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All Things Being Equal

People who produce life contribute more to society than those who don't

  • True

    Votes: 13 24.1%
  • False

    Votes: 29 53.7%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 3 5.6%
  • Other

    Votes: 9 16.7%

  • Total voters
    54
Think of the Duggars. What are the females of that bunch gonna bring to this world less other kids? Unless the children you brought into the world are doing something great or hell even working what good the hell are you other than a brood mare:(

BTW, no hate really towards the Duggars and find them lovely folks:)
 
There is plenty of procreation, though. Not every person on the planet needs to parent.

a society needs a birthrate of 2.1 to replace itself before it's population starts to shrink and it is incapable of taking care of itself. no society has ever survived having a birthrate dip below 1.8.
 
I would say other

If for some reason the worlds human population was decreasing and was under threat of dieing out, then, yes those having offspring would contribute more to society. But as the world is not decreasing in population, and the human race is not under threat of dieing out from a lack of new humans being created, those that have offspring are not contributing any more to society then those that dont.

Now in societies with publically funded education, it could be argued that those without childern are contributing more as they are paying for the education of childern not their own
 
All other things are never equal.

that generally is corret - the phrasing is really just a way of saying "child rearing is of worth to society"
 
that is true, but the vast majority of people do that and hence the statement stands. you are attempting to judge by the outliers, and the outliers in only one direction.
The statement doesn't stand because they don't have "intrinsic" value. You can't claim someone's value is intrinsic if it isn't intrinsic. The more believable claim would be that most people have value, but "instrinsic" does not work because value is neither natural nor essential for a person to have.

That said, I wouldn't argue that the "vast majority" of people contributing to society is a good argument for people producing life being more valuable because far more people than mere "outliers" spend their lives taking away from society - there are millions of people in the world who take a lot away from society in tangible ways like stealing or terrorism and in less tangible ways like having a negative impact on every person they meet and decreasing others' productivity.
 
i'm sure she's wonderful. explain to me again how that alters the math?

There's no math. Your opinion is your own, and by a rate of about 3-1, your opinion is in the minority.
 
There's no math. Your opinion is your own, and by a rate of about 3-1, your opinion is in the minority.

I have yet to see him present any "math" on the subject, apart from some completely randomly derived numbers about the theoretical income of a non-existent woman with vs. without kids combined with the possible income of her children.

Those numbers, nearest I can tell, not only have no basis in any sort of fact or research, but surmise that the only worth of a person is income. Well, I guess teachers aren't very useful then, since they make sweet ****-all these days...
 
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I have yet to see him present any "math" on the subject, apart from some completely randomly derived numbers about the theoretical income of a non-existent woman with vs. without kids combined with the possible income of her children.

Those numbers, nearest I can tell, not only have no basis in any sort of fact or research, but surmises that the only worth of a person is income. Well, I guess teachers aren't very useful then, since they make sweet ****-all these days...

Is it just me? Or is this based on keeping "our race" intact?
 
Is it just me? Or is this based on keeping "our race" intact?

Pretty sure it's not just you. He was not-so-subtly talking about how "the immigrants" would out-breed us and it would be the end of our civilized society.
 
a society needs a birthrate of 2.1 to replace itself before it's population starts to shrink and it is incapable of taking care of itself. no society has ever survived having a birthrate dip below 1.8.

Birthrate or growth rate?

This is an important distinction, that many people seem to overlook (possibly due to the fact that it automatically defeats their argument to word it correctly, possibly due to flawed assumptions on their part), because birth is not the only means of increasing growth rate.
 
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It takes two to produce life.. So the one that actually produces it is no more important than the one that is needed to get the ball rolling.. Our species would simply die out if their no men or women.. Both are required for our species to live on..

Having said that.. The issue of having children and contributing to society are two seperate issues.. I think teachers contribute more to society than perhaps any other profession.. Our planet is over populated as it is, so couples not having a child is not a big issue.. In fact it is probably the smart move at least for our species as a whole..

So.. In the end.. While having kids is needed for our species to live on.. It has little impact on todays society..
 
There's no math. Your opinion is your own,

there is indeed math involved. as we age and our birthrates drop, our ability to support our elderly diminishes, and it is currently diminishing rapidly. For example, in 1940, we had 42 workers for each retiree. Now, we have 3.3. Soon that will shrink even further. Medicare will go bankrupt in around 10 years. This stuff isn't just "my opinion", it's the "opinion" of the Social Security Trustees, the Medicare and Medicaid Actuaries, the OMB, and the CBO. Politicians who have pointed this "opinion" out range the political spectrum from Ron Paul to Paul Ryan to Barack Obama.

by a rate of about 3-1, your opinion is in the minority.

well given that a Majority of Americans think that you can balance the budget without reducing Medicare and Social Security expenditures (a position that not even the President pretends to hold), that's not terribly surprising.
 
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Birthrate or growth rate?

This is an important distinction, that many people seem to overlook (possibly due to the fact that it automatically defeats their argument to word it correctly, possibly due to flawed assumptions on their part), because birth is not the only means of increasing growth rate.

that's an excellent point. Immigration is currently keeping America afloat, population wise. the question becomes one of integration.
 
that's an excellent point. Immigration is currently keeping America afloat, population wise. the question becomes one of integration.

Immigration has always kept the US afloat. We'd never have grown to the size that we have without immigration and if we hadn't grown to this size, the world would be a very different place, possibly one without a United States of America in it. And the integration fears that people have today are no different than the integration fears exhibited in Boston circa 1849. I have absolutely no worries about immigrant integration at all. The country adapts, as do the immigrants. They always have and they always will. That's an aside, though.

The main point is that a society is not dependent on birth rate. It is dependent on steady population growth.

Therefore, the actual act of procreation is not a necessity at all.

Thus, if we apply the same logic consistently, the statment "all other things being equal, illegal immigrants give more value to society than natural born citizens do" is just as true as "all other things being equal, those who have produced and raised children have given more value to society than those who have not".


If you agree with both statements, then your logic is consistent.

If not, there is clearly a flaw in the logic somewhere since logically speaking, one statement cannot be true while the other is false, since they depend on the same premises.
 
I voted true because mostly it is true. Saying that most people don't become productive members of society and many more actually are very successful is dishonest. You of course do have a small percentage that is going to be a dud but if you quit shooting off fireworks because one of them doesn't shoot off, or you see someone elses fireworks didn't fire off how are you going to really take chances at anything else in life?
Yea because simply popping out a baby makes youre contributions to society greater than someone who hasn't. At the end of the day, all of our societies problem are caused by......lets see here.....whats the word......people.
 
Yea because simply popping out a baby makes youre contributions to society greater than someone who hasn't. At the end of the day, all of our societies problem are caused by......lets see here.....whats the word......people.

Well as cpwill said when you consider SSI it does help out. At the very least, anyone with a child contributes someone they will need to buy things for therefore injecting more into the economy. I honestly thing the two proponents of not having children are full of it, Boop has already stated she has had kids so she has at the very least done her part, and Mistress well..I don't know how Mistress contributes to society in any way???
 
Well as cpwill said when you consider SSI it does help out. At the very least, anyone with a child contributes someone they will need to buy things for therefore injecting more into the economy. I honestly thing the two proponents of not having children are full of it, Boop has already stated she has had kids so she has at the very least done her part, and Mistress well..I don't know how Mistress contributes to society in any way???

I can't even believe you just typed that. What's Oprah done. Mother Teresa. Betty White. Should the barren just go out and off themselves?

This is such bull****.
 
People who don't have children can serve just as vital a function in the community as people who do. The functions are just different. A lot of people who don't have children contribute greatly to humanity's progress because they are not burdened or distracted by having to care for offspring. They have fewer opportunity costs.

On the whole, I think the poll question can not be objectively answered.
 
Well as cpwill said when you consider SSI it does help out. At the very least, anyone with a child contributes someone they will need to buy things for therefore injecting more into the economy. I honestly thing the two proponents of not having children are full of it, Boop has already stated she has had kids so she has at the very least done her part, and Mistress well..I don't know how Mistress contributes to society in any way???
Ive thought of not having children but it doesnt make me or anyone else a menace to society. Hell I'd be able to focus more on work, which could very easily make up for or surpass what one of my children could have contributed, especially if they ended up being a welfare mooching bum, which is becoming an increasingly popular occupation.
 
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