Should we sterilise the poor?

[Cyclone]

I don't feel very surprised that you don't understand. Imagine the planet as an indian train. You can allow one off, and one on. Or you can allow a free for all and let people clamber on the roof and hang out of the doors. Or you can do away with the train altogether. The people will suffer more or less, unless there are no people to suffer.

 

Imagine what you like, as an answer to my question what you said made no sense.

 

---------- Post added 18-01-2018 at 10:08 ----------

 

There are ways to encourage this of course. Child benefit restrictions are a form of control on birth rate.

 

Waldo used the word "restricting", not encouraging. Restricting something would imply some solution other than removing child benefit for 3rd and subsequent children.

 

---------- Post added 18-01-2018 at 10:11 ----------

 

How about just limiting their benefits?

 

If you're unemployed you won't get any support for another new child, no benefits, no larger housing etc.?

 

The birth rate in the UK is actually lower than replacement.

[Mister M]

How about just limiting their benefits?

 

If you're unemployed you won't get any support for another new child, no benefits, no larger housing etc.?

 

If the issue is about the cost to the taxpayer of benefits, then it's worth remembering that more money is spent on those topping up the various benefits & tax credits of the working poor than those who are out of work and claiming benefits.

[Cyclone]

And the social cost of maladjusted children becoming adults is probably higher than the cost of providing child benefit to help them have a healthy childhood.

[El Cid]

The birth rate in the UK is actually lower than replacement.

 

I do recall seeing a news item a few years ago, about benefits in Spain, how the system in the UK made our birth rate higher. Maybe that has changed now?

[willman]

How about just limiting their benefits?

 

If you're unemployed you won't get any support for another new child, no benefits, no larger housing etc.?

 

Stopping benefits won't stop future generations being poor.

 

I guess wealthy middle class people don't get unemployed and live on the poverty line or working class people have the rug pulled from under them.

[ENG601PM]

And the social cost of maladjusted children becoming adults is probably higher than the cost of providing child benefit to help them have a healthy childhood.

 

The (not my) counter argument to that is in the thread title. Sterilising adults who might have maladjusted children stops the arising problem within a generation. The efficiencies of scale might get all the poor people sterilised for the cost of a week's child benefit, then the eugenicists can go to work on the rest of the population.

[Cyclone]

If the moral argument against it wasn't so strong, you'd have to consider the practical one. Is someone who is poor always poor, is someone who isn't poor guaranteed to stay that way.

Being poor is not a permanent state, it's just a circumstance.

[melthebell]

Well known Eugenics fan Toby Young has suggested selecting embryos for intelligence as a way out of poverty.

Killing the rich would also solve that problem?

[phil752]

How about just limiting their benefits?

 

If you're unemployed you won't get any support for another new child, no benefits, no larger housing etc.?

 

I thought we already had?

[Naive]

How about just limiting their benefits?

 

If you're unemployed you won't get any support for another new child, no benefits, no larger housing etc.?

 

That makes no sense.

 

Who do you tell that they won’t get any more support for a new child?

 

What happens if they subsequently get (or lose) a job. Do you change your attitude to a person depending upon their employment status?