Christian found out today that upon the birth of the kid, his company will pay him a bonus each month “for being a good dad.” Now, although I’m sure Christian will be a wonderful dad, I gotta wonder: how do they check? Will the company install video cameras in our home? Or do they perhaps resort to monthly interviews with the kid? Do they employ a specialist in babies who can interpret gurgles and cries? And for that matter, how do you measure the “goodness” of a father? What’s the base line?
My suspicion is that all dads are declared “good” at this company, and so get the bonus, which by the way, is an obscene amount of money, considering that we’re living in China. The vast majority of our Chinese friends make less than the amount Christian will receive for managing to out-maneuver The Pill. In essence, he’s being rewarded for reproducing in the most overly populated country in the world. This weird inconsistency is thanks to some baby bonus law in the country out of which Christian’s company is based. Even though Christian’s currently residing half a world away, and last I checked has no plans for ever living in that country, he benefits to the tune of… Oh, wait. I hate talking about money.
Baby bonuses rub me the wrong way. I mean it’s not like the world isn’t swimming with people. We have billions of them. You know that whole global warming thing? It probably wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have billions of people. And endangered species? You can also thank the billions of people. There weren’t any of these issues back when there were only millions of people in the world (possibly because people were too busy getting it on), but now that we have billions of people, the world’s going to pot and may very well implode. So why on earth is anyone offering people more incentives to reproduce? Those countries could probably save a whole bunch of money if instead of paying people to have babies, they just loosened up their immigration policies. Usually low fertility rates are limited to really rich countries, the very same countries people from countries with high fertility rates want to move to. I’m sure baby bonus countries would have no trouble recruiting immigrants.
But on the other hand, if any other countries or corporations (or really anyone for that matter) are intent on blowing some money, might I suggest myself as a recipient? I’m really, really good at spending money on silly things.