A social network comment gone bad

I want to apologize for breaking my globalization subject for this blog post. Unfortunately it has come to my attention that the vice president of the youth section in one of the major political parties in Finland has made social Darwinist remarks on child support. I want to bring his comments to the attention to the world and discuss it:

‘’Child support ought to be removed. It’s beyond reason to support inferior humans reproduction, and then we wonder why there are children born as junkies here, children of alcoholics under custody’’ – Saul Schubak

 ‘’I want to get rid of eugenics replaced by commonsense in reproduction of children. Child support is perhaps one of our society’s most harmful benefits.’’ – Saul Schubak

Now the situation is that, many people are quite deeply upset and stunned by his remarks. He belongs to the moderate conservative National Coalition Party.

Afterwards he wanted to precise and his remarks:

‘’Finally I want to state that my remarks represent myself and not the policy of the youth section in National Coalition Party:

My perhaps a bit inconsiderate FB-remarks considering child support were taken out of context by the Finns Party and sent to the press in the purpose of an obvious dirt campaign.

I will now precise my opinion: In the science of economics we approach benefits in the manner where we must take in consideration all negative side-effects. With child support comes the negative side-effect of supporting reproduction of such humans that cannot offer a good life for their children. In my opinion every child has a right to get a good childhood. We can discuss whether or not the positive gain exceeds the negative side-effect in the matter of child support. However child support should not be something sacred beyond humane discussion.

Finally I will state again that these are my opinions not the opinions of the youth section of the National Coalition Party’’. – Saul Schubak

From here

Saul Schubak was even in a quick television interview where he stated that the thoughts behind his remarks were well thought through. And that he stands behind them. (http://areena.yle.fi/tv/1689292)

The secretary of Education condemned Mr. Schubak’s remarks. Secretary Gustafsson said according to iltasanomat that such opinions can be expressed privately in a sauna but if publicly expressed over the social media there’s always a responsibility to carry. Gustafsson thinks that Mr. Schubak’s choice of words is extremely poor and inconsiderate. And that makes it even more inexcusable and sad due to the fact that Mr. Schubak restated his opinion in a televised interview. (http://www.iltasanomat.fi/kotimaa/art-1288513263771.html).

The youth section of the National Coalition Party has taken distance of their VP’s remarks.

Across the media: Yle - Helsingin Sanomat

Discussion

Schubak is one addition to the long list of social network error doers. People should be more cautious about their public remarks. And keep the controversial remarks as their own information. This is one of the problems within the cyber-world. But what I find incredible is that he has not apologized for the controversial ''inferior humans or inferior elements'' comment.

There's two options where the publics anger stems from. His wording however was terribly poor and inconsiderate ‘’inferior humans’’. It’s a very social Darwinist remark. I don’t know what he means by what he calls inferior humans. He only mentioned those who don’t have enough resources to get children ought not to be encouraged to get children. I would imagine this can also be a anger catalysator because the discussion of child support itself is quite controversial in Finland. But these are the two reasons for this scandal. However it’s good to see that social Darwinism is widely condemned in Finland.

Where is the empathy in his remarks? We humans cannot plan our every step in life. We do not and we cannot control our environment completely. This goes to every walk of life, including children. We do not always plan on becoming parents. Nobody is perfect thus we cannot expect that we always make rational choices. It’s quite cynical to think that people would get children only to get money from the state. And the bottom line is that it’s not the child’s fault that (s)he was born. 

We must also see the whole child support discussion in a broader aspect. As I stated before in my post dealing with the challenges of globalization in the Nordic countries, there’s a massive demographic deficit happening in Finland. Our population is ageing and our labor force is in decline. We need more people, we need more immigrants we need more children, we need more people! Therefore Finland needs policies which encourage reproduction. We need policies which encourage people to get children. There should be tax cuts for middle class families instead of concrete child support. This would also reduce bureaucracy. This would encourage people to work. Of course this must be a case by case. Whether single parents or whether one of the parents wants to stay home for the first 9 months raising children. It's plausible to pay child support to the parent who stays home. Families without means ought to get some child support in order to secure the child’s well being. This is a fundamental principle in a welfare state.

We cannot leave people fending for themselves. But we also need to get the middle class working and encourage them to make more children, and tax exemptions would be a good policy approach to get the reproduction going. We need more people to fix this demographic deficit in Finland.

 

 Thank you for reading