Unpopular Opinion
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I don't get this one... If I am a productive worker and self fund my retirement, how am I a net negative?
Because you aren't replacing yourself. It might not be net negative while you're alive (though I would be very surprised if your 'self funded" retirement wasn't helped along significantly by the tax code (either tax breaks you get for saving for retirement or tax breaks tour employer gets for matching contributions, etc) the state will outlive you and need a replacement...one you didn't contribute to the system.
This overlooks the uncomfortable truth that most humans in the developed world consume far more resources than they produce.
I'm not for parents paying higher taxes, but some of the counter-arguments here seem to assume having more children is unquestionably a good thing in all circumstances. They read more like dogma than rational thinking.
Net consumption (if I'm understanding your definition here correctly), while important to the economy, gets a little weird when you think about how individual choices impact the overall economy. Technically, if I were to buy less than I'd otherwise use of something, that'd lower GDP (the standard, if very flawed, measurement of economic activity) because I wouldn't be circulating those funds among other workers. Buying more than I need actual improves the economy right up until the point we run out of the inputs for production. It's gets more confusing in a service-based economy because service workers don't technically produce any resources...instead they free up time/energy by doing things for resource producers to make more resources or they aid the process of getting those resources to the folks who want to buy them.
None of that means I disagree with you. From a resource-consumption standpoint, there's good arguments on both sides of the aisle...each new person DOES use more resources than is sustainable long-term, but we also need enough people to keep the economic engines running smoothly. A big part of why life got harder after the pandemic (and one that doesn't get talked about much) is that so many workers died or were disabled beyond the ability to work. That's part of why you see the child labor laws relaxing most in industries that were hit hardest by covid (like factory farming). It's definitely not always the moral choice to have kids, but to tie it back to OP, the state definitely has an interest in people having the right amount of them.
Then I'm net neutral.
No, neutral would be to have 2.1 children. That keeps the population steady.
I see you haven't met their youngest, Decimo.