Tag Archives: Children

News

Government handouts make up 35% of all wages

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From CNBC.

Excerpt:

Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.

Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”

The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.

[…]Social welfare benefits have increased by $514 billion over the last two years, according to TrimTabs figures, in part because of measures implemented to fight the financial crisis. Government spending normally takes on a larger part of the spending pie during economic calamities but how can the country change this make-up with the root of the crisis (housing) still on shaky ground, benchmark interest rates already cut to zero, and a demographic shift that calls for an increase in subsidies?

At the very least, we can take solace in the fact that we’re not quite at the state welfare levels of Europe. In the U.K., social welfare benefits make up 44 percent of wages and salaries, according to TrimTabs’ Schnapp.

You can see a nice graph of welfare spending and another graph of single motherhood in this post at Director Blue. He makes the same point I made about increased welfare spending destroys marriage by reducing the need for men in their traditional roles.

Commentary

Men should prefer women who allow moral judging and spiritual leading

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I wanted to write about a common mistake that I see men making today when they are selecting women for marriage.

Some women prefer men who don’t have strong views on moral, spiritual, economic and political issues, and who don’t try to lead them in moral and spiritual areas. This is because if men know a lot about things then they tend to have definite opinions which might constitute grounds for rejecting the woman if she does something wrong, and women fear rejection. For the spiritual leadership, again, if the man has studied this a lot, then the woman fears that he will make her do a bunch of reading and debating which may not be much fun for her. So, some women avoid men like that. The question I want to ask in this post is – should men marry a woman who doesn’t like that they know a lot about moral issues and spiritual issues? I don’t think that men should, and I’m going to explain why.

Good men will want to set moral boundaries and lead spiritually when they have children.

Children usually look to Dad for guidance about the real world, because he is viewed as more “practical”. And fathers tend to want to protect children by setting moral boundaries and debating moral issues. Additionally, fathers want to protect children from believing lies that may cause them to make bad decisions. So, fathers are going to talk about things like chastity and oxytocin, as well as things like the big bang and the cosmic background radiation. They do this to tell children right and wrong with evidence and to tell children the truth about the world with evidence. What they do is NOT just state opinions or preferences – these are not take-it-or-leave it. And this can be offensive to some women who reject that morality is one way or the other, or that the universe is one way or the other. Some women elevate happiness above morality and truth, and men need to be aware that those women will not let them state moral principles or tell the truth about spiritual things. They value “compassion” (the denial of moral absolutes and personal responsibility) and “pluralism” (the denial that anyone’s beliefs about the world can be false). If a good man has children, he needs to be sure that the woman is not undermining all of his boundary-setting and truth-arguing at home. He has to test for this during the courtship.

Sometimes men are stupid, and choose women without regard to what God wants from the marriage.

Let’s pretend that men are choosing medicine instead of a wife. Some men are choosing their medicine based on the pretty packaging, and yummy taste, and then complaining when it doesn’t fix the illness. They want to choose a medicine without knowing anything about their illness and anything about the candidate medicines. They want to be “free” to choose a medicine based on the feelings they have about the medicine – not whether it will do the job required. They say: “But it looked good and tasted good! Medicines that look good and taste good should work!” They think that they can judge everything about a woman in her physical appearance and her manner. (Women do this too, when they talk about wanting things like “a deep voice” and “confidence” – without looking for signs that the man can meet marriage/parenting requirements). The purpose of the woman and the marriage, for some men, seems to be to meet their needs. So their criteria are the only criteria that matter. God is nowhere in the picture. He supposedly doesn’t want a marriage and children that honor him – oh no. He supposedly wants the man to be happy. The customer of the marriage is the man, not God.

And men really need to be on the alert to detect women who will block them from doing what good men do with marriage and children, otherwise they will not be allowed to make moral judgments and to lead the family. Men – make sure when you are choosing a wife that you choose someone who loves moral judgments and the way that you like to build other people up to be effective and influential. If the candidate resents your setting of moral boundaries, or resents your knowledge of issues, or resents your efforts to “bully” them into correct views using reasons and evidence, then you need to pass on that woman. You are a man. Men are interested in morality, truth, fixing problems and making things better. You must make sure your wife is supporting you in that role. Make sure she is choosing you for the right reasons, using the right criteria. You are a quarterback. Do not play for a team where you will be reduced to cheerleader and mascot. You were not designed to do that.

And women – it makes no sense to complain that men are not raising the children properly if you deliberately chose a man who didn’t believe in moral judgments or truth. If the man makes you behave morally in the courtship, he will make your children behave morally. If the man makes you believe true things in the courtship, he will make your children believe true things. You will just have to learn to like being judged on moral grounds and being led about spiritual things.

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News

UK judge rules that Christians have no right to religious liberty

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From the UK Telegraph. (H/T ADF Alert)

Excerpt:

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson made the remarks when ruling on the case of a Christian couple who were told that they could not be foster carers because of their view that homosexuality is wrong.

The judges underlined that, in the case of fostering arrangements at least, the right of homosexuals to equality “should take precedence” over the right of Christians to manifest their beliefs and moral values.

In a ruling with potentially wide-ranging implications, the judges said Britain was a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country in which the laws of the realm “do not include Christianity”.

[…]The ruling in the case of Owen and Eunice Johns, from Derby, is the latest in a series of judgments in which Christians have been defeated in the courts for breaching equality laws by manifesting their beliefs on homosexuality.

[…]In their ruling yesterday, the judges complained that it was not yet “well understood” that British society was largely secular and that the law has no place for Christianity.

“Although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church which is Christian, there have been enormous changes in the social and religious life of our country over the last century,” they said.

It was a “paradox” that society has become simultaneously both increasingly secular and increasingly diverse in religious affiliation, they said.

“We sit as secular judges serving a multicultural community of many faiths. We are sworn (we quote the judicial oath) to ‘do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will’.”

The judges acknowledged that there was a “tension” in the case of Mr and Mrs Johns between the rights of individuals to maintain their religious beliefs and the rights of homosexual people to live free from discrimination.

However, when fostering regulations were taken into account, “the equality provisions concerning sexual orientation should take precedence” over religious rights, they said.

The world becomes a more evil place when Christians are forced to retreat into the shadows by the fascist state. I wonder if the two defendants voted for the Labor government that brought in these anti-Christian changes? I hope that they did not vote for the Labor Party, because it is a fearful thing to be your own executioner.

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