Reply to Please tell me how this sounds to you. To me, it's ridiculous

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[quote=FruminousBandersnatch][quote=Anonymous]Wow! Has the entitlement culture gone this far off of its rocker? Now, people want the government to "get parents more involved with the human beings they've given birth to". Parents don't get involved because they have dignity, respect and obligation to their children- it's because the government provides money. How absolutely disgusting. It's shocking that things have gotten this bad that people could suggest this with a straight face. Tell the lady to go suggest this BS in China. She'd likely be hanged for such a ridiculous suggestion. This says two things- we've taken our citizenship so far for granted, that now we want the government to encourage appropriate parenting. And two- the Chinese and other Nations who would laugh at this are totally going to canabalize us. We've made it easy.[/quote]

The government gives money to encourage/discourage behaviors all the time. The government encourages home ownership, so we have the interest deduction. The government wants to encourage people to have health insurance, so Virginia offers a tax credit. The government wants to discourage "sin" so we have taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, etc. This is nothing new.

The point of the idea cited by the OP is a good one, although it might be late in the life of the child to have a benefit. There are lots of competitors for parental attention, and we want to encourage parents to pay attention to their kids because we believe that parental engagement is better for the kids and leads to a better society. So, we offer a reward for the behavior we want to see. Some parents will do this anyway, whether or not you give them an incentive. But, on the margin, the incentive will cause some parents to engage in the desired behavior.

So the question is whether the societal benefit of the behavior is worth the cost in terms of the money provided. If so, society benefits. If not, then we should scrap the program.

This is something that can be easily tested and analyzed.

What aspects of Chinese and other countries' cultures and policies do you think we should emulate to avoid having them "cannibalize us"?[/quote]

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