Comments by "Black Cat Dungeon Master\x27s Familiar" (@blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311) on "Labour will keep cruel Tory two-child benefit limit" video.

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  3.  @jamiestone1809  I completely agree with you about immigration. It has questionable short term economic benefits with vast costs longer term of all kinds. I do understand your point about lower taxes don't help out poorer people as much. Public policy is all about trade offs. Overall, poorer parents would be better off by 1) Completely stopping low skilled immigration so market forces push up low skilled pay 2) Rolling back the excessive regulation around child care which mean we have (from memory) the second most expensive child care in Europe (the continent, not the EU) after Slovakia and Switzerland (relative to earnings) I'm not arguing against all child benefits, I'm just highly sceptical of direct benefits. For example there used to be universal free milk in schools i.e. not means tested. Why can't we do that now (part from political correctness?). I'm also fine with some subsidies for child care. The problem with direct benefits, it creates perverse incentives. The poorest people have a strong financial incentive to have more children for the benefits. For higher earning people, the benefits are negligible relative to the opportunity costs. It's not PC to say this but differential fertility rates have seen the genetic component of intelligence fall drastically in Western countries over the past 150 years especially in Britain. Until say 20 years ago, this was masked by improving environment, eg. nutrition, health care etc. but it's really starting to become obvious now. Immigration is a huge problem too of course but we're rapidly becoming a third world country and the fact that less intelligent people have substantially more children on average is one of the two big reasons. Although I agree with you about immigration, differential fertility across let's say the capability spectrum is a really huge problem almost nobody is aware of. There's some very convincing mathematical and genetic evidence behind this long term trend.
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