How our tax dollars subsidize family breakup

WorldNetDaily ^ | April 26, 2008 | Stephen Baskerville

[RogerFGay]

Divorce and unwed childbearing cost taxpayers at least $112 billion each year or more than $1 trillion over the last decade. This estimate from the Institute for American Values is, as the authors suggest, likely to be an underestimate.

This staggering but plausible tally of the economic costs of family dissolution follows what we have long known about the social costs. All our major social ills -- poverty, violent crime, substance abuse, truancy and more -- are more closely linked to family breakdown and single-parent homes than to any other factor. A poor black child from an intact home is more likely to succeed than a rich white one from a single-mother home.

[Responsibility2nd]

Hello Roger.

Nice to see Dr. Baskerville weighing in on this issue, as Carey Roberts recently did.

Just too bad Baskerville - like Roberts - is part of the problem, not the solution.

How? I notice Baskerville also discounts the pro-marriage initiatives that the IAV calls for. And this is typical of all these Fathers Rights guys. Including yourself.

I've read this thread. And your replies that complain how Reagan and his conservative followers have redefined marriage to the sorry state it is now in, and I call BS on this. I'd call it something else, but Jim Robinson frowns on stronger language.

Back to how the F/R guys are part of the problem: I don't care if somehow all their wildest dreams came true and 50/50 parenting became law, and court ordered child support payments were abolished. They would still be divorced parents and so therefore responsible for this $112 billion.

Furthermore, you guys with your advice NOT to get married in the first place are also a direct and leading contributor to this $112 billion boon-doggle that taxpayers are facing.

In short: You are to blame.

[RogerFGay]

Well, I've already responded. I don't speak for any group, so I can't really reply in response to everything you've read or heard from anyone you sense is a fathers' rights advocate. Personally, I think fathers are important, and they should have rights. I don't mind advocating them. And personally I derive those rights from the constitution. So, please don't waste my time setting up another straw man argument.

Your conclusion is quite illogical of course. The FR movement started in response to these problems. It could only have been the cause if it had proceeded them; and then only if their political movement had a strong influence on policy - which it has not.

As you know - and I know you know - the vast majority of divorces are initiated by mothers, not fathers. So you can scratch that route to blame off your shoe as well.

Baskerville is a very strong supporter of traditional marriage, in the legal sense. Opposed to no-fault and arbitrary government intrusion on the institution - don't see any reasonable way for you to blame him either.

[traviskicks]

Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.

[traviskicks]

FYI:

http://www.neoperspectives.com/summary.htm

[murphE]

Catholic ping

[Puddleglum]

Good posts. Thanks for articulating what I agree with. I am tired of the “he’ll be a good Magic Genie* if he’s our Magic Genie” stuff I read here too often.

* See also Uncle Santa, King TaxMcMoneyBags, MicroManagmentMagicOctopus, and Dr. Surgery-wtih-a-Mallet

[RogerFGay]

Welfare entitlements have actually increased. The trick is that they've been shifted to different programs, provided in different ways, and to some extent, provided in the same old ways but the entitlements have simply been renamed.

One example is welfare dependence measured by the number of families on AFDC. Of course that number has dropped - AFDC was renamed to TANF. It's the same program basically, but with a new marketing strategy, more funding, and more paperwork. That's what welfare reform did. Another example; entitlements increased via "child support enforcement" in a variety of ways. One was the mechanism of welfare entitlement as a child support guarantee ... fed decided that single mothers should get both the guaranteed support plus the private support paid by fathers; instead of only an amount summing to old entitlement levels. New education progams were created ... like Europeans ... poverty and welfare dependence can now be hidden in a multitude of programs that just aren't referred to as providing basic, old-fashioned welfare benefits. Make no mistake about it, the welfare state and government power have both increased dramatically.

Poverty rates are also very sensitive to the economy, as are rates of child support payments ... i.e. what the bureacracy calls "collections" for the sake of increasing the amount of pork distributed to the states.

[RogerFGay]

Girls just wanna have a sugar daddy.

[MrB]

Instead of “liberal”, I suggest

Authoritarian
Secular
Socialists

The root word of “liberal” is “liberty”, meaning INDIVIDUAL liberty. The modern left supports NO individual freedoms except those related to consequence free sexual behavior choices.

[MrB]

She was supplied with an appartment, a vehicle, schooling and babysitting.

And had she (gov't forbid), MARRIED the father of her baby, she'd have gotten NONE of this. Stupid Leftists ignore both the obvious incentives of their policies and the obvious results. Satanic Leftists know about both, and that the results favor them remaining in power.

[RogerFGay]

One suggestion, made by Mike Adams at Townhall.com is illiberal statism.

[RogerFGay]

See also, post #30.

[Grunthor]

So make divorce illegal.

[RogerFGay]

Divorce is illegal in some countries, including until recently, at least one Western European country. I'm used to a more traditional American take on the law of Moses; if you and their neighbors can't live with the couple without going crazy, you can't demand they continue living together themselves. There's some do unto others logic in that.

But the western tradition of seeing an implied contract in marriage as a way of translating the rules into civil law was correct in my view. Certainly "social policy" - giving government arbitrary control - is an extremely dangerous and destructive direction.