Tag Archives: Democrat Party

News

New study: marriage and church attendance help kids finish high school

1 Comment

From the Marriage & Religion Research Institute. (I grabbed the PDF in case it disappears)

Excerpt:

The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that students who now worship weekly and who grew up with two married parents are most likely to have received a high school degree.

Examining current religious attendance and structure of family of origin, 93 percent of students who grew up in intact married families and who attend weekly religious services have received a high school degree. Only 68 percent of students from all other family structures who never attend religious services received a high school degree. Eighty-nine percent of those who never worship but grew up in intact families and 81 percent of those who attend religious services weekly but come from other family structures received high school degrees.

Examining current religious attendance only, 87 percent of students who attend weekly religious services received a high school degree. In contrast, only 70 percent of those who never worship received a high school degree. Between these two extremes are those who attend at least monthly (81 percent) and those who attend less than monthly (76 percent).

Examining structure of family of origin, 91 percent of individuals who grew up with married biological parents received a high school degree. They are followed by those who grew up in a married stepfamily (80 percent), those who grew up with a single, divorced parent (76 percent), those who grew up in a cohabiting stepfamily (68 percent), those who grew up with an always-single parent (63 percent), and those who grew up in an intact cohabiting family (60 percent).

See the original article for footnotes, including links to other studies that confirm this finding.

The reason why this matters is because finishing high school is very important in order for people to avoid being poor.

Black economist Walter Williams explains.

Excerpt:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.

Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.

Finishing high school is a major factor to prevent poverty, but research shows that the greatest preventer of child poverty (and child abuse) is marriage. Marriage stability also increases with regular church attendance. So, church attendance promotes both the completion of high school as well as the stability of marriage. Therefore, regular church attendance prevents poverty by helping two of the causes of poverty-avoidance.

Now… should we expect the secular left to promote church attendance based on this evidence? I think not.

One other point. The more marriage declines, the more children are raised without fathers, which makes it much less likely that children will accept the faith of their parents, leading to lower church attendance for the children of these fatherless homes. It’s a vicious cycle. The policies of the left that undermine marriage stability, like sex education, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce and single motherhood welfare, actually cause the decline in church attendance that drives marriage rates and high school graduation rates down.

News

Everything you need to know about Paul Krugman and the New York Times

Leave a comment
Government Spending Vs Jobs
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control in 2007

From Newsbusters.

Excerpt:

Exactly what country does New York Times columnist Paul Krugman actually reside in?

Before you answer, consider the following sentence from his article Monday:

Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters, the past year has actually been a pretty good test of the theory that slashing government spending actually creates jobs.

For the past year to be a good test of this theory, there would have needed to be a slash to government spending, right?

Was this the case?

Hardly.

In fiscal 2010, total federal outlays were $3.72 trillion. In fiscal 2011 which ends September 30, we’re projected to spend $3.83 trillion. That’s a $111 billion increase.

Yet this Nobel laureate in economics thinks government spending was slashed.

In reality, since the last time such outlays declined year over year was 1965, we should really be testing Krugman, Obama, and the Democrats’ theory that dramatic increases in government spending creates jobs.

Democrats have been radically increasing outlays since they took over Congress in 2007. During this time, as spending rose by 41 percent, the economy lost roughly seven million jobs sending unemployment skyrocketing from 4.4 percent to 9.1 percent.

If Krugman wasn’t delusional, the above referenced sentence from his Monday column would read, “Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters like Barack Obama, the Democrats, Robert Reich, and me, the past four years have actually been a fabulous test of the theory that exploding government spending actually creates jobs.

Isn’t that really the only conclusion that one could draw given what’s happened since this recent Keynesian experiment began in 2007?

Of course, it’s unfair to expect this Nobel laureate in economics to make such an obvious determination.

He thinks a $111 billion increase in spending is a slash.

I think that Paul Krugman is going beyond mere mendacity these days, as his Keynesian worldview is disproved right before his eyes. The whole country is being treated to a massive disproof of all of his ideas, and this must be causing him some mental strain.

Is Paul Krugman seen as reliable?

I’m not the only one to point out how nutty Krugman has become of late.

Here’s a bunch of non-conservatives:

Why does the New York Times hire a deluded person? Because they don’t so much report the news as they provide their readers with “confirmation” of a worldview that allows them to feel that they are right without having to care about reality. In short, Krugman is a well-paid writer of fiction.

Related posts

News

Employers added ZERO net jobs in August

1 Comment

Story from Bloomberg News.

Excerpt:

Employment in the U.S. unexpectedly stagnated in August and the jobless rate held at 9.1 percent as American employers became less confident in the strength of the recovery.

Payrolls were unchanged last month, the weakest reading since September 2010, after an 85,000 gain in July that was less than initially estimated, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for a rise of 65,000. Hourly earnings and hours worked both declined. The August data included a 48,000 drop in information industry jobs, mostly reflecting striking Verizon Communications Inc. workers.

The first U.S. credit downgrade, political squabbling over the budget and mounting fear of a default in Europe caused the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to plummet 17 percent from July 22 to Aug. 8, prompting companies and consumers to cut back. The lack of hiring is one reason Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week said the central bank still has tools available to stimulate growth.

“Net employment flat-lined in August,” Ellen Zentner, a senior U.S. economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York, who forecast a decline of 5,000, said before the report. “When the outlook is uncertain, businesses don’t hire. Calls that we’re on the cusp of a recession or already there are not completely unwarranted.”

Estimates of the 86 economists surveyed by Bloomberg for overall payrolls ranged from a decline of 20,000 to a 160,000 increase. The unemployment rate was projected to hold at 9.1 percent, according to the survey median. Estimates ranged from 9 percent to 9.2 percent.

Don Surber comments:

Excerpt:

Unexpectedly?

Only a mouth-breathing, in-bred moron was surprised to learn that President Obama’s policies have put the economy in a stupor. I thought Bloomberg News was a wire service that specialized in commerce. Have they no one at that agency who does anything but kiss-up to the socialists who are now in charge of our government?

What a mess. The month of August began with the first downgrade of America’s credit rating in memory. That failure alone should cost him his job.

Youth unemployment tops 25%. Black unemployment is at 16.7%. Hispanic unemployment is at 11.3%.

14 million people are jobless.

6 million people have not had a job for more than 6 months.

86 million working-age people are not in the job market.

[…]Few companies are expanding as they wonder what in the heck his EPA policies will do to them, what in the heck his health insurance policies will do to them and what in the heck his tax policies will do to them. The 9.1% unemployment rate in August matches July as the economy hits the horse latitudes, where it will stay for about another year until hope of a new regime change begins to take hold.

Barack Obama’s presidency has hurt the poor and minorities the hardest. Their jobs were the first to go and on his watch, 1.5 million fewer Americans have jobs than on his Inauguration Day. This is terrible. He may have inherited a recession but he seems bound and determined to make it a depression.

What does Bloomberg mean by “unexpectedly”. Does letting the government take money from taxpayers and businesses create jobs?

CBS News reports on what the stimulus does:

ABC News reports on more stimulus spending:

And this one features a real economist:

Let’s learn some economics and find out why Obama’s government spending, green jobs, tax the rich, regulate businesses approach hasn’t work to create jobs.

Economics in One Lesson

Perhaps it is time to review Henry Hazlitt’s book on basic economics “Economics in One Lesson”. Let’s look in chapter 4, which is entitled “Public Works Mean Taxes”.

Excerpt from that chapter:

Therefore, for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the $10 million taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project. More bridge builders; fewer automobile workers, television technicians, clothing workers, farmers.

And consider Chapter 5 as well, entitled “Taxes Discourage Production”.

In our modern world there is never the same percentage of income tax levied on everybody. The great burden of income taxes is imposed on a minor percentage of the nation’s income; and these income taxes have to be supplemented by taxes of other kinds. These taxes inevitably affect the actions and incentives of those from whom they are taken. When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only fifty-two cents of every dollar it gains, and when it cannot adequately offset its years of losses against its years of gains, its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those attended with a minimum of risk. People who recognize this situation are deterred from starting new enterprises. Thus old employers do not give more employment, or not as much more as they might have; and others decide not to become employers at all. Improved machinery and better-equipped factories come into existence much more slowly than they otherwise would. The result in the long run is that consumers are prevented from getting better and cheaper products to the extent that they otherwise would, and that real wages are held down, compared with what they might have been.

There is a similar effect when personal incomes are taxed 50, 60 or 70 percent. People begin to ask themselves why they should work six, eight or nine months of the entire year for the government, and only six, four or three months for themselves and their families. If they lose the whole dollar when they lose, but can keep only a fraction of it when they win, they decide that it is foolish to take risks with their capital. In addition, the capital available for risk-taking itself shrinks enormously. It is being taxed away before it can be accumulated. In brief, capital to provide new private jobs is first prevented from coming into existence, and the part that does come into existence is then discouraged from starting new enterprises. The government spenders create the very problem of unemployment that they profess to solve.

And the results we see today are consistent with the predictions of basic economic theory.