Should unwilling parents be forced to pay child support if we'll have a UBI?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Listen to yourself speak. Children are not things to be sold or negotiated. Of course parents should be forced to pay child support.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Listen to yourself speak. Children are not things to be sold or negotiated. Of course parents should be forced to pay child support.

There's certainly a difference between having moral views along these lines and supporting making your moral views into law, though.

If your moral view is that somebody should be forced to do something, then I think it makes sense to advocate for that person being forced to do that thing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Listen to yourself speak. Children are not things to be sold or negotiated. Of course parents should be forced to pay child support.

There's certainly a difference between having moral views along these lines and supporting making your moral views into law, though.

If your moral view is that somebody should be forced to do something, then I think it makes sense to advocate for that person being forced to do that thing.

I don't think that one should actually have a moral  view that states that somebody should be forced to pay child support in cases where taxpayer money isn't on the line, though.

I can tell you don't think so.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Thanks for your meaningful contribution to the discussion.

You're very welcome.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I actually am serious that people who support this 'independent individuals who are only as obliged to one another as they want to be' model of the modern family should read What Maisie Knew, by the way. It's actually a much more relevant novel now than when it was written--there's a film adaptation that changes the setting from 1890s London to 2010s New York and shockingly little about the plot or themes has to change with it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I actually am serious that people who support this 'independent individuals who are only as obliged to one another as they want to be' model of the modern family should read What Maisie Knew, by the way. It's actually a much more relevant novel now than when it was written--there's a film adaptation that changes the setting from 1890s London to 2010s New York and shockingly little about the plot or themes has to change with it.

Is the movie a good adaptation? I might be interested.

It's pretty good. It removes one character and changes the ending--not to make everything Hollywood-happy, just to streamline the narrative--and I think it loses something thematically in the process, but for somebody for whom English isn't a first language it's probably a more worthwhile investment of time than attempting to wade through Henry James's prose.

Isn't the amount of child support owed a function of income though? I mean, it would be utterly absurd to ask of Drumpf the same you'd ask of an unemployed guy from a poor neighborhood... right?

In theory yes. In practice it can get pretty damned unreasonable. There are plenty of aspects of reproductive and family policy that I don't agree with TheDeadFlagBlues on, but the critique that he's lodging of the combination of current child support policies and lack of meaningful family structures in many communities rings true and is a much better argument than 'muh independent individuals, muh men should be able to screw their children too' or whatever.