Posted on 04/19/2008 3:03:01 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Imagine a stranger coming up to you and demanding to use your credit card to finance a weekend fling. Any rational person would refuse. Now imagine that the stranger's good time showed up on your credit card bill anyway, and your credit card company insisted that not only did you have to pay but that the money would come directly out of your paycheck.
It's not imaginary. A nationwide study released last week by Ben Scafidi of Georgia College & State University found that children born out of wedlock or left to the support of only one parent after a divorce cost taxpayers more than $112 billion a year. The costs, as calculated by Mr. Scafidi, included increased direct expenses for assistance such as Medicaid ($27.9 billion a year) and indirect expenses such as lost tax revenue ($22.3 billion).
Let's put those numbers in perspective. The discretionary part of the 2007 federal budget spent about $56 billion on education, $34.7 billion on housing, $10.7 billion on transportation and another $10.3 billion on parks and conservation. That adds up to $111.7 billion, or about $0.3 billion less than the cost of insufficiently supported children. And don't let that $0.3 billion fool you into thinking it's not all that much: Expressed the same way, the largest Powerball jackpot (as a 30-payment annuity, not a lump sum) was $0.295 billion.
In any case, children relying on taxpayer help because only one parent is in the picture cost more than the federal government's discretionary spending on schools, housing, transportation and conservation put together. As David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, said: "The study documents for the first time that divorce and unwed childbearing — besides being bad for children — are costing taxpayers a ton of money."
Messrs. Blankenhorn and Scafidi said reducing those costs "is a legitimate concern of government, policymakers and legislators."
One mechanism for reducing those costs is already in place. All that is required is the legislative will to mandate that an absent parent contribute to a child's upkeep through the same sort of automatic withholding already enforced on everybody else to subsidize that parent's child. Another would be to make it clear as a matter of law that the financial security of children be the top priority in any divorce proceeding, perhaps with a mandatory trial period before any divorce becomes final, just to make sure all support payments are being made.
Here's another way to think about it. About 130 million tax returns were filed for 2007 as of last week's deadline. Those who filed individually are expecting economic stimulus payments of up to $600; joint filers will be getting up to $1,200. But by the time those checks arrive, children born out of wedlock or left stranded by a divorce will already have cost an average $861.54 per return. In other words, even with the stimulus money, single filers are $261.54 behind.
What Mr. Scafidi's study shows is that financially, it doesn't take a village to raise a child. It takes a mother and a father.
My 33 year old son-in-law died very suddenly in Nov '06, leaving my daughter and 3 kids. I cannot say she doesn't receive any government benefits because she receives a social security survivor's check on the three kids. A total of $1049 per month, other than that she hasn't received any thing else. She manages by working a full time job and last summer she also had a part time job. I might add, by her and her husband's short sightedness, he had no life insurance.
I'm now preaching to any young working person who will listen - get life insurance, it's relatively cheap when you are young and you are not immortal.
How about this? Keep it in your pants unless you’re ready to become a father.
See my post # 35. I have my own kids to feed. I'm not interested in feeding the Welfare hordes any more. If you care so much, then you can feed them
Why?
If the father wants the kid, and is willing to accept full custody at birth, should he have the right to compel the woman to carry the child to term? If not, then why is forcing a women to deal with a baby for 9 months less acceptable than forcing a man to support a child for 18 years?
“I completely understand what you are saying, and I’m in full agreement that the court system is radically skewed toward women. I just think the decision about sex can and should include the possibility that a child will result, and that’s part of the equation for both men and women. I know it always has been for me - I never really trusted contraception completely, and did actually end up getting pregnant twice while using contraception. We were married, but wanted to get more secure before having children... oh well, the Good Lord saw it differently than we did ;-)”
I understand, and good for you kids are great.
“How about this? Keep it in your pants unless you’re ready to become a father.”
Touch a nerve did I?
How about this? Keep your skirt down and stop whoring the institute of motherhood.
bump
It’s one thing to require someone to support their child and it is already a law- and most states are quite tough enforcing it; but there will always be deadbeats no matter what the law is. My oldest daughter is a single mom after divorce- she divorced her husband when he got on meth and went off the deep end three years ago. Over the last three years he has been in and out of rehab, and various jails. When he is not in jail or rehab. he sleeps at his grandparents house. He has no assets, he has no job, he already lost his driver’s license. His family supports him and he steals from people to raise money for drugs. How are you going to make people like him pay child support?
Many of the single mom’s out there have the same story, and it is sad that they and their children depend on taxpayers to survive- but what is the answer? My daughter has never been on public assistance of any kind. We figure she and our grandson are our responsilility. She is going to nursing school and working- but we help her out with rent and groceries and whatever emergencies come up. If we just could not afford to help her then she would need public assistance. There really are no easy solutions.
I agree, all the single mothers I know are also working very hard and many are also in school so they can get a better job.
So what is it that you want? For men NOT to be held accountable for the children they father? Seems like we’ve got that now, hence the hefty tax bill to support these children. Or do you want men to be able to force a woman to have an abortion?
“So what is it that you want? For men NOT to be held accountable for the children they father? Seems like we’ve got that now, hence the hefty tax bill to support these children. Or do you want men to be able to force a woman to have an abortion?”
Why should men be held accountable for women’s decisions?
You have never answered any of my points about women having the right to say no means no, what of the 11 forms of birth control they have to use, to abort or adopt, or bear the child.... and having the man pay 60% of his total income for it...for up to 32 years!
Talk about slavery!
You have never answered for the fact that 33% of men are paying for children that they have proved are not theirs and you have not answered for the laws that appoint men as responsible for children that are not theirs just because they dated the mom.
Now answer to this injustice if you can.
You force who you can. Obviously if someone is in jail or dead, you’re not going to be able to compel them to support their kid.
But what I’m talking about is the widespread cultural acceptance of the fact that creating a kid is without consequences for BOTH parents.
You force who you can. Obviously if someone is in jail or dead, you’re not going to be able to compel them to support their kid.
But what I’m talking about is the widespread cultural acceptance of the fact that creating a kid is without consequences for BOTH parents.
Ok, if I’m king, and DNA proves someone’s not the father, he’s off the hook.
As for the rest, here’s what I want: It’s not my problem. Not one dime of my tax money goes to support the child. Beyond that, I don’t care what happens.
“Ok, if I’m king, and DNA proves someone’s not the father, he’s off the hook.
As for the rest, here’s what I want: It’s not my problem. Not one dime of my tax money goes to support the child. Beyond that, I don’t care what happens.”
Ok so injustice, violations of civil rights and the constitution are all right by you as long as your money is ok...?
Wow.
The object is to formulate POLICY and LAW that is MOST LIKELY to make the best out of a bad situation. I think that the best objective would be away from subsidizing single motherhood and toward heterosexual 2 parent adoption. That is infinintely better than the evil that is abortion. What has significantly changed in the reproductive relationship between men and women is the behavior of WOMEN due to radical feminism and the sexual revolution. Men have basically remained the indiscriminate pigs that nature inclines them to be, absent the moderating forces of civilization and traditional feminine rectitude that tended to channel the creative energy and power of men in ways that convinced women to share gene pools with them. I think most would agree that most women have been evolutionarily programmed to be more sexually reticent and discriminating due to the disproportionate burdens that reproduction incurs upon them. Societal mechanisms (which also served to moderate the rampant sexual tendencies of men that remain essentially unchanged) that acknowledged this reality have been distorted by Roe, and the cultural Marxism of the counter cultural revolution of the ‘60s that are now nearly mainstream. (This is no accident. Read about the influence of the cultural Marxists Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. Lest you think me sexist, I have simply been able to cast off the veil of obsfucation cast over my vision by political correctness.
As every basic economic theory has shown, when you subsidize a thing you get more of it. The various levels of government have been subsidizing single motherhood for four decades now with a commensurate rise in the rate of bastard children with no fathers in their lives. Public policy should be toward encouraging adoption for such children rather than all of the aid programs and forced child support payments for single women that have helped to accelerate the trend.
The problem is that PC, radical feminism, the sexual revolution, the welfare state, moral relativism, and mindless multiculturalism has weakened the strictures against illegitimacy that used to keep far more young women from this sort of thing than happens now. The stigma WAS far worse and fair or not, it served it’s purposes well. When I was growing up, if a young woman got pregnant she frequently went down south to have the child where it would be placed for adoption or raised by relatives. Today the girls in my neighborhood have baby showers, and think that nothing that is significantly wrong with that, as it is now the norm. It wasn’t in 1965.
As for men not being held responsible, in Illinois all the woman has do do if she is getting public aid is to make an allegation and the guy has to show up for the DNA test or recieve a default judgement of child support that is irrevocable. Remember, he is held LEGALLY to the strictest standard of accountability. The fact that people are able to evade the legal consequences is no reflection on the severity of the law that holds him accountable. He does not have the wide range of LEGAL options that women do. In many states, women are allowed to ABANDON newborn children that they do not want at hospitals or firehouses, no questions asked. Men don’t even have any “reproductive rights” in marriage, because his wife retains her “reproductive rights” if she “chooses” to exercise them.
But if we do have this awful regime of options for women only, than let us not make men second class citizens and create a comparable right for them as well. Do you not see that Lord Acton had it right?: i.e. “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Women and society have been absolutely corrupted by women’s absolute power in this sphere of law. We are subsidizing single motherhood and getting more of it.
It is certainly without consequence to the mother. She can abort, give up for adoption, abandon at any hospital or police station, etc. She only needs to raise a kid if she chooses to. The system encourages female irresponsibility
Fathers, and society, need balancing choices, including the choice NOT to support her child.
And there needs to be a way to impose consequences on women who choose to be concubines to gang bangers, and who then impose the consequences of their choices upon the taxpayers
The “consequences” need to be equal to both people who create a child.
The reason this is a problem now is that they are not equal. That’s how we got in this mess in the first place.
I don’t agree.
We don’t need to punish children. That’s not the answer.
We need EQUAL responsibility from adults who co-create a child.
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