kid...you can't afford to HAVE a kid.

Why is this so hard for some people to understand? So sick of seeing poor people and borderline people having kids that the government has to basically pay for them to have. If you don't have a good enough job to where you have insurance, or insurance at all, or can't pay the medical bills on your own to have your kid, the odds are you can't afford to properly raise your kid to begin with.

My GF works with this girl who is 20 and is having her THIRD kid. Her husband has basically never had a job and sits at home and plays video games all day while she works about 40hrs a week waiting tables. My GF asked her why they just don't use birth control, and for the love of god, she said it was because they couldn't afford it.

So you can't afford birth control, but you think you can afford to raise THREE kids?!?!?! She doesn't seem to think its a huge deal because apparently there is government assistance to where you can basically have a kid for free. Oh, they also eat out basically every night of the week and smoke like chimneys. But....the birth control is way too much for them.

If you can't afford to have your kid, the government should pay for it to be born and then they should confiscate it and put it up for adoption to a good family who can raise it properly.

Shit like this really pisses me off.

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 6:23 PM. Reason : meant to put "kid" in the title.]

2/10/2012 6:22:31 PM

tell us how you really feel

2/10/2012 6:22:57 PM

Uhm. I had to read that whole long ass post to figure out what qualifies people to have a kid.

2/10/2012 6:24:01 PM

I used to be in your camp tacolu but its really unfair on the kids. Somebody should pay for them



I'm Krallum and I approved this message.

2/10/2012 6:24:19 PM

Quote :

"Uhm. I had to read that whole long ass post to figure out what qualifies people to have a kid."

Well I would assume that it's basically common sense to most people.

2/10/2012 6:26:34 PM

then why make this thread?

2/10/2012 6:36:09 PM

Before welfare, I could never give my kids enough food...cuz I couldn't afford it!

2/10/2012 6:42:02 PM

I couldn't affooooooooooooooooooooooooord it

2/10/2012 6:43:04 PM

Well, have your dog spayed, have your tubes tied...

I firmly believe that there are people who can afford to provide food, clothes, shelter, and education for a child who cannot afford the birth of their child. Not everyone has insurance and a simple uncomplicated vaginal birth. Not everyone can afford to shell out 20K at once. Even though some hospitals provide deep discounts to pay it off right away, that's also not feasible for everyone. If not for payment plans, there would be a lot of folks out there who couldn't afford to "have" their kid.

2/10/2012 6:48:29 PM

this guy could be good...

2/10/2012 6:49:49 PM

It's a shitty mindset to have, but it's a natural result of our shitty consumerist mindset. Why are you planning to finance your child's birth? I mean yes, I understand that pregnancy can happen accidentally, but I'd be willing to venture that most are planned. If that is the case why would you not wait until you have enough saved up for the delivery and other major initial expenses?

2/10/2012 6:52:20 PM

I find it rather incredible how people like tacolu will rant about how illogical it is to have more children when you can't provide for them yourself.

Technically, in the eyes of evolution, these people are vastly more successful than everyone posting ITT. In 100,000 years, nothing you're doing right now will matter. But they made a lasting impact.

Think about that.

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 6:53 PM. Reason : ]

2/10/2012 6:52:54 PM

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/preach_to_the_choir

Attn: tacolu.

2/10/2012 6:54:43 PM

Most of humanity won't make a lasting impact.

The majority of people are born, live, and die without making even a blip on the radar of history. Simply passing on your genes is not success in and of itself. Did your great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather matter just because a few hundred years down the line you exist? I don't think so. In fact, the world would probably be better off without you, your shitty ancestors, and your shitty future offspring.

Think about that.

2/10/2012 6:56:40 PM

Quote :

"Simply passing on your genes is not success in and of itself"

In the larger picture it's the only thing that matters, unless we reach the technological singularity or some whack shit like that. Why do you want to succeed? You can talk about how pointless one goal is, but there are no other goals of merit you can present as alternatives.

The universe doesn't really care that you're you. Your free will is just a tool that your genes use to get out there and make more of themselves? Why? Because that's how it's always been done, that's why.

2/10/2012 7:02:45 PM

^I disagree. I think that even if people like Caesar, Einsteing, Fermi, Gates, etc. had never had children they have made more of an impact than entire generations. As an intelligent species there is more to human advancement than simply passing along genetic material. Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of the species, but when you talk about what matters there is more to it than that.

2/10/2012 7:05:34 PM

2/10/2012 7:06:51 PM

can some lazy piece of shit mod move this to soapbox?

2/10/2012 7:08:48 PM

Is this the user that was from slickdeals?

2/10/2012 7:09:34 PM

Hmm, this Kurtis nigga's been making a lot of sense lately

2/10/2012 7:13:57 PM

^^ Cambria Suites 48

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 7:14 PM. Reason : .]

2/10/2012 7:14:04 PM

Quote :

"Well, have your dog spayed, have your tubes tied... I firmly believe that there are people who can afford to provide food, clothes, shelter, and education for a child who cannot afford the birth of their child. Not everyone has insurance and a simple uncomplicated vaginal birth. Not everyone can afford to shell out 20K at once. Even though some hospitals provide deep discounts to pay it off right away, that's also not feasible for everyone. If not for payment plans, there would be a lot of folks out there who couldn't afford to "have" their kid. "

A payment plan is fine as long as you are still paying the cost of having the kid and not the government. Some of these poor parents seem to treat kids as some free thing they get from government assistance while the spend what little money they do have on other things. Just because you want a kid doesn't mean you should just have one and let the government pay for it because you are to poor to do so.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who can afford the insurance, maintenance and gas for a brand new Ferrari, but that doesn't mean they are well enough off to have one.

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 7:18 PM. Reason : .]

2/10/2012 7:16:12 PM

12 kids ranging in age from 11 years to six months?????????

2/10/2012 7:22:18 PM

Quote :

"I think that even if people like Caesar, Einsteing, Fermi, Gates, etc. had never had children they have made more of an impact than entire generations"

Well that's a point, Einstein said something to the effect that an equation is forever, unlike any other accomplishment. So he discovered the general relativity equation and that will last forever. Even if we forgot it as a species, some other civilization can discover it again.

But I say fuck those selfish equations. I'm not some digger that was put here on this Earth to research trying to find you my entire life. The people who are known for generations are known for an idea they had, which is similar to a physics equation in some ways.

Probably the most effective way to get remembered is to do something that is both absurdly stupid and reckless that will cost the rest of society insane amounts of time and money for generations to deal with your screw up. Like having 13 kids. That would qualify.

2/10/2012 7:22:31 PM

WTF @ that video Krallum posted. WTF indeed.

2/10/2012 10:36:39 PM

if you can't feed them, don't breed them.

2/10/2012 10:39:08 PM

Quote :

"Technically, in the eyes of evolution, these people are vastly more successful than everyone posting ITT. In 100,000 years, nothing you're doing right now will matter. But they made a lasting impact. "

2/10/2012 11:01:58 PM

ahaha

when i clicked play i didn't expect the whole fucking movie

hahaha

2/10/2012 11:13:20 PM

this guy.

he deserves to be a meme..

educate your fellow university classmates

that poor / uneducated people can't afford to have kids.

2/10/2012 11:18:48 PM

man I was hoping you were going to explain why I can't have my cake and eat it too

because I don't get that...once I have my cake, what else the fuck am I supposed to do with it? put it in a shadowbox on display in my apartment?

2/10/2012 11:25:48 PM

Quote :

"ahaha when i clicked play i didn't expect the whole fucking movie hahaha "

2/10/2012 11:49:31 PM

This reminds me of a thread a few years ago when the woman told her 20yr old daughter to have a kid, get on welfare and live off of it because "they couldn't work". It was a news report from Ohio, and they asked a McDonald within walking distance if they would hire both of them, the store said yes, and on tv the two said they couldn't work.

The part of me that is going to hell says screw welfare, let the weak die off. The other side of me feels bad for the kids who didn't have a choice in this. The logical median tells me the kids are poorly going to grow up and either be criminals or live off the system like their parents did, so welfare isn't a solution.

Logical side is based off of my aunt and uncle with 6 kids, 4 grand kids, and 1 job being worked out of 6 adults, and multiple drug, theft and breaking and entering charges. 1 of them is currently in college, she is the only hope for an entire side of a family, and she is the one working while at school. Welfare has a 1in6 success rate in this section of society.

2/11/2012 9:35:15 AM

If you ain't got no rims nigga don't get no wood grain steering wheel for real

2/11/2012 11:32:43 AM

Quote :

"The part of me that is going to hell says screw welfare, let the weak die off. The other side of me feels bad for the kids who didn't have a choice in this. The logical median tells me the kids are poorly going to grow up and either be criminals or live off the system like their parents did, so welfare isn't a solution."

I'm going to be a dick.

We need to use game theory to set the incentive structure in our society. That doesn't mean killing people off. It means you give them an option that would prefer over having children. I mean, if you could offer a lifetime supply of Slim Jims for getting their tubes tied, it would solve a lot of problems at the same time.

2/11/2012 12:10:34 PM

^ how is that being a dick?

social engineering isn’t a bad thing.

And people were popping out kids they couldn’t handle long before welfare… welfare isn’t the cause of this, it was the response.



Whether you like it or not, we have to find a way so that we can live with the people on the left half of this curve without having the streets overrun by destitute homeless.

[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 12:21 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2012 12:17:39 PM

I always thought the poor were breeding grounds for future slave labor in the spice mining industry when space travel became cost effective.

2/11/2012 1:37:33 PM

vote gingrich, he'll ship them to the moon

2/11/2012 1:59:26 PM

Then we'll have the Australia of space!

2/11/2012 2:16:39 PM

Quote :

"And people were popping out kids they couldn’t handle long before welfare… welfare isn’t the cause of this, it was the response."

i don't know. before, if you had a kid you couldn't afford, one or both of you died, and the situation was resolved, even if we didn't like how it was resolved. Now, you have a kid you can't afford, and the gov't pays to keep both of you alive, albeit in a not so great circumstance. That kid then learns to adapt and live in that environment and goes on to have more kids that probably live in the same environment, living off of the gov't. So no, welfare isn't the sole cause of people having children they can't afford, but it certainly can and does lead to more people having children they can't afford.

2/11/2012 2:18:05 PM

I'm fairly certain that China has solved this problem already

2/11/2012 2:25:32 PM

Quote :

"social engineering isn’t a bad thing."

Think about the "pro-life" political movement. Just think about that in comparison for a second.

People go god damn nuts just at the idea of women voluntarily getting abortions! People have some kind of absurdly irrational "don't mess with my reproductive system" mentality. Particularly when it comes to the government.

See, the thing about sterilization and birth control is that it avoids so many problems. Not only does it avoid problems, but the majority of the people having too many children didn't necessarily want to have those kids.

You don't sit around and think to yourself "boy, the world sure is lonely because of all those people who we aborted in the 70s/80s who would be around my age now". This is moral relativism at its finest. The less we care about fetuses and infants, the fewer shitty situations we will have in so-many years.

This is why unintended consequences makes ethics bull crap. Think about baby jokes. The entire point of baby jokes is to be as terrible as possible, but again, the less we value the welfare of children, and in particular, the welfare of other people's children, the better off we'll be as a society. I swear to God, do-gooders are going to fuck this world up.

Arrgh, people with moral integrity absolutely boil my blood.

2/11/2012 2:27:34 PM

so, can we extend that into not preventing or prosecuting murders and other violent crime, too? After all, the less people we have, the less problems we have, right?

2/11/2012 2:49:24 PM

You know there are people, many environmentalists, who will openly make statements that the world is going to have to cut down population by 30%. They tend to not go further into specifics.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/scientists-look-onethird-of-the-human-race-has-to,27166/

2/11/2012 3:00:50 PM

i'd rather have the govt pay for abortions than pay to feed accidental crotchfruit

2/11/2012 3:52:23 PM

^

2/11/2012 4:02:31 PM

Idiocracy is an awesome movie because its true!

2/11/2012 4:06:32 PM

No matter how stoopid people are social engineering is bad.

2/11/2012 4:09:13 PM

Quote :

"why would you not wait until you have enough saved up for the delivery and other major initial expenses?"

yeah. and we shouldn't offer assistance to people wanting to attend universities either. they should wait until they have enough saved up for tuition, fees, and other related expenses.

2/11/2012 4:13:12 PM

^exactly. The price of school would actually drop without gov't and loans.

[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 4:16 PM. Reason : -]

2/11/2012 4:16:11 PM

^

2/11/2012 4:17:54 PM