Tag Archives: Earner

Commentary

MUST-READ: Why Obama’s health care plan is just wealth redistribution

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Story from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

President Obama proposes to require insurers to sell policies to everyone no matter what their health status. By itself this requirement, called “guaranteed issue,” would just mean that insurers would charge predictably sick people the extremely high insurance premiums that reflect their future expected costs. But if Congress adds another requirement, called “community rating,” insurers’ ability to charge higher premiums for higher risks will be sharply limited.

Like the homeowner who waits until his house is on fire to buy insurance, younger, poorer, healthier workers will rationally choose to avoid paying high premiums now to subsidize insurance for someone else. After all, they can always get a policy if they get sick.

To avoid this outcome, most congressional Democrats and some Republicans would combine guaranteed issue and community rating with the requirement that all workers buy health insurance—that is, an “individual mandate.” This solves the incentive problem, and guarantees that both the healthy poor 25-year-old and the sick higher-income 55-year-old have heath insurance.

But the combination of a guaranteed issue, community rating and an individual mandate means that younger, healthier, lower-income earners would be forced to subsidize older, sicker, higher-income earners. And because these subsidies are buried within health-insurance premiums, the massive income redistribution is hidden from public view and not debated.

If Congress goes down this road, health insurance premiums will increase dramatically for the overwhelming majority of people.

This is the best explanation of what is really at stake if Obama’s socialized medicine plan passes. Please read it.

What no one realizes is that when one group is funding the lifestyle choices of another group, they stop producing wealth. Maybe they just retire, or maybe they move to another country. But the result is the same: economic growth is stifled and unemployment goes through the roof. These are the unintended consequences of the policies of well-meaning but naive socialists.

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Commentary

New research paper highlights the importance of fathers

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Story here on Florida International University’s web site:

Who did the research:

FIU’s Fatherhood Lab explores these issues and Psychology Professor Gordon Finley, who runs the lab, focuses specifically on how divorce impacts fathers and the development of their children. Finley has found that a father’s role is unique and far too often neglected by the family court system.

What did they find:

Using questionnaires and a retrospective technique in which he asked 1,989 young adults to think back on their relationship with their fathers, Finley found that children of divorce really miss their fathers. According to Finley, they are denied a relationship with them because of present-day family law and court practices.

“Divorce marginalizes or severs a father’s relationship with his child,” he says. “In reality, the father becomes a visitor in his or her life. He is no longer a father in the very literal sense.”

Recently,  I blogged about why social conservatives should be fiscal conservatives.

But you fiscal conservative readers – shouldn’t you be social conservatives, too?

The statistics are alarming: children from fatherless homes account for 63 percent of youth suicides, 85 percent of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders and 71 percent of all high school dropouts. And 37 percent of fathers have no access or visitation rights to their children.

Read the whole thing, especially if you don’t usually care about social conservatism. It matters. The family is a bulwark against state power, and is the first thing to go as socialism progresses into fascism

More on this topic later in the week

Further study

Recently, I blogged about how government intrudes into the family and about the myth of “dead-beat Dads”. And about how the feminist state’s discrimination against male teachers is negatively impacting young men. And there is my series on how Democrat policies discourage marriage: Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.

News

Why social conservatives should be fiscal conservatives

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UPDATE: Welcome visitors from the Maritime Sentry! Thanks for the link!

We socially-conservative men need lots of things in order to have a successful family, and those things are all supported by free market capitalism.

Here is what I would need to marry and to run a family:

  • a job
  • the ability to to keep almost all of what I earn
  • the ability to spend what I earn on whatever I want
  • complete freedom from government influence across the board
  • the ability to find Christian services and products in the marketplace
  • the ability to find a new job if I get terminated for being a public Christian at work

The best way to achieve my social conservative goals is by voting for the economic system that will allow me to get the money and liberty to pursue the social goals.

Here are some things that raise the price of consumer goods and reduce my opportunities to find employment: (add yours in the comments)

  • workers unions
  • tariffs
  • corporate taxes
  • regulations
  • environmentalists
  • trial lawyers

And here are some others that have other nasty effects:

  • public schools: they substitute PC leftist indoctrination for a real education
  • teacher’s unions: they deny me school choice, protect unqualified teachers and indoctrinate my children with lefty crap
  • welfare programs: they waste tax money and destroy the need for real men and diminish the role of husbands and fathers
  • gun control: they disarm the law-abiding sector of the society in order to protect criminals
  • feminists: they reduce the pool of marriage-minded women by indoctrinating women to oppose chastity, family, men, God and children… and they favor no-fault divorce
  • socialists: they want government to control how I can spend my money on things like health care – they don’t want me to buy health care myself, they want me to pay for everyone else’s health care and then get in line
  • secularists: they are annoyed by the thought that I might spend my money in ways that increases the influence of Christianity and they will try to stop me from doing so
  • naturalists: they waste money speculating about ways to explain the effects of intelligence in nature without implicating an intelligence

Many of these aggravating factors have gotten worse because of the recession. We know why we are in a recession right now: because the Democrats forced banks to make loans to people who could not afford them. Obama himself worked for ACORN to sue banks like Citibank.

Consider this article from the American Thinker to see how Obama has affected the businesses where people work to earn the money they need to fuel their marriage and parenting activities.

Excerpt: (H/T 1RedThread)

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars.  This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as “new,” nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service.  There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.
Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler’s insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.
…This is beyond imagination!  My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN.  We did NOTHING wrong.This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy.  This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families?  This is a total economic disaster.

Obama has destroyed capitalism and the rule of law in this country. What happens to a man who has his means of earning a living, which is the fuel of his marriage and parenting engine, removed? Obama took trillions from the private sector to spend on his own special interest groups, like ACORN and auto worker’s unions.

Wrecking the economy is good for Democrats because their goal is to replace responsible men with the federal government. Single women, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, prefer the guarantee of security from government handouts over the responsibility of having to choose and relate to a moral, responsible husband and father.

Here is the article from the Wall Street Journal:

And the excerpt:

For example, for black males ages 20 to 24, the unemployment rate is close to 50 percent; in the black community overall, men have absorbed 100 percent of the job losses 463,000 jobs since the recession started in November 2007.

And even if the economy grows by the forecasted 1.3 percent, it’s not enough to create job growth, says Mr. Sum, who doesn’t anticipate any net job growth until 2011.

“From a fatherhood perspective, it’s going to have an enormous impact on an already fragile community,” says Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, a nonprofit group aimed at “increasing the proportion of children growing up with an involved, responsible and committed father.”

“So much of the traditional view of the father revolves around his ability to provide,” says Mr. Warren, who writes a column for The Washington Times.

…Meanwhile, black women have experienced a small net job gain during this recession, mainly due to the fact that they are overwhelmingly employed in health care and education, two sectors that haven’t experienced huge layoffs since November 2007, Mr. Sum says.

The article tries to make a case that men can have an influence in the family without earning money. In the vast majority of cases that is just not going to work. Men need to have authority in the family to have a positive impact, and that authority that is guaranteed by their role as primary provider.

Let me be clear. Welfare programs that reward people for choosing to have children from the wrong sorts of men come at the expense of good men. Good men pay the taxes for the welfare, and good men are passed over because the government is a substitute – a safety net – which removes the need for women to be choosy about men. When you have compassion on people for choosing bad men, you are encouraging them to continue to do so.

Before you vote, think about whether government welfare programs are an adequate substitute for a husband and father. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both. I know an awful lot of single-mothers who voted Democrat in the last election and had no idea that they had just voted to destroy the male roles of husband and father. Ideas have consequences.

Further study

Recently, I blogged about how government intrudes into the family and about the myth of “dead-beat Dads”. And about how the feminist state’s discrimination against male teachers is negatively impacting young men. And there is my series on how Democrat policies discourage marriage: Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.