statists give them rights too. After all, my political beliefs are as relatively as good as yours, aren’t they?
Democracy can be best described at its worst as two wolves and sheep deciding what’s for dinner.
July 11th, 2007 22:14
“After all, my political beliefs are as relatively as good as yours, aren’t they?”
Apparently we have to be tolerant Brendan, but not post-modern. I prefer mine.
July 11th, 2007 22:24
I’m glad you are so tolerant Russell and still let me be part of your collective socialist conservatist paradise
July 11th, 2007 22:40
“so tolerant” - no, it’s the lingering effect of the Parable of the Good Shepherd - even you Brendan, will not be left out. Depressed you well may be, but we have created Medicare and the PBS so that you can be treated!
July 11th, 2007 23:36
Russell, I take care of my own health, thanks. That is why I’m an adult and pay for health insurance. Unfortunately, the existence of medicare prevents me from obtaining the type of insurance I’d prefer. Medicare well as well be short for mediocre healthcare.
I’m glad you can at least acknowledge that we’re all sheep under Australia’s current welfare state.
To be frank, I’d rather be left out and watch from the sidelines as socialism consumes the state as it collapses under the ever increasing burdens of meeting the welfare state’s infinite desires and its unrealised, as yet imagined, rights. Unfortunately I am constrained by collectivists to participate in the demise of the liberal civilisation we had the good fortune to inherit. A restaurant at the end of the welfare state, anyone?
July 12th, 2007 01:07
SOME NASTY, NARROW-MINDED, NEW RIGHT, NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS FOR RUSSELL
In post 34, Russell stated:
To be blunt, the only thing that has been “useless” in this discussion, Russell, has been your attempt to justify parental subisidies by applying the human rights label to them. When broken down (as done on the The maternal state thread), your “argument” amounts to little more than an assertion that parents should be subsidised because parenthood is the type of thing that you think should be subsidised. As I pointed out on that thread, you are entitled to think that, but it doesn’t constitute an argument.
Mutual insults aside, however, let’s address the issues about parents who could not afford to properly provide for their kids(at least at current income and consumption levels) without parental subsidies, and/or who would proceed to reproduce irregardless.
The first point to make is that, given today’s level of affluence, most parents in Australia could in fact afford to properly support their kids from their own incomes, including many on only a single income.* Of course, as others have pointed out, doing so would require that they cut back on other consumption, whether now or in the future. I have mentioned in previous posts that some parents may no longer be able to “have their kids and eat out too”, but of course for some it may require larger cut-backs than that; among other things, for example, some who currently own their own home may need to rent instead - at least if they want to have a large family. But that is simply a reflection of the costliness of having children; as previously pointed out, the fact that some things are costly does not per se mean they should attract a subsidy. The key point for the present, though, is that your objection is unlikely to apply to a significant proportion of parents or prospective parents - most parents could still afford to have children.
However, let’s suppose that a subset of people - say unpartnered women or jobless couples - had insufficient time and/or money to “afford” to have children without subsidies (in whatever form). And let’s accept for the moment your view that everyone should be able to have (and, at the expense of others if necessary, afford) at least two children if they want them. Would that then justify parental subisidies, at least for those parents? Again, unless you can provide some justification for favouring the choice to have children over the choice not to have children - and so far you haven’t - the answer is that it would not. Rather, logically it would be an argument for setting welfare payments for everyone who could not afford two children at a level that would allow anyone to afford them if they so chose. Otherwise, you would be discriminating against one set of poor people (ie the childless and poor) without a valid basis, creating horizontal inequities in the process.^
Finally, let’s consider the case in which, although all prospective parents could afford to have at least two children (either by cutting back their alternative consumption or by drawing on generally available welfare - in line with hoizontally equitable adjustments based on Russell’s apparant preferences), some who couldn’t afford subsequent children decided to continue to breed irregardless. I doubt that many parents would necessarily do that, particularly after a transition period coupled with disincentives (see below). However, Russell is right to raise the issue as no doubt at least a some would. What should happen then? First, it would indeed be appropriate to “tut tut” or in other ways socially sanction such parents - as we do most people who intentionally spend or make committments beyond their means. Beyond that, however, government would of course face a difficult trade-off, needing to intervene to protect the children’s needs while seeking to avoid subsiding their parents, and a ’second best’ approach might indeed be to provide subisidies to the parents during the period in which their children remain dependent. However, there are other (complementary or alternative) options which could be pursued - including imposing expenditure restrictions on such parents, the HECS-style provision of parental loans rather than subsidies, community service orders or other legal sanctions for serial offenders, and the adoption of off-spring to infertile couples etc. While some of these measures may at present seem extreme to some, given many people unquestioning attitude towards the motherhood statements of the family lobby, it should be noted that our society already engages in the forced removal of children in some instances - indicating that we do not see parents’ “rights” to have access to their children as inalienable, or children’s “need” for their biological parents as sacrosanct. More forward thinkingly, as Rajat said in post 50 on the The maternal state thread:
_______________
NOTES
* The extent to which changes such as the abolition of general parental subisidies affected the disposable income of parents would of course depend inter alia on the extent to which taxes also fell, and on any concommitant adjustments to other measures, such as (non-parental-status-related) welfare payments to address legitimate vertical equity concerns.
^ Of course, recognition of these implications might make one reconsider whether one really does think that everyone should be able to afford to have two children. However, I have retained Russell’s assumption for the purposes of the subsequent argument.
July 12th, 2007 01:57
Shorter Tom N: I hate those bludgers even though I have no evidence they are bludging, and single parent welfare mothers are the worst. You shouldn’t dress up prejudice in such a long post, it’s easier just to let it out quickly.
July 12th, 2007 02:13
Not even close, David.
However, in trying to demonstrate your wit, at least you were half successful.
July 12th, 2007 10:08
I hate pedantry, but Tom N, I think you meant regardless, not irregardless. I hate irregardless!
July 12th, 2007 10:10
I have to say, Russell, that I’m sorry, but your arguments about having kids being a “right” are very unpersuasive. Having kids is often biologically possible - calling it a “right” makes arguments extremely unclear.
July 12th, 2007 11:28
Sacha - The two words mean the same thing, but like you none of the authorities approve of ‘irregardless’. Fowler’s is kindest, merely callling it ‘non-standard’, while Bryan Garner’s *Modern American Usage* says that ‘careful users of language most continually swat it when they encounter it’.
July 12th, 2007 12:49
We should all swat it, whenever it appears!
I thought it actually wasn’t a word but stand corrected
July 12th, 2007 13:16
Sacha - a ‘portmanteau word of irrespective and regardless’ it seems, but as Pam Peters (my favourite Australian guide to usage) says ‘it negates itself from both ends, with a negative prefix and suffix, and what’s left in the middle by way of meaning is unclear’.
July 12th, 2007 13:23
A great big nothingness?! It’s a word without content!
July 12th, 2007 16:54
Russell,
For a single mother, is it better to be dependent on welfare and be able to spend time with a child, or to work and be able to support that child better and give them a better example in life? Complicated question depending on many variables.
For a two-parent family in this country, if one person has a full-time job at or above the award minimum wage, and there are children, then it is IMO absurd to propose that the other parent ‘needs’ to work to support the family. The income of such a household, taking into account FTB etc, is more than sufficient for housing, clothing, food, electricity and other essentials. If people want to be able to consume nonessentials, they may well work a second job; but this is a ‘want’ not a ‘need’. Important distinction.
Personally, I’d like to see some discussion of means-tested childcare vouchers for single parents who lack means of caring for their children while they work. Seems to me that would be a more worthwhile thing than any of the 39 proposals listed in the name of work-family balance… but then, many of the advocates of such things have always seemed more interested in making their own middle class lives easier than doing anything for people who actually are doing it tough.
July 12th, 2007 20:06
Leopold
“means tested childcare vouchers” - you mean like this?
July 12th, 2007 20:47
No.
July 12th, 2007 21:19
Why not ?
Child care benefit is income-tested, and it is effectively a voucher - you have to spend money on child care to get it. You have free choice of child care providers, and you have the choice of taking it in cash or getting it paid direct to providers who are operating in a competitive market.
What alternative do you have in mind?
July 12th, 2007 21:49
Tom - from our discussion it appeared that people have different bases for claiming ‘rights’ - so I was/am noting that because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child etc have been ratified by our and most other governments, these rights exist. You can argue against them, but you are arguing against existing, widely acccepted rights - whether YOU recognise them or not is completely insignificant!
You demonstrate my point about right-wing economists not providing any practical solutions to the problems we see with parents (nearly always mothers) of babies/infants trying to work as well as be a good parent. Do you really think there’s any use in suggesting that the solution is abortions (compulsory?) for the less well off, or failing that, that their children be given to other people who want/can afford them?
July 12th, 2007 23:22
Andrew, while we won’t agree about the relative merits of Eureka Street vs Policy, it seems we share an admiration for Pam Peters. For people who may not know about it, they can receive for free a very enjoyable little magazine edited by Pam:
http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/centres/sc/articles.htm
July 13th, 2007 00:10
THE BLACK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN
Arguing with you, Russell, is becoming more Monty Pythonesque by the moment.
In your latest post, you firstly misrepresent the basis of my debunking of your “parenthood as a human right” justification for parental subisidies. Specifically, my rebuttal was not dependent on whether you, me, the UN, or even the pink panther, thinks that parenthood is a human right. My point was that, even if parenthood is a human right, that is not a sufficient condition for its subsidisation. In other words, contrary to the way you (mis)represented my argument in your post, I was not “arguing against” parenthood as a human right; I was arguing about its relevance. I, and others, have made this point several times, yet you continue to pretend that this deficiency in your argument doesn’t exist and carry on regardless.
Further, you suggest that my post backs up your earlier point “about right-wing economists not providing any practical solutions” to the problem you perceive with parents trying to work and also care for young children. Yet, in my post, I firstly pointed out why parental subsidies are probably unnecessary for most parents to be able to do this - thus, unless and until someone points out some flaw in that argument, it is simply not incumbent on me to offer such solutions to sustain my argument against parental subsidies generally. Even so, recognising that there may be a subset of parents or prospective parents for whom that is a problem, I mentioned a number of relatively benign solutions, as well as ones that (as I acknowledged) seem extreme at present, to address that ‘problem’. Once again, you conveniently overlooked the former, and instead attempted to paint my position as if it were based on only the latter.
Overall, in view of your continued failure to confront the points that I and others have made about the deficiencies in you human rights justification for parental subsidies, and instead proceed as if labelling something a human right itself wins the argument, together with your multiple misrepresentations of my position, I do not intend to spend any more of my time debating you on this matter.
July 13th, 2007 21:41
“I do not intend to spend any more of my time debating you on this matter.” Good, I’ll have the last word then.
There WAS a lot of debate about whether being able to “found a family” should be a human right. I was closing that part of the discussion by pointing out the obvious - governments around the world accept that it is, so it is.
Once a government ratifies a convention, accepts the definition of certain rights, it implies action will be taken to allow citizens to exercise those rights, or that the exercise of those rights won’t be thwarted, if reasonable actions can be taken to that effect - thus governments pass the appropriate laws, implement policies, and set up bodies such as our Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to advise and enforce etc.
That is why it is correct to say that founding a family is a right in Australia, and that the government is therefore obliged to see that people aren’t prevented from exercising that right. Economic hardship could prevent people from doing that, hence the government provides assistance to people with children.
“I firstly pointed out why parental subsidies are probably unnecessary for most parents to be able to do this - thus, unless and until someone points out some flaw in that argument, it is simply not incumbent on me to offer such solutions to sustain my argument against parental subsidies generally”.
I haven’t made a study of it, it’s just from my personal observation in very atypical workplaces - libraries - that the issue of returning to work for mothers with young children is a very big problem for all concerned, and it wouldn’t be happening if there wasn’t some necessity about the return to work. There’s lots on the HREOC website about the problem, and their solution: a national paid maternity leave scheme - a reasonable contribution to the debate.
“recognising that there may be a subset of parents or prospective parents for whom that is a problem, I mentioned a number of relatively benign solutions, as well as ones that (as I acknowledged) seem extreme at present, to address that ‘problem’. Once again, you conveniently overlooked the former, and instead attempted to paint my position as if it were based on only the latter.”
You did your own credibility in by thinking you could offer as a solution the idea that poorer people’s children could be taken from them and given to others with more money. What is your ‘position’ then? - it seems to range from the merely impractical to the monstrous. A rhetorical question since this apparently is THE END OF THE DISCUSSION.
July 15th, 2007 10:33
Russell, I think you have the same problem with the word “rights” as David Rubie has with “prescription”. On your reasoning, the Government has an obligation to set up blogs for every citizen so they can each exercise their right to free speech. Get real!
July 15th, 2007 21:35
Rajat - James said the same thing earlier - a right to freedom of religion doesn’t mean that the government has to build me a temple. I agree. And it doesn’t have to buy me a newspaper to give me freedom of speech. And it doesn’t necessarily have to give parents money because it has signed on to a definition of human rights that includes the right to found a family.
But in agreeing to that definition of rights, it is obligated to see that people aren’t deterred from exercising that right because doing so would result in real economic hardship. How it does that, and what action is ‘reasonable’ is a matter for debate and negotiation within the community.
I’m not sure why you advise me to “Get real!” - I’m supporting the actually existing arrangement we have: benefits paid to parents. It’s real enough; given your radical ideas perhaps it’s you who need to get real. Don’t you think it’s more likely/real that we will move towards a national paid maternity scheme, than move in the direction you advocate?
July 15th, 2007 22:33
I agree with Rajat and Tom on the basic issues. But Russell you are right that there is a political juggernaut against the childless. Given that the only opposition to it seems to be on this blog, only a recession will stop it.
July 15th, 2007 22:57
I’m happy to acknowledge most Australian parents are perfectly able to feed, house and clothe their own children without government assistance.
Some, however, are not. Does anyone here really think it would be possible for an unemployed person to support two children on Newstart? Do they think it would be reasonable for said children to end up on the street because their parents were lazy/irresponsible?
I’m interested in hearing clear answers to the above questions. It seems to the answer, for not just me but even for most people of ‘liberal’ persuasion must be no, and the inevitable consequence of that is some form of family assistance. But do Rajat, Tom or Mr Norton say ‘no’ to one of those questions?
July 15th, 2007 23:41
“Russell you are right that there is a political juggernaut against the childless.” Well Andrew, they’re your sentiments - there may be a broadly-based political pro-family movement, but that doesn’t mean it’s against the childless. Does it have to be a zero sum game? Are you sure that you just can’t see what’s actually in your own best interest - to live in a thriving community? Just asking.
I haven’t studied law so I could have it all wrong - but doesn’t it imply, when a government signs a convention etc, that it will implement the terms of the thing in some reasonable manner. In the case of rights, we’ve set up HREOC to advise on what should be done to meet our committments, so aren’t we obliged to pay attention to what it says?
July 16th, 2007 07:33
Leopold - I think welfare dependants are a different case. My case against FTB turns on most of its recipients not having any genuine unmet *needs* prior to redistribution.
For that group, I think this is a classic zero-sum game - it is a straight transfer from one group to the other with no ’social benefits’ created.
July 16th, 2007 10:05
I would be really interested in knowing how many children were ‘ending up on the street’ and suffering similar deprivations prior to the advent of family tax benefits, in an era of much lower average living standards, lower or non-existent unemployment benefits, less access to contraception and abortion and much lower demand for adoptees. CIS Peter Saunders has no doubt written something on this.
July 16th, 2007 10:32
Rajat - I suspect not huge proportions, but we should not forget that the welfare state wasn’t just an ideological folly imposed without any need - a lot of people did do it very tough, as can be seen in social histories of earlier times. And the welfare state did spread risk more evenly - in the old days extended family picked up a lot more of the burden if bad luck hit a part of it. For example, my grandfather lost his father at age 5 (through death, the usual route to single parent families in the early 20th century), and was largely supported by various relatives until he was old enough to get a job.
July 16th, 2007 10:41
Rajat - it seems that you would be happy to live in a world where every child that was accidentally conceived by parents without sufficient means to support it was simply aborted or given away. I think you are in quite a small minority there. I certainly don’t think the CIS Peter Saunders would agree with you - on my reading you would have to categorise him as a right-familist who believes that there should be fairly generous allowances through the tax system for families with children. (Though on second thoughts, he does seem to favour much less generous treatment for families on welfare, so perhaps he is secretly in favour of increased abortion and adoption.)
As I think I have explained before on a previous related blog thread, any notion of social assistance that takes account of the relative needs of families of different sizes leads fairly inexorably to some form of family assistance for low-income working families if even minimal work incentives are to be maintained. I certainly agree with Andrew that many middle income families that benefit from FTB don’t “need” the money and would in fact be happy to see the generosity of FTB wound back considerably. Maybe Andrew is right and we have to have a recession for a government to be sufficiently cash-strapped though.
I also don’t really believe that people should just be able to go out and have as many children as they want as the expense of the rest of society’s taxpayers, but if is a tricky business designing a system that caters adequately for people without their own income, safeguards the rights of children (planned or not) to adequate subsistence and maintains sufficient incentive for people to work in low-paid jobs. Compromises always need to be made and there will always be some perverse incentives at the margin - the trick is to keep an eye on them and ensure they don’t get too large relative to the intended benefits of any policy.
July 16th, 2007 10:48
Andrew, I don’t doubt that’s true - some people did suffer in those days. I’m just suggesting that if we just got rid of FTB today, that number (or at least proportion) who suffer could be much smaller than it was even then. I’m also not sure if the issue today is risk-spreading as much as general redistribution. After all, it is quite possible now to buy life, disability and income-protection insurance and most people have at least the first through their superannuation fund (unless they’ve opted out). Income-protection insurance is tax deductible and financial advisors typically recommend it to anyone taking on a mortgage, let alone those having kids.
July 16th, 2007 11:37
BG, to tackle your point head-on, yes, in principle, I would have no problem with a woman aborting her foetus for financial reasons. After all, we place no restriction on the reason(s) women can choose abortion right now, which may include financial or career priorities. So what if on the margin - and I believe it would be very much on the margin - a few more women choose to abort? I’m sure you’re right that this attitude would place me in a very small minority.
July 16th, 2007 12:09
“I think this is a classic zero-sum game - it is a straight transfer from one group to the other with no ’social benefits’ created.”
I suspect it isn’t. What if a large and perfect survey found that nearly everybody thought it was “fair” that parents were given money to help with the costs of raising children. The social benefit of FTB then is that it reinforces the agreeable sense people have of living in a fair society.
Despite what you might define as people’s needs, what if you took the FTB away and the birth rate fell below replacement rate as people reacted to the disincentive to have children? I think most people wouldn’t look forward to the social consequences of a falling population, or immigration on a much larger scale.
July 16th, 2007 12:46
Rajat - my comment was aimed at your implied support for the situation where many low-income people would have only two choices - to abort or to give their child up for adoption.
I think most people would feel that providing a third choice - to keep the child with some financial assistance - would be a preferable situation. This is after all why, despite its undeniable downside, many people would regard the introduction of single parent benefits in Australia as having been a good thing.
July 16th, 2007 12:48
Russell - I doubt the birth rate would fall much. The increase in the FTB has not had a significant effect on birth rates. Though they are slightly up on earlier this century, rates for women in their 20s are still dropping while increasing for women in their 30s (and even 40s, though small in absolute numbers). So it is quite possible that all we are seeing here is the consequence of delayed childbirth, with policy have little or no impact.
And there has been a consistent pattern of poorer people having more kids, the reverse of what your money hypothesis would predict.
To the extent money is a factor, disposable income would not fall by as much as the FTB reduction because this money would be returned in tax cuts. As families already pay significantly more income tax than average, this would disproportionately benefit them.
July 16th, 2007 13:30
“And there has been a consistent pattern of poorer people having more kids, the reverse of what your money hypothesis would predict. ”
Not necessarily - it’s just that there are factors other than money involved too. Poorer women might be having more children because they don’t have the more interesting and more rewarding options that better educated women have. You wouldn’t want to skew things even further by having lower-middle and middle class women have fewer children because doing so meant a drop in their standard of living. (Have the Singaporeans been successful in getting the educated and qualified to breed?)
What do you think of my claim that a social benefit of FTB is that it reinforces the agreeable sense people have of living in a fair society?
July 16th, 2007 13:35
What do you think of my claim that a social benefit of FTB is that it reinforces the agreeable sense people have of living in a fair society?
Russell - I haven’t seen any polling on FTB, but regardless of what such a poll said I do not take my normative views from surveys. I think the public is wrong on many issues.
July 16th, 2007 15:48
Rajat,
My query wasn’t about FTB specifically but about the concept of specific transfers to families.
If you got rid of FTB, Parenting Payment would still be there, so I wouldn’t expect any major crisis. But are you in favour of getting rid of all assistance to families - or just assistance to those who have substantial private income and could clothe, house and feed their children anyway? The rhetoric on this comments thread has been unclear.
I honestly suspect the real disagreement here is not whether the state should transfer ANYTHING to ANY parents with childrne, but about the scope and quantity of such transfers. And I actually think that would actually be a more rewarding debate to have than some of this quasi-philosophical discussion about whether rights may or may not exist etc.
July 16th, 2007 15:50
Actually my old English teacher would actually have me shot for actually writing that actual sentence…
July 16th, 2007 16:07
IS vs SHOULD BE
While in my view Andrew’s response (in post 79) does not directly address Russell’s question^, it does usefully highlight the issues why we debate the merits of policies on a blog such as this, and the extent to which existing community opinion (whatever it might be) is relevant in that context.
Both Russell and BG have at various times sought to justify particular policies on the basis that most people, and/or certain institutions, think it they are a good thing and/or have committed themselves to those policies.
For example, in post 76, BG sought to justify financial assistance for some parents on the basis that most people would feel that it was a preferable option to (some) alternatives. But if that supposedly wins the argument, why are we having a debate about parental subsidies at all, given that we know that most people currently favour them?
Imagine, for example, if 30 years ago when economists started challenging tariffs in Australia, the response had been that the imposition of tariffs by government is justified because most people support them. Within its own limited logic that statement might well be true, but in the context of a debate about the merits of tariffs it would also be pretty vacuous.
Similarly, in post 65, Russell argued that by agreeing to a particular definition of rights, the government “is obligated” to see that people aren’t deterred from exercising those rights.
When boiled down, this is an argument that the government should do X because the government has said that it will do X. Again, while within its own mechanistic logic the statement may be correct*, as a basis for assessing the merits of a policy it is essentially vacuous.
_______
^ Russell’s question related to the extent to which people might get psychic external benefits from government actions in pursuit of fairness. Of course, whether parental subisidies are fair or not is partly what we are debating, but given that many people feel they are fair, such policies in my view would indeed generate some benefits in this respect. The question, then, would be how significant these (and any other)benefits are relative to the costs and other inequities that arise from parental subsidies.
Note that this argument is similar to arguments about the benefits to (often ill-informed) Westerners who gain a “warm inner glow” from trade restrictions on the basis of labour standards in third world countries. In that case, an assessment I did found that those psychic benefits are likely to be real, but would be swamped by the effects of such policies on people in developing countries themselves.
- -
* Of course, even in this limited logic, governments have another alterantive - specifically, to rescind their earlier endorsement of whatever the particular right is. Again this highlights that labelling something a right is not of itself a sufficient condition to justify a policy to ensure the right can be exercised.
July 16th, 2007 16:27
Ah but Tom, in the end policy is a lot to do with politics, like it or not. Which is why what most people support is important to politicians even if some of us can rise above it.
In the end, I understand both the arguments for and against transfers on behalf of children. As someone with children who receives no FTB and as a woman who has always sought to be financially independent, I don’t have any particular problem with some of the money I pay in taxes going to improve the living standards of lower-income families with children. I do have a problem with anyone arguing that adults are entitled to a minimum level of support from taxpayers, but children are not. Because in the end, I believe that children are human beings, not just someone’s consumption choice.
As Leopold said, unless you are prepared to argue that there should be no transfers on behalf of children in any circumstances (I think you have conceded that this isn’t your position, although I think it may be Rajat’s), then we would be more productively engaged in discussing the quantum and criteria for making those transfers. I have said on a number of occasions, both here and elsewhere, that I regard those issues as clearly open for debate.
July 16th, 2007 16:37
In response to the issue of whether financial subsidies increase the incentive for people to breed, I would have to say that I think they probably do (though maybe not in the straightforward “I want another baby bonus so I’ll have another baby” fashion). Because of the system of family assistance we have here, it is true that lower-income Australians suffer little or no reduction in their standard of living from having another child (indeed, in the short term, they may make a profit). So their incentive to limit the size of their family is not the same as for a middle income family, where even if Mum does not drop out of work altogether, there is likely to be a net reduction in the family’s standard of living with each additional child.
July 16th, 2007 16:43
In post 80, Leopold said:
I cannot of course speak for Rajat, Leopold, but as you have have repeated the implication from you earlier post (no. 67) that Rajat, Andrew and I are being unclear on whether there should ever be subsidies for parents, let me repeat for the record something I said in post 47, about what would happen if, after the removal of general parental subisies, some people continued to reproduce beyond their means:
That said, I would also point you to the arguments in that post as to why the extent of the problem (ie the number of people who would be unable to afford family with the removal of parental subsidies) would be much less than some on this thread seem to imagine.
(I would also draw your attention to the contextual remarks I made in post 47 is relation to options such as requiring recalcitrant parents to relinquish their children.)
July 16th, 2007 17:16
Actually, I disagree with BG and Leopold that the issue of parents’/children’s rights to assistance (or whatever one calls it) is uninteresting and the quantum of such assistance is the interesting or productive question.
No, I am sticking to my guns on the question of whether parents should receive anything extra at all. As I said once before, children miss out on a number of rights and entitlements presently enjoyed by adults. So, just because children are people does not imply, in my view, that they should be entitled to financial assistance just because adults enjoy such an entitlement. I think the role of the state is to intervene in the raising of children only when there are serious threats to the welfare of a child. Where that occurs, parents should face – in the extreme – losing their rights to raise their children, rather than the receipt of money as a reward for making stupid or selfish decisions.
July 16th, 2007 18:54
I think part of the problem that people have in discussing Australian family policies is that Australia has adapted features common in other countries to reflect its extremely unusual comitment to egalitarianism.
For example, when income tax was introduced in Australia there were deductions for dependent children and dependent spouses. This was on the basis that families with dependent children and spouses had less capacity to pay tax than people without family responsibilities (even though there was a system of basic wages that was set to meet the needs of families). Child endowment was introduced as we moved away from the family wage system. Payments for children of poor families (mainly widow pensioners) were introduced as a cheaper alternative to increasing child endowment, which was initially not paid for the first child in the family. In 1976 the tax rebates for children were moved out of the tax system and added to child endowment and became family allowances. This not only made the system more progressive, it also made the overall cost cheaper (because for a time the tax system was indexed, but family allowances were not). Even the current payments for birth grants were introduced in order to reduce the pressure for more expensive paid maternity leave. Child care benefit can be thought of as a more progressive, cheaper and administratively more efficient alternative to tax deductibility for child care costs (a cost of working that reduces capacity to pay).
So what we have in Australia is an extremely progressive system that has been constructed this way in order to avoid the more universal and costly systems that are common in other countries. For example, in the US there are still tax deductions for children as well as relatively new refundable tax credits for children and the EITC for low income working families. In France and Germany there are forms of income-splitting that are extended to children in the case of France. In Nordic countries there are no tax allowances for children, but there are universal family allowances that for middle and higher income are significantly higher than the payments received by middle income Australian families (and housing benefits for lower income households that vary by the number of children).
Most countries except the US also have paid maternity leave that is significantly more generous than the Australian payment.
The fact is that all other developed countries support families fundamentally on the basis that families with children have reduced capacity to pay taxes. In fact, Australia is one of the few countries apart from NZ that doesn’t do this on a universal basis. Many countries also give higher support to low income families on the basis that backroom girl has pointed out to alleviate child poverty.
Now the fact that everybody does something doesn’t necessarily make it right. But what it does imply is that the majority of people and governments in democratic countries find the basic arguments in favour of family support more convincing than the arguments against.
So what we have in a sense is different value positions as a starting point, so I’m not sure that we will ever reach agreement. But this also implies to me that in practical policy terms the more interesting debate is about details of design - about how to achieve these sorts of social objectives more effectively and with greater efficiency.
July 16th, 2007 19:27
The detailed design of policies to achieve some social objective can indeed be interesting, Peter, but:
(a) it is not what we are debating on this thread; and
(b) knowing the legitimate reasons - if there are any - for intervening in a particular area is vital if one is to design policies in the most beneficial (and/or least harmful) manner.
Your point that most countries having familiast policies is well understood here, but similarly most countries have tariffs on imports and most citizens find the arguments in favour of protectionism more intuitively appealing than the arguments for free trade: that, however, does not make them right.
July 16th, 2007 19:47
Tom N - you are ignoring what I said except in the last paragraph.
The substantive point I made is that family policies started out on the basis that governments and people believed that people with children had reduced capacity to pay tax compared to people without children. In Australia this has been adapted to make the system much more targeted to low income families with children and payable in cash, but the fundamental principle remains the same.
So rather than framing this debate in terms of rights - which I also find unconvincing, I think it is normally framed in terms of capacity and needs.
Reduced capacity to pay is regarded as “the legitimate reason” for families with children being assisted and increased needs is the reason for directing more of the assistance to lower income families.
Now no-one has to agree that they find these reasons compelling - my point is that these reasons do exist, whereas many of the people commenting on this thread appear to operate on the basis that there are no legitimate reasons for family assistance. There are - you simply don’t agree with them, while other people do.
July 16th, 2007 20:24
As I have pointed out several times already in this debate, Peter, the fact that something is costly does not of itself warrant its subsidisation. Of course, it is true that people who choose to bring children into the world have, as a result of that decision, less ‘capacity’ to pay tax than people in otherwise equivalent circumstances. But spend money on anything, and/or take time off work for anything, and you will have less income left, and thus less capacity to pay tax (or to spend on other things), as a result.
Simply asserting that “Reduced capacity to pay is regarded as ‘the legitmate reason’ for families with children being assisted…” does not justify such assistance: it is merely another fluffy statement that attempts to win the debate without actually arguing the merits of the case.
Tom
PS: Another point you made that I did not respond to was your comment that family policies have been introduced in Australia reflect our “committment to egalitarianism”. I am not sure if you were suggesting that those who oppose parental subsidies are anti-egalitarian, but if you were I would respond that I consider my position to be perfectly consistent with egalitarian principles. In fact, I would argue that, if anyone, it is those who favour general parental subsidies who are being anti-egalitarian, by discriminating between people on the basis of their lifestyle choices.
July 16th, 2007 21:35
Tom
On the egalitarianism issue you are being over-sensitive. From comment at No. 87, it is clear that by talking about Australian family policies as being egalitarian what I was referring to was the distinction between how Australia structures its family payments compared to other countries. Australia income tests its family payments and its child care assistance and provides a flat-rate payment on the birth of a child rather than providing compensation related to past earnings, and so in the sense of income progressivity Australian family payments are more egalitarian than those in most other countries. Perfectly obvious, I would have thought.
No the fact that something is costly doesn’t justify subsidisation. What justifies differential treatment - which you label as “subsidisation” - is that these costs can reduce the living standards of some individuals - children - who will potentially be adversely affected, and who had no say in the choice to have children.
Now it is standard in economic analysis to treat households of different sizes as having different levels of need. After all no one thinks that because China has roughly the same aggregate GDP as Germany that individual Chinese are as well off as individual Germans. Welfare comparisons of households are made on the same basis as welfare comparisons of countries, but with a bit more sophistication. In the welfare comparisons of households rather than using a simple per capita income comparison, income is adjusted by equivalence scales, which normally gives children a lower weight than adults. This is precisely what family payments do also.
July 16th, 2007 22:29
Peter, you justify benefits on the basis that “costs can reduce the living standards of some individuals - children - who will potentially be adversely affected, and who had no say in the choice to have children”.
Why only children, and not the adults whose living standards are adversely affected? Is it the element of choice … and is having children a choice like any other everyday choice?
July 16th, 2007 22:59
Russell
I hope it is clear that I don’t think that having children is like any other everyday choice (even though it can be analysed as if it is).
No system of family payments fully compensates parents for the extra costs of children - there is an assumption in all systems that it is a mix of adult responsibility and community responsibility.
July 17th, 2007 09:35
“Why only children, and not the adults whose living standards are adversely affected?”
Russell - where I have some limited sympathy with Tom and Rajat’s arguments is the notion that people should preferably not have children that they cannot afford to raise. So, like Peter, I don’t believe that people should be fully compensated for the “costs” associated with having children. Most people accept that their material living standard is likely to decline when they have children, but presumably they receive other benefits which make up for that reduction in living standards.
However, unlike Rajat and Tom, I have a little more tolerance for human frailty and for plain bad luck. Many children are not intentionally conceived but their parents decide that they will have them rather than abort, other people inherit children that they never intended (like grandparents raising their grandchildren when the parents die or prove incapable of the task), and some people give birth to severely disabled children that are likely to cost them significantly more than non-disabled children, both in direct costs and in income forgone to provide the care those children need.
The other thing that makes children unlike other consumption choices is that if you find that you bought a lemon (ie the child is severely disabled) or that you miscalculated your capacity to keep up the repayments, it’s a bit difficult to return the faulty child to the manufacturer or to sell it off to the highest bidder.
But as Peter observed, I think the likelihood of all of us ever agreeing is pretty small, so I’m just happy to abide by my values and presumably Tom and Rajat will abide by theirs.
July 17th, 2007 11:17
BG, I see the severly disabled child issue as a separate one on a number of grounds to what we have been discussing. (1) There is little or no risk of moral hazard; (2) I assume this is an area where the government already steps in to provide institutional care if parents lack the resources or ability to provide that care - in other words, parents already can and do often relinquish their role as caregivers. Therefore, there is an ability for parents, in a sense, to ‘return the faulty child to the manufacturer’; and (3) This does not currently seem to be a risk that can be insured against. For these reasons, I could support something like a voucher scheme where the government offered parents the cash it would otherwise spend on the upkeep of these children.
July 17th, 2007 11:32
Rajat Sood wrote:
…moral hazard…
I can see moral hazard in the context of insurance being a genuine problem (i.e. arranging for your over-insured car to be stolen) but in the context of welfare it is meaningless.
Nobody having children views it as some kind of financial jackpot unless they are seriously deluded. Having the attitude that children are a life style choice (LCD or plasma dear?) is ridiculous on many levels. You need children to keep society ticking over, helping people have them is less a problem of costs and more a solution (who is going to pay for the legal system, for example, when you have finished working?)
July 17th, 2007 12:29
Rajat - all I can say is that you seem to have little experience of the actual relationship between parent and child, if you think it is such a simple thing for parents to just abort an unplanned pregnancy or to give their child up to unknown adoptive parents or to a government bureaucracy. The fact that you actually believe that this would make for a better world just boggles my mind, really.
It seems that you really do view children as a commodity like any other. Does this mean that you also believe that parents ‘own’ their children and are therefore entitled to do whatever they like with them?
In the end, aren’t you and Tom just disagreeing with decisions that governments have made about what to do with the money they have collected from you and others through taxation. If that is your beef, I’m sure there are plenty of others in the same club, though I imagine most of them would be exercised about other expenditure items.
July 17th, 2007 12:48
Tom,
My apologies. It is a long thread; I must have skidded over that comment. Interesting thoughts, which I’d like to spend some time considering before I responded.
Rajat
The idea that removing children from their parents is a better option than giving said parents some extra money is so alien to my personal views that I see no particular point in debate on it - we are genuinely outside each others frame of reference on this.
Peter Whiteford has put my own thinking - that egalitarianism is the main case for family payments - better than I could have myself. In this context I would add that the FTB system, tied as it is to AWE and extending deeply into the middle class (thereby building political support for it), may in time come to be seen as the single most effective long-run egalitarian policy ever implemented in Australia.
Which of course would add to the annoyance it causes philosophical liberals.
July 17th, 2007 13:03
BG, you’re right - I have no direct experience of the relationship between parent and child. So I can only go on observation. What I observe is that women abort foetuses from unplanned pregnancies all the time. So it’s not too hard for some. On the other hand, of those that choose not to terminate, I observe that very few if any babies are put up for adoption these days. This suggests that once children are born, parents find them very hard to give up and are likely to do just about anything to provide for their children. Great - why don’t we make use of these observations? Women who are not really desperate to have a child can use contraception or can abort (or abstain?) and those that are desperate to have children can make the necessary sacrifices. State takeover can remain a last resort. Whilst reproduction may or may not be a right, I believe that raising children is a privilege. And, yes, I am unhappy about lots of other areas of government expenditure as well.
July 17th, 2007 13:35
Can’t stop at 99 comments, so just an obervation about analysing things: it must annoy most of you that my comments are so subjective, just as it strikes me that most of your comments are so inhuman. Disposition, family background etc count towards this but also perhaps education - in the arts and humanities we are always exposing ourselves to and reflecting on subjective experiences, in economics you are looking at statistical data. A bit like the two cultures idea of C P Snow.
July 17th, 2007 13:38
“Which of course would add to the annoyance it causes philosophical liberals.”
Indeed, that was one of my criticisms of Howard-Costello in my original big government conservatism piece. They are entrenching big government and making people fully capable of self-reliance welfare dependent.
July 17th, 2007 13:51
I’m with Leopold - I don’t think I will ever be capable of completely understanding where Tom and Rajat are coming from. I also don’t understand how you can paint this as a black and white issue from either side of the argument.
In the end, I don’t believe that there is any such thing as a perfect policy, just some that are better than others.
And whether you like it or not, the views of ordinary people are always likely to shape the policies that we get - that is the nature of politics after all. By all means make use of the instinct of most parents to “do whatever they can to provide for their children” and, if necessary, place conditions on whatever income support you provide to try to ensure that happens. But I totally reject a model of society that says children have no rights to support other than what their parents can provide.
It seems to me that in the end people who oppose all forms of income redistribution aimed at improving the life outcomes of children are fundamentally opposed to the welfare state per se. I really am a bit bemused as to why they don’t exercise a lifestyle choice and go and live in some other better society altogether
. I for one am staying here.
July 17th, 2007 14:57
SOFT HEARTS AND HARD HEADS
In post 100, Russell said:
Your approach to debating can certainly be frustrating, Russell, but I think you misdiagnose the problem. People who study the arts or humanities have no monopoly on human insight, compassion or understanding - and economists certainly do not restrict themselves to statistical data. I would be happy to have my “soft heart” credentials compared with anyone elses.
Where I think we differ is in what we then do intellectually with those insights, values and fellow-feelings, and in particular whether we apply hard-headed or soft-headed thinking to the question of what they imply for government policy. Obviously I think that you and others in this debate have often adopt the soft-headed approach - relying on fluffy motherhood statements and ‘justifications’ for your positions that simply do not bear rigorous scrutiny.
Having a soft heart is not enough; one also needs a hard head.
Tom
July 17th, 2007 16:16
Tom, I expected Andrew to come back with statistics that show 50% of scientists vote Labor and 50% of musicians vote Liberal, but I was suggesting that the stereotypes of the ‘luvvies’ and liberal arts majors as left-wing communitarians might be true, and it that it might be due to reflecting, as an occupation, on human experience.
What you call fluffy motherhood statements could I suppose be called value statements. Values are formed from one’s lived experience - using heart and head, and if my experience has led me to believe that we are indeed, to some extent, our brother’s keeper, there’s not much your rigorous scrutiny can do to prove that that is invalid.
July 17th, 2007 16:30
The great value of the social sciences, in which I include economics, as opposed to the humanities, is their ability to test whether the inferences drawn from personal experience are in fact correct - whether the causality is as thought, whether the experience is representative or not. Often the answer is ‘no’. I started out in the humanities - I even spent years in a political theory PhD - before realising that without hard-headed social science these fields of study cannot deliver worthwhile insights or policy proposals.
July 17th, 2007 16:36
Andrew,
So how did all those successful leaders in history manage without a hard-headed social science background?
July 17th, 2007 16:42
Russell - They relied on trial and error in a fairly narrow range of fields. Many of the state functions you probably think indispensable did not exist until the second half of the 20th century; it is no coincidence that social science and social policy rose together, our ability to analyse problems prompting calls for policies, and policies prompting the need to analyse whether they worked or not (though there is still far too little of the latter).
July 17th, 2007 16:53
Only half convinced - administrators, whether Chinese mandarins in the Tang Dynasty or British colonial governors like Arthur Phillip, have always had to analyse and solve problems and done so brilliantly without a social sciences education.
July 17th, 2007 16:55
Should have said … am half convinced that the social science tools have grown up to meet the needs of complex societies. Just not convinced that they help so much with purposes, goals, direction.
July 17th, 2007 18:36
I think your response in post 104 misses the point, Russell. We all have basic values, and they can be as soft-hearted or as fluffy as you like and, while I might have different ones, there is no basis in logic on which I can challenge your basic values. The question, however, is what do those values imply for policy.
Unless your basic values are formed at the level of policy - and your “we’re our brother’s keeper” statement does not do that* - there is a process that one needs to go through to ascertain the implications of one’s values for policies. It is in that process that hard-headed logic is required, and that fluffly statements and non sequiturs are fair game.
As far as I can tell, in this debate I have not criticised your or other’s basic values - which although it may surprise you I suspect I broadly share. Rather, in effect my arguments have been about why the rigorous application of the broadly held basic values of our society undermines the case for parental subsidies, rather than supports them.
______
* I also strongly doubt that your “borther’s keeper” point is in fact a basic value of yours, in the sense that I expect that you have more fundamental values that underpin or justify your opinion about people being their brother’s keepers. However, that is a trip into Philosophy for which at present I do not have the time.
July 17th, 2007 18:39
# 107 On the topic of whether social policies work, in the mid 1970s there was an Association for Evaluation of Social Policies (or words to that effect) with a newsletter and membership in places like the Division of Planning and Reasearch (NSW Health) where i worked at the time. It had a short life and someone said this was because the main outcome of evaluation studies was negative.
Check out the results of the New Deal! Not to mention the Great Society programs of the 1970s.
July 17th, 2007 18:53
Tom: “there is a process that one needs to go through to ascertain the implications of one’s values for policies. It is in that process that hard-headed logic is required” - well, your hard-headed logic hasn’t convinced me that paying family benefits doesn’t match my values. Can you do that?
And I still think that people may legitimately choose to make decisions that prioritise sentiment rather than logic.
July 17th, 2007 19:51
“MERELY A FLESH WOUND”
I have time and again argued why parental subsidies are not justified, and have responded using logic and rigour to various counter-points and challenges to those arguments that have been brought forward.
Likewise I have several times pointed out why statements that you and others have made in an attempt to justify parental subsidies - such as your view that