Woman: If you marry them, odds are they take half your stuff.
But they aren’t done then. Then they get busy taking it through the vote. Stan Greenberg has depressing statistics about un-married woman voting patterns. They supported Obama and Democrats 70% to 30%.
We want your stuff.
John Lott covers this pattern with his usual statistical/historical wizardry:
Even after accounting for a range of other factors — such as industrialization, urbanization, education and income — the impact of granting of women’s suffrage on per-capita state government expenditures and revenue was startling. Per capita state government spending after accounting for inflation had been flat or falling during the 10 years before women began voting. But state governments started expanding the first year after women voted and continued growing until within 11 years real per capita spending had more than doubled. The increase in government spending and revenue started immediately after women started voting.
Should woman have the vote? Of course. But permitting them the vote almost immediately following a Constitutional amendment that provides unfettered access to other people’s wallets wasn’t the brightest of ideas.
The result of that combination has been remarkable growth of government in the US. Some good has come with this, but much risk. Small government can’t enslave us. Large government can’t not enslave us.
How are women treated in China? Russia? Ultimately, women seeking comfort and aid from the group will find a far worse bargain than that which a loving husband that government permits to keep enough resources to provide for his family on his own.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:35 am
You overlook the large percentage of the cases where women marry what they thought would be a loving husband with all the virtues you describe. But the ugly facts of marriage for women are that a huge percentage of those husbands abandon their responsibility, leaving the wife with unsupported children and low economic prospects. Then having fall-back help from the state is critical to the safety of both the wife and the children.
How about an equally tart harangue on irresponsible men followed by a stateless and fair solution for their irresponsibility?
If I were an unmarried and thinking (with any tools except my hormones) woman, I would worry about a system that would leave me alone to pay for my mistake in picking the wrong man at an age when we are both too young to know what we are doing. Maybe the women are acting against their own interests by not voting often enough for Democrats. Fortunately for the small government obsessed alpha males, they vote only 70% Democrat.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:54 am
There are cases where men bail on their families. Except in the black community they are not a “large” percentage. Rather small actually. Men with assets who do that are hunted down now and any assets they have are taken. Men without assets make up most of that scenario however.
Woman need to pick a good man. Those that don’t are hosed under any approach. No government will come close to what a good man can do as a partner.
Woman who side with government participate in a self-defeating/feeding cycle. Government takings make “good” men rarer and rarer.
November 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Good advice. But what percentage of young adults, especially men, heed advice? How would you rate your attitude toward advice from either government or parents? Does testosterone block out advice in favor of charging ahead and proving one’s manhood and independence?
Nature provides the drive to create children but society has to protect the children thus born from abandonment and/or abuse.
Federal estimate of national arrears in child support $100 billion. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pol/IM/2008/im-08-05a.pdf
Dec, 2007 Minority Families and Child Support – Data Analysis
In 1994, the Black-White gap in child support orders was 23 percentage points (Section I, this report). That year, 66 percent of custodial White mothers and 43 percent of custodial Black mothers had orders. By 2002, that gap narrowed to 18 percentage points (66 percent of White mothers and 48 percent of Black mothers). On average, after 1994, the difference between Whites and Hispanics was 27 percentage points, between Whites and Native-Americans 24 points, and between Whites and Asian Americans, 15 points.
A quarter of non-custodial fathers are below the poverty level and 2.5 million of those pay nothing. 29% of non-custodial fathers are institutionalized, mostly in prison.
Utah collected $180M in support payments; that’s from the irresponsibles who had to be chased down. . http://www.ors.utah.gov/child_support_services.htm
Hard data on children seem easy to assemble, but data on the effect of marriage breakdown on women are much more elusive. That’s data, not opinion, since everybody’s got an opinion on soft data subjects.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I once read that we would face a future fighting over a piece of an ever shrinking pie. Unfortunately the same few are raising the ingredients, providing the utility to process, package and bake the pie and then having that pie confiscated by those unable or unwilling to bake their own. A government entity will chase down the uncaring father and of course collect a fee for doing so.
In one case a woman did not want the money to be collected from her ex to prove abandonment and allow her new husband the right to adopt her delinquent abusive drug using former husband’s child. Guess what? The government refused to stop chasing the biological father and of course collected a portion of the collected pittance, thus depriving the child of a caring father who would have adopted him. Did I mention that the government then would not have needed to “help” the child and mother? Did the government really care about the child or about the fee for its collection service INVOLUNTARILY RENDERED AND NOT CANCELLABLE? Simple answer really.
Clearly govenment is only worried about government jobs and revenues collected. The fight is over private sources of capital and the willingness of government to confiscate capital using any guise. Do not lower corporate taxes, simply put a tariff on goods entering the country to “help American business.” How exactly does higher prices while the government keeps the tariff help American business which is taxed at such a high rate to begin with? Simple – now the government is collecting equally from everyone. Nice move. Its as if you get cancer and the solution is to give it to me too. The pie is shrinking because the government is taking more and more and more….. Rant over… for now….So oh yes, women do not always want governments mandated help. Hope that closes the thought loop sufficiently.
November 8th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
It’s much more complex than you might think. The subject is best seen in “The Moral Animal” by Robert Wright. Evolutionary psychology, if you believe it, says the hormones rule anyway causing all kinds of male-female dodges, ruses and hanky-panky, only a bit dampened by social rules aimed at preventing violence at the dance.
November 10th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
sorry all for slow comment moderation. SPAM bites again, your comments got eaten and I had to “unspam” them.
November 10th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Fathers care about the welfare of their children. If somebody else is taking care of them, that satisfies natures demand on Dads. Thus, in general, governmental support for single mothers make it much more likely the father will say “they are taken care of, I can scoot”.
One immediate step I would take is to get the federal government out of supporting children or single parents. States and towns can do it and they can be much more discerning about who needs it.
re: Frank’s comment… during pregnancy and a baby’s early years woman need to be supported by somebody else. When the government is willing to do that, some men are happy to have them do it while they go off an impregnate again.
Currently, our governmental social policies are structured to maximize damage to the atomic family and to prevent as many children as possible from the advantages that form of family provides. Advocates of the current system justify it with extreme cases of abandonment or neglect. Those would be better handled by government individually rather than a nameless faceless system of check writing.
December 21st, 2011 at 10:44 am
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