Deep Discounts for Doing the Wrong Thing

We're big believers in doing the right thing. We stopped eating pigs on the Chinese New Year of the Pig a few years back now. This year we stopped eating factory farmed beef. We recycle. We compost. We have a garden. We keep our tires properly inflated. We only had two kids.

So it really pisses me off when I get into situations where I see people get rewarded for doing the wrong thing, while I'm paying more for organic food and green products in general. There are many examples, but the granddaddy of them all is a reward for having more kids.

Now I'm not talking welfare here. I'm a firm believer that every kid on this planet deserves a fair share. But I'm sick of pricing in the market that makes me pay more than someone with 8 kids. I don't know if penalizing the prodigious populators is constructive, since it would inevitably punish the children, but damnit, I should not be punished for having less children!

The latest example is shopping for dental insurance, a luxury in this day and age where 1/3 of Americans don't have dental coverage, but something we were looking into since we haven't seen a dentist in a long time due to our recent prolonged poverty.

The best plan I could find has costs about $1500 per year in premiums for a family, while capping the per person payout per year at $1500. So, with our family of three, we would get a maximum of $4500 worth of dental coverage per year, while a family of eight would get $12,000.

That means we're subsidizing that family. WTF? I thought there were too many people on the planet. Add this to the fact that conservatives have more children than liberals and that means when this child bonus does take money out of my pocket, more often than not it goes to conservatives--the very people who complain when people take things out of their pockets.

No wonder Republicans want to protect the big insurance industry.