I am discussing the finances of the family, not that socialist Ponzi scheme. NO ONE has children because they think "My children will pay into the social security system and help me retire!!"
When it comes to having children, their tax contributions to society at large is irrelevant to the decision.
APf
There really is no SSI trust fund. Without it to raid, the CONgress loots our wallets in other ways in order to buy the votes which ensure their ongoing employment.
As for having children, yes, that part is not determined by their future tax contributions, but for other reasons.
But the absence of those 'future contributions' from children already not had, as of two or three decades ago, is being felt.
Why do you think the government is dipping ever harder into your paycheck, which makes it hard for those not on the dole to have kids?
Why are they so desperate to shake and bake an huge new allegedly taxpaying class?
Instead we who are productive subsidize the third or fourth generation of the unproductive breeding the next generation of the unproductive, while scarcely being able to raise progeny of our own.
The entitlement mentality which permeates our culture from the bottom up has made it difficult to maintain our schools, our communities, and freedom from even more taxation, and so long as we subsidize those who will not work, we remain slaves of the state whose ability to raise our own children is severely limited by the economic factors which have been contributed to by our own lack of progeny.
We will soon be outvoted by the non-productive if this continues, because even those who work will need to be subsidized in order to raise children (they already are--the EIC). It is a vicious cycle, and this is not the first time around.
My point is that we rely on our children in ways we do not even comprehend. That starting in the 60's people were sold a bill of goods comparable to Kyoto, in which the best and the brightest were encouraged to not pass that on in the interest of there being a future, and those who were farther down the spectrum continued in the same behaviour they always had, with the added benefit of dribs and drabs of first-world aid which significantly lowered their mortality rates in childhood.
Other trends include selfishness, irresponsibility, and a culturally hedonistic attitude. All these have been facillitated by readily available abortion, divorce, birth control, and a general breakdown in social mores. But behind it all I see the simple spectre of selfishness, once cause to be deemed a pariah in a community, now extolled as virtue.