This type of pre-birth social engineering was foretold in the 1932 dystopian novel,
Brave New World.
LOL, I may have had Brave New World at the back of my mind, I don’t claim it as an original idea! But what I was actively thinking of the scary statistic that in one of the poorest communities (I think it might be the poorest community, actually) in the US, Oglala Lakota on the Pine Ridge reservation, 25% of children are now being born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Downward levelling is NOT an option.
3) I believe that ultimately it is up to US taxpayers to determine how US tax money is to be spent.
And that is what is going to happen, regardless of what a handful of intellectually understimulated parents of whatever citizenship discuss on some obscure Internet forum. You really needn’t worry on that front at all. Why would you be opposed to the intellectual exercise of refuting an argument on its merits?
I do notice that you carefully use „taxpayer“ and „taxpaying citizens“ as opposed to „voters“ or „citizens“ or „the US electorate“. I understand that according to the US constitution, taxes and the budget are the purview of Congress, which is elected by US citizens regardless of taxpaying status. Is that something you’d like to see changed? Do you feel that citizens of lower financial status aren’t created equal?
[quote=indigo
There is a fine balance, beyond which a tipping point exists: if given a choice, which form of "free" do taxpaying US citizens prefer? [/quote]
What if there were a meaningful discrepancy between what a majority of citizens eligible to vote were to prefer and what a majority of taxpaying citizens would prefer? What if services such as access to universal affordable health care, universal preschool, universal community college etc (not necessarily free and public, but publicly legislated and/or organised and heavily subsidised) were preferred by a majority but a majority of taxpaying citizens were opposed? (I think that is actually not a far fetched scenario, and not just for the US?). Who should win, according to you? (Disregarding political parties and realities for this thought experiment...) Who should win according to the US constitution, and the bill of rights?
Indigo and Bostonian, if the idea of a levelling the playing field (upwards for the “non-aristocracy”!) doesn’t engage you as sportsmen or -women, how about the idea of the economic returns as fiscal conservatives? Offering as many children as possible the best possible chance of into productive citizens (taxpayers!), able to support themselves and their families? The damage to children’s physical and mental health induced by the stresses of poverty and poor educational outcomes are currently creating a permanent (“sticky”, according to the Atlantic article) underclass, not just in the US, a large part of the female and underage proportion of which needing permanent public assistance and a large part of the male proportion needing to be incarcerated, at HUGE cost to the taxpayer. The returns for every dollar spent wisely on chiildren are well known. Would such sound investment be un-American?
