Mr. Malanga covers the true basics of the myths surrounding the palliatives proffered by politicians and demogagues.
Finding solutions to these problems is far more complicated and politically risky than offering palliatives about minimum wage hikes or tax cuts. To address the issue of the more than 80 percent of poor families where no one works full time requires figuring out how to dissuade poor girls without a high school education from having children by a man who won’t marry and support them. It also requires doing a much better job helping make ex-convicts--the 700,000 or so mostly men who leave prison each year--more employable. And it requires finding more successful ways of helping alcoholics and drug addicts—who make up a sizeable portion of those who say they can’t work because they are ill—get straight and stay clean.
Mr. Malanga has said a very unorthodox thing which has made me smile and because it's what I've been saying for way too many years:
figuring out how to dissuade poor girls without a high school education from having children by a man who won’t marry and support them.
The past 40 years has been the feminist demand for a man to "keep it in his pants". I, OTOH, have always asserted that it was females we needed to focus on in this regard. If she doesn't uncross her legs, his "it" has no where to go. Feminists don't like this response. But Mr. Malanga is right to focus upon the female in this equasion. For many reasons. And to add that "having children by a man who won’t marry and support them" in addendum to the focus.
Most of these males who won't marry and support their baby's mother, don't marry the mother and because... they can't afford to. IME, most can't afford to because they often have little more than what amounts to a 1st grade literacy level. And many are held hostage by "their culture" from advancing, breaking away from the pack, improving themselves, and living free.
“Most of these males who won’t marry and support their baby’s mother, don’t marry the mother and because... they can’t afford to.”
Many of these “men” already have several kids by several different moms by the time they graduate high school. A lady I know (nice hard-working individual) has 3 kids by 3 different men, starting when she was 14 years old. Never married. Each of her sons has multiple kids by multiple moms. Never married. Each of her 3 sons has been in prison at least once. None ever [legally] employed.
Monogamy, it seems, is not an option.
“how to dissuade poor girls without a high school education from having children by a man who won’t marry and support them. It also requires doing a much better job helping make ex-convicts—the 700,000 or so mostly men who leave prison each year—more employable.
And it requires finding more successful ways of helping alcoholics and drug addicts—who make up a sizeable portion of those who say they can’t work because they are ill—get straight and stay clean.”
It’s not complexity requiring a solution here. As Reagan said, it’s a simple answer that requires a ‘hard moral choice.’