ATR Thrive

I've been thinking a lot about sustainability of late, so I asked Chat: why do we have a tax system that promotes growth? We need a tax system that promotes value, save money invest in efficiency, structure life around a single salary and sustainable birth rate. The tax system is structured to promote lending, paying back growth with future growth. This thought process is not sustainable. Why don't all sustainable conversations and models address this. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate Hoping this is thought promoting.

Putting a finger on a very deep contradiction.

Modern tax systems are largely built around expansion: more consumption, more borrowing, more asset inflation, more GDP, more corporate scale, more housing turnover, more financial leverage. But a society with low birthrates, high debt, expensive housing, and environmental/resource constraints probably needs something different: resilience, household stability, productive efficiency, and family formation.

The current system often rewards the wrong behavior.

A business can borrow heavily, deduct interest, scale fast, and get tax advantages. A household that lives carefully, saves cash, buys durable goods, repairs things, raises children on one income, and avoids debt often gets very little structural reward. That is backward if the goal is a stable society.

The tax system says, indirectly:

“Borrow, expand, consume, depreciate, refinance, speculate.”

It does not say:

“Maintain, repair, save, raise children, conserve energy, live within one income, build durable local enterprise.”

That is the philosophical problem.

A better tax system would promote value over velocity.

What “value-based tax policy” might look like

First, stop favoring debt over equity. Interest deductibility encourages leverage. It tells companies and investors that borrowed money is smarter than saved money. That creates fragility. A more sustainable system would reduce the tax advantage of debt and favor retained earnings, patient capital, and lower leverage.

Second, reward household formation and child-rearing properly. Not just a token child credit, but a serious recognition that raising children is productive work. A family raising two or three children is producing the next generation of citizens, workers, taxpayers, caregivers, soldiers, inventors, farmers, teachers, and business owners. That is not a private hobby. It is civilizational infrastructure.

Third, make single-income family life viable again. This does not mean forcing one parent home. It means not designing the economy so that two full-time incomes are required just to rent a house, pay insurance, buy food, and raise children. Tax brackets, child allowances, healthcare costs, education costs, and housing policy should not punish the household that chooses to have one parent focus more heavily on children.

Fourth, tax speculation more heavily than production. Productive investment creates real goods, services, skills, and infrastructure. Speculation often just bids up the price of assets other people need, especially housing and land. A sustainable tax system would distinguish between building a business and merely extracting gains from scarcity.

Fifth, reward efficiency and durability. If a business cuts energy use, reduces waste, repairs equipment, improves insulation, uses better motors, or designs longer-life systems, that should be favored. Right now, we often reward new capital purchases more than maintenance and efficiency. That encourages churn.

Sixth, shift some taxation away from work and toward extraction, pollution, and unproductive asset inflation. Payroll and income taxes punish labor. Meanwhile, some forms of asset gain are treated more gently. That sends the wrong message. Work, repair, care, and production should be lightly burdened compared with pollution, waste, monopoly rents, and speculative gains.

The deeper issue

You are also right about the growth/debt loop.

When a society borrows against the future, it needs future growth to pay the debt. But if birthrates fall, labor forces shrink, household formation weakens, and young people cannot afford children, then the future growth does not arrive. The model starts eating itself.

That creates pressure for:

higher immigration,
higher productivity,
higher female labor-force participation,
higher asset prices,
higher debt,
higher retirement ages,
and more government borrowing.

Some of those may help temporarily. But none of them answer the core question: Can a normal family reproduce itself economically and biologically?

If the answer is no, the system is not sustainable.

The principle I would use

A sane tax system should ask:

Does this behavior strengthen the long-term household, the productive economy, and the next generation?

If yes, tax it less.

Does this behavior extract value, inflate assets, increase fragility, or borrow recklessly against the future?

If yes, tax it more.

That would be a major shift from growth-at-any-cost to stewardship.

And frankly, this is where conservatives, environmentalists, family advocates, small-business people, and anti-financialization economists should be able to find common ground. The current system is not traditional, not ecological, not pro-family, and not genuinely capitalist in the productive sense. It is too often a debt-and-asset machine.

Your instinct is sound: we should not be designing tax policy around endless growth when the demographic and household foundations of growth are collapsing.

Fertility Rate Explore changing patterns in fertility worldwide, from birth rates to parental ages, twinning rates, reproductive technologies, and more.

ATRThrive is at

Shamrock Dairy Tour was great.

Thanks to Ken Rabas and David Miller from Kalona. A great couple of hours was had with about 20 farmers talking about infant mammal digestion and milk replacers. We share the time with Dirk from Goat Improvement Company who spoke about genetics.

Get-Go gained new customers and we will be back in Kalona later in the year.

You won't guess what I heard last week. I think I need to wean that calf, it won't stay in the pen.

Quote of the day, Get-Go Revive, like Bluelite on steroids.

New Testimonial in today. Farmer raising Boer billies for meat thought his kids were getting big. Weighed them and found many were over 50 # at 50 days old. They are now weaned. Get-Go MR+ produced these outstanding results. Another farmer also checked, he has raised all his kid goats this year and only lost one. www.atrthrive.com products available through the online store or call and talk to Nicole. Thanks for using Get-Go.

Get-Go Store Get-Go animal digestive supplements

This is why field data matters.

Over the past four months, one commercial goat operation running 10–12,000 head annually implemented the Get-Go program starting at arrival (approximately 3 days of age).

Protocol:
• Revive on arrival
• MR+ through the feeding period
• Revive again as needed

These kids often arrive after less-than-ideal early management. We are not claiming improvements in colostrum or passive transfer — that happens before they reach us.

What we are seeing:

• Marked reduction in death loss
• Stronger, more consistent growth
• Fewer animals requiring intervention
• A noticeably calmer barn environment

Even before accounting for potential reductions in days-to-market or feed savings, the improvement in survivability alone has generated a substantial economic return relative to program cost.

The most encouraging part?
The goats simply look better.

We’ll share shipping and time-to-slaughter data once it’s finalized.

If you're working with high-risk arrivals and want to improve resilience from day one, reach out.

Results matter.

Even though much of the kidding season is coming to an end, we gain more dairy goat kids on Get-Go. A recent field trip to visit an operation on their second year of use is leading to more customers for Get-Go.