Quite a few friends I know have shared a link in their Facebook accounts poking fun at what is being called the "First Hubby scheme" (subsidised like the car scheme) and wishing it could be adopted as government policy.
As with countless issues, great and small, beautiful and ugly, which creep into the social network, the joke must have roots somewhere.
A few taps on the computer keyboard and a slew of responses from various web boards comes pouring out, mostly decrying a propagation of the species idea put forth by an economist at Rangsit University.
The academic, Therdsak Chomtohsuwan, has placed himself right in the firing line for suggesting that single people be taxed more.
That would mean a heftier price to pay for being unmarried. As if singles are not taxed enough.
Mr Therdsak means well, I believe, for suggesting the tax measure to try and stave off the prospect of the country slipping into an ageing society. But he whipped up a storm because the topic he raised happens to be hugely unpopular.
He joins the ranks of noted demographers in warning there are fewer babies being born than there are old people dying. The prediction is that if people aged 60 and over make up 20% or more of the population, we officially go over the threshold of an ageing society, which threatens workforce productivity.
The academic says it is not a fertility problem. It has more to do with the sheer fact that it has become increasingly expensive to raise children.
Couples used to have two to three children on average, compared with 1.6 now. And if the figure doesn't improve, the ageing society could be with us a decade down the road, Mr Therdsak warned.
To reverse this alarming trend, he suggests the government slap more tax on the unmarried. Taxation does seem to be a convenient deterrent to almost everything under the sun.
Mr Therdsak was arguing from an economic point of view, and this needs fleshing out.
Although the government has been perceptive to the bad vibe emanating from the "Bachelor and Bachelorette Tax" conundrum and was quick to pour cold water on it, the idea may have given the heavy-spending administration something to mull over for when it needs to fill the coffers in the future.
If one day his idea is taken seriously, he must first tackle the vagueness of it and explain whether the tax would be levied on singles as well as couples who have no children. There are lots of technical singles out there _ couples who have children but have not married in order to sidestep certain tax or debt obligations.
Then, there are the genuinely single mothers and fathers as well as the couples who register their marriages but are childless. Since the argument here centres on population, propagation of the species is the real gist, not marital status.
What we also cannot leave out is the question about biological limitations and sexual orientation. Some couples are financially ready to have children but their biological condition isn't.
The same could be said of people of the third gender with a near-zero chance of bearing children (except in the very rare case of transvestite-tom boy couples).
Having or not having children should be a matter of choice. We might have to search very hard for a rationale for a tax based more or less on how much we contribute to propagation.
Playing the population game also entails social ramifications. In China, the controversial one-child birth control policy implemented for 30 years has been the focal point of criticism for widening the gender gap, causing late-term abortions and robbing families of their freedom to have more than one child.
Some people say birth is more divine than science _ "un-divine" tampering with the population alters the course of nature which may have dire consequences on the functioning of society and national progress.
What is certain is that the issue is incredibly complex and delicate and only after it is thoroughly thought through should it be taken up for consideration by policy makers.
For now, at least, it looks like Mr Therdsak's proposal is pie in the sky, although it can serve as a warning that economic measures, if they are one-sided, can be insidiously damaging socially. Public policies with an immediate impact on people's pockets and way of life need plenty of sensitisation before they materialise.
Taxing people without children will be opening a can of worms _ and it is obvious the government knows a potential quagmire when it sees one.
Kamolwat Praprutitum is an Assistant News Editor, Bangkok Post.