This bit resonated.
It makes me so terribly sad that in a society such as ours the wealthy keep creating new means to harm the less lucky.
That aside, Alan Kholer has also opined in the past that our economics policy is based on disdain.
I know many will read my financial experiences and see failure. I haven’t failed; I succeeded when the odds were totally stacked against me. I made good what life threw at me. I survived … with my values intact.
I can only agree.
Wealth generation is partially tied to your expenditure. Having 7 children will massively increase this over the course of your life. Additionally, parents may be forced to make financial sacrifices in their careers to better raise their children.
When you choose to have children, you are accepting that you may be limiting your ability to generate wealh. This is particularly true when you make this choice 7 times In a row.
I guarantee that every millionaire has more outgoing expenses without counting anything spent on their children than a large family does.
The woman in the article is clearly not a millionaire. so I’m not sure what your point is here.
You were scorning the mother for “wasting” money on having kids, but millionaires “waste” more money on their expenditure than having kids would do.
Also, having 7 kids does not mean you can’t be a millionaire, as millionaires are statistically actually more likely to have more kids than average.
Hatred of large families is largely manufactured by the media residue of hating on “Octomum” - a woman who had octuplets during the global recession of 2007-8 as a way of blaming the common folk for not having good sense (despite the fact it was a result of pure chance) and not because banks couldn’t stop themselves from doing multiple crimes every single day.
Finally, Elon Musk has 11 kids.
Again, what is your point here? I was not “scorning the mother for wasting money on having kids”; I was mocking her inability to see her life choices as directly impacting her ability to obtain wealth. She claims “money is about luck, nothing else” but acknowledges herself that her decisions have affected her financial situation:
Whether incredibly wealthy people have multiple kids has no relevance to whether having any children, let alone 7, impacts your financial situation.
Having a disability is absolutely “luck” as is potentially having kids. No birth control is 100% effective.
You can’t have a disabled child without first choosing to have a child.
Are you really pretending this woman accidentally found herself pregnant on 7 occasions? And that on each occasion, she accidentally had the child without ever making a choice to keep it instead of pursuing an abortion? And that nowhere, throughout any of these 7 births, was she ever in control of her life to the extent that she could have made choices that led her down an entirely different path?
why is having kids wasting money, but a medical procedure such as abortion not a waste of money? what value is generated from the abortion?
I feel like you’re arguing for the sake of arguing. Nothing you’re saying makes sense beyond being contrite.
Firstly, I have never said children are a “waste” of money, I have only said that raising them impacts one’s financial situation.
As for how the two are different: an abortion is a standalone cost. A child is an ongoing cost lasting at least 18 years, quite possibly much longer if one aspires to be a supportive parent.
Sure whatever if you become a parasite but very, very, few people ever realistically get the choice to do so. Like long before you even have to decide between embracing evil and getting shares/property/whatever you need food, clothes, shelter, and medicine. It’s completely luck.
If you get that chance early, or if you are an heir or whatever to fortune kids are easy. If not kids are hard.
Having children is in no way related to the luckness of it.
But the argument being made here is not about whether raising children is easy or difficult; it’s about whether “money is luck”. Your life choices affect how much money you have. That is a fundamental truth.
Are you being bad faith or genuinely confused here?
You’ll need to be more specific with your questioning.
Do we agree that choices are not free? That the set of choices available to someone is determined by precededing moments, a chain of which extends back well beyond anything a person could be held not merely responsible for but indeed capable of having any influence over at all?
You seem to be misunderstanding the point I am making. I am not arguing that the only thing that dictates wealth are the decisions of the individual. I am arguing that the decisions of the individual contribute to their wealth. Maybe you see the world from a determinist mindset, but I certainly don’t. There are always choices we can make about how we choose to live. Sometimes these require sacrifices, such as the choice to not have 7 children.
But 7 children doesn’t influence your geographical location, the quality of your education, your skin colour, the quality of your parents’ education, your familial wealth, your health, the stability of your home life, your gender, your health, the job opportunities upon attaining your majority etc etc etc. It is negligible and largely downstream of the good luck required to be well off and does nothing to undermine wealth being all luck.
I never said it did. Please refer to my previous reply: