Polemics

Christians have always believed in a romantic, committed, exclusive view of sex

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Does government provide incentives for people to get married?
The natural family is the only place where sexual activity makes sense

Consider this post from Michael Krueger, and it’s a must-read.

Excerpt:

[I]n the second century, as Christianity emerged with a distinctive religious identity, the surrounding pagan culture began to take notice.  And it didn’t like what it saw.  Christians were seen as strange and superstitious–a peculiar religious movement that undermined the norms of a decent society.  Christians were, well, different.

So, what was so different about Christians compared to the surrounding Greco-Roman culture?

[…]While it was not unusual for Roman citizens to have multiple sexual partners, homosexual encounters, and engagement with temple prostitutes, Christians stood out precisely because of their refusal to engage in these practices.

For instance, Tertullian goes to great lengths to defend the legitimacy of Christianity by pointing out how Christians are generous and share their resources with all those in need.  But, then he says, “One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives” (Apol. 39). Why does he say this?  Because, in the Greco-Roman world, it was not unusual for people to share their spouses with each other.

In the second-century Epistle to Diognetus, the author goes out of his way to declare how normal Christians are in regard to what they wear, what they eat, and how they participate in society.  However, he then says, “[Christians] share their meals, but not their sexual partners” (Diogn. 5.7).  Again, this is the trait that makes Christians different.

We see this play out again in the second-century Apology of Aristides.  Aristides defends the legitimacy of the Christian faith to the emperor Hadrian by pointing out how Christians “do not commit adultery nor fornication” and “their men keep themselves from every unlawful union” (15).

A final example comes from the second-century apology of Minucius Felix.  In his defense to Octavius, he contrasts the sexual ethic of the pagan world with that of Christians:

Among the Persians, a promiscuous association between sons and mothers is allowed. Marriages with sisters are legitimate among the Egyptians and in Athens. Your records and your tragedies, which you both read and hear with pleasure, glory in incests: thus also you worship incestuous gods, who have intercourse with mothers, with daughters, with sisters. With reason, therefore, is incest frequently detected among you, and is continually permitted. Miserable men, you may even, without knowing it, rush into what is unlawful: since you scatter your lusts promiscuously, since you everywhere beget children, since you frequently expose even those who are born at home to the mercy of others, it is inevitable that you must come back to your own children, and stray to your own offspring. Thus you continue the story of incest, even although you have no consciousness of your crime. But we maintain our modesty not in appearance, but in our heart we gladly abide by the bond of a single marriage; in the desire of procreating, we know either one wife, or none at all (31).

I think that women should want men who believe in chastity before marriage and who believe in committing to you exclusively as protector and provider for a lifetime. And they should have to prove that they can be faithful and committed during the courtship, too. You can’t just take their word for it, they have to work before the marriage to demonstrate their ability as a husband and father. It’s not just that this is the way that we have always done it, it’s that there are real reasons why chastity and fidelity are important for marriage success. You can’t just have fun, pick anyone you like, and have marriage “work out”. You have to be comfortable with chastity and fidelity, and the person you choose has to be comfortable with chastity and fidelity. It takes two people with self-control to make a stable, exclusive and committed marriage.

News

Obama voters face choice between an expensive fine and an expensive Bronze plan

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Should we pick a candidate based on our emotional response to his confidence?
Should we pick a candidate based on our emotional response to his confidence?

Obama told us during his election campaigns that health care premiums would go down an average of $2,500. How did he intend to achieve that? By reducing choice and competition, and require insurance companies to cover more stuff, like drug addiction therapy, onto every health care plan.

Here he is promising things to young voters:

So what happened? Health care premiums went up, because the more stuff that your health care plan has to cover (e.g. – drug addiction treatment) the more you have to pay for that health care plan. And so, as I blogged about before, health care premiums have actually gone up $4,865 on average, per year. Yes, this is another case of keep your doctor / keep your health plan lies.

Well, that’s all fine and good, because this is America, and no one will be forced to buy these expensive plans that cover things that you don’t want or need, right? Well, not so much. See, there is this Obamacare thing called the “individual mandate”, and it says that everyone has to buy health care, or they have to pay a fine. Even single young men in their 30s who don’t even need health care have to buy health care.

Investors Business Daily explains:

Millions of people who will start shopping for ObamaCare plans as early as Sunday will have one question in mind: How much is the cheapest plan for avoiding a $695 individual mandate penalty?

For the vast majority, that means the cheapest bronze plan. The next question they’ll consider, taking into account the deductible that will rise as high as $6,850 in 2016, is whether they would be better off paying a penalty.

A lot of factors will play into the decision, but for most relatively young and healthy adults, the biggest will be just how much more it will cost to get insurance than to go without coverage.

An IBD review of 2016 rates in one major metro area in each of the 37 states using HealthCare.gov reveals where higher bronze-plan costs — even after subsidies — will make the mandate penalty look relatively attractive.

So you either have to pay a $695 or you have to buy a bronze plan with a $6,850 deductible. Most people never use that much health care, so they will be paying out of pocket for all their health care anyway. So, either you are paying a fine that covers nothing, or you are paying for a plan that covers nothing.

Here is the chart of bronze health care plans:

Obamacare Bronze plans: and don't forget the $6850 deductibles
Obamacare Bronze plans (click for larger image)

More:

The accompanying chart lists the after-subsidy cost of the cheapest bronze plan for a 30-year-old earning 257% of the poverty level, or about $30,000. At the top of the chart, young adults earning $30,000 in Miami, Atlanta and Jackson, Miss., would have to pay more than $2,200 for the cheapest exchange plan — or more than triple the mandate penalty.

What’s nice about this is the justice of it. It’s the young, hip, middle-class young people who are going to end up with the bill for their Democrat-voting in 2008 and 2012.

The question is whether average moderate-earning 30-year-olds, assuming they have that much money available for insurance, will think it is better to pay an extra $1,130 or so for a plan with a huge deductible or whether it makes sense to hope for the best and hold on to that cash to pay any medical bills that arise.

A logical goal of the individual mandate is to get young and healthy adults with moderate incomes to sign up for coverage, since low-income young adults get pretty big subsidies and may not need as much of a push to enroll. Yet ObamaCare’s individual mandate does not seem well designed to achieve its goal, which helps explain why young-adult enrollment is somewhere around 2 million below target at this point.

Health care reform is a valid goal, and we do need health care to get cheaper. But the way to do that is not to elect someone who has not done it, but who just makes a lot of promises. The way to fix health care is by electing someone who has experience at fixing health care.

News

New study: Average student loan balance at graduation hits record high under Obama

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President Obama's student loan bubble
President Obama’s student loan bubble

The new study is discussed in The Federalist.

Excerpt:

Graduates from the class of 2014 can thank President Obama that they’re exiting college with the highest student loan burden ever. They graduated with an average of $28,950 in student loans, according to a new study by the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS).

[…]A recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York examining how student loans rose between 2001-2012 concluded that the more government subsidizes education, the more colleges raise their prices.

The study explains:

Yearly student loan originations grew from $53 billion to $120 billion between 2001 and 2012, with about 90% of originations in recent years occurring through federal student aid programs. Against this backdrop of increased borrowing, average sticker tuition rose 46% in constant 2012 dollars between 2001 and 2012, from $6,950 to $10,200.

In the years examined, tuition increased about 55 to 65 cents for every dollar the federal government gave out in student loans or Pell Grants.

Surprise! A government program designed to lower the cost of education actually did the opposite. Once colleges saw they could rake in money from helpless taxpayers, they figured: “Why stop now?” Consequently, tuition has skyrocketed due to government involvement.

Under Obama’s leadership, the U.S. Department of Education has increased the maximum Pell Grant award from $1,000 in 2008 to $5,730 for 2014-15. Additionally, it has doubled the number of students slated to receive these funds. If history is any indication, this expansion won’t lower the cost of higher education. In fact, it will probably do the opposite.

What’s more, increasing numbers of these loans aren’t getting repaid. Currently, about 40 million people owe about $1.2 trillion in student debt. Last year, 11.8 percent of student loans subsidized by the government fell into default, which is bad news for taxpayers, who are left holding the bag.

Well, if the rate of defaults is increasing, then how come bankers are still giving out these loans. Glad you asked. It’s not bankers who is giving out these loans with bank money. It’s Obama giving out these loans with taxpayer money. You see, Obama nationalized the student loan system in 2010, so that anyone can now get a loan no matter what they study, and no one has any requirement that they study something that allows them to pay the money back.

Investors Business Daily explains:

In 2010, Obama eliminated the federal guaranteed loan program, which let private lenders offer student loans at low interest rates. Now, the Department of Education is the only place to go for such loans.

Obama sold this government takeover as a way to save money — why bear the costs of guaranteeing private loans, he said, when the government could cut out the middleman and lend the money itself?

The cost savings didn’t happen. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office just increased its 10-year forecast for the loan program’s costs by $27 billion, or 30%.

What did happen was an explosive growth in the amount of federal student loan debt… The result of Obama’s action is striking. In each of the past six years, federal direct student loan debt has climbed by more than $100 billion.

And since Obama keeps making it easier and easier to avoid repaying those loans, it’s a problem that taxpayers will eventually have to shoulder.

The radically leftist New York Times, of all places, supports this view that big government is behind the rise in the cost of higher education (student loan bubble), just like big government was behind the housing bubble.

This is by Paul F. Campos, law professor at the radically leftist UC Boulder.

He writes:

[P]ublic investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.

[…][F]ar from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. 

[…]As the baby boomers reached college age, state appropriations to higher education skyrocketed, increasing more than fourfold in today’s dollars, from $11.1 billion in 1960 to $48.2 billion in 1975. By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.

[…]State appropriations reached a record inflation-adjusted high of $86.6 billion in 2009. They declined as a consequence of the Great Recession, but have since risen to $81 billion. And these totals do not include the enormous expansion of the federal Pell Grant program, which has grown, in today’s dollars, to $34.3 billion per year from $10.3 billion in 2000.

The more money that is attached to students, the more money universities charge – simple. Taxpayers are on the hook for all these defaulted loans, as well as state funding of higher education, as well as the increase in Pell grants. And what is Hillary Clinton’s response to all this? Why, to make taxpayers pay for college for everyone. Who do you think is going to pay for that?

Maybe we should be electing someone who actually knows how to make the costs of higher education go down so that students don’t have to be stuck with these huge student loan balances.