Tag Archives: Economics

News

FRC releases new study on marriage and economic well-being

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Mary found this little blurb on the Christian Post.

Excerpt:

Marriage plays a big role in the well-being of the U.S. economy, such that sound and stable marriages keep the economy healthy while divorce helps the economy regress, a new report suggests.

The findings released by the Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute show how intact married-couple families outperform other family types, including remarried families, divorced families, single-parent families, and cohabiting families, in all of the following economic segments: employment, income, net value, net worth, poverty, receipt of welfare and child economic well-being.

Basically the stats show that the more intact the family remains, the less the difficulties and the inefficiencies the family encounters.

Married-couple families generate the most income with “the median household income twice that of divorced households and four times that of separated households,” reads the report.

Divorced families on the other hand experience a sharp decrease in income after the separation. Divorced women are affected the most as they are 2.83 times more prone to live in poverty than women who remain married.

MARRI Director Pat Fagan, Ph.D, said couples that remain stably married can provide a sound environment where children can be securely fostered while divorce triggers society’s reliance on government welfare programs – programs that currently cost tax payers around $112 billion per year.

Then I went looking for the research paper and found this press release.

Excerpt:

The economic well-being of the United States is strongly related to marriage, which is a choice about how we channel our sexuality. The implications of sexual choices are apparent when comparing family structures across basic economic measures such as employment, income, net worth, poverty, receipt of welfare, and child economic well-being. In all of these the stable, intact married family outperforms other sexual partnering structures; hence the economy rises with the former and encounters more difficulties and inefficiencies as it diverges from it.

Family Structures and Economic Outcomes:

  • Employment and Income. Married-couple families generate the most income, on average. Young married men are more likely to be in the labor force, employed, and working a full-time job than their nonmarried counterparts. Cohabiting men have less stable employment histories than single and married men. Married families generally earn higher incomes than stepfamilies, cohabiting families, divorced families, separated families, and single-parent families. According to one study, married couples had a median household income twice that of divorced households and four times the household income of separated households.
  • Net Worth. Intact, married families have the greatest net worth. A family’s net worth is the value of all its assets minus any liabilities it holds. Married households’ net worth is attributable to more than simply having two adults in the household: a longer-term economic outlook, thrift, and greater head-of-household earning ability (the marriage premium) all contribute to greater household net worth.
  • Poverty and Welfare. Poverty rates are significantly higher among cohabiting families and single-parent families than among married families. Over one third of single mothers live in poverty. Nearly 60 percent of non-teenage single mothers rely on food stamps or cash welfare payments.
  • Child Economic Mobility and Well-Being. Children in married, two-parent families enjoy more economic well-being than children in any other family structure. Children in cohabiting families enjoy less economic well-being than children in married families, but more than children in single-parent families. The children of married parents also enjoy relatively strong upward mobility. By contrast, divorce is correlated with downward mobility. A non-intact family background increases by over 50 percent a boy’s odds of ending up in the lowest socioeconomic level.

Having a high net worth is necessary if you want to have an impact. With money, you can buy people apologetics books, sponsor debates, get more degrees, and contribute to Michele Bachmann, and send your children to the best universities so they can have an influence. Therefore, we need to be extra careful who we marry, extra diligent about preparing for our roles in marriage, and extra persistent in staying married. We need the money for important things.

The FRC is my second favorite think tank, right behind the Heritage Foundation.

Commentary

Thomas Sowell explains why third-world countries are so poor

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Thomas Sowell

Mary sent me this article from TownHall.com.

Excerpt:

The idea that the rich have gotten rich by making the poor poor has been an ideological theme that has played well in Third World countries, to explain why they lag so far behind the West.

[…]There is obviously something there with very deep emotional appeal. Moreover, because nothing is easier to find than sins among human beings, there will never be a lack of evil deeds to make that explanation seem plausible.

Because the Western culture has been ascendant in the world in recent centuries, the image of rich white people and poor non-white people has made a deep impression, whether in theories of racial superiority– which were big among “progressives” in the early 20th century– or in theories of exploitation among “progressives” later on.

In a wider view of history, however, it becomes clear that, for centuries before the European ascendancy, Europe lagged far behind China in many achievements. Since neither of them changed much genetically between those times and the later rise of Europe, it is hard to reconcile this role reversal with racial theories.

More important, the Chinese were not to blame for Europe’s problems– which would not be solved until the Europeans themselves finally got their own act together, instead of blaming others. If they had listened to people like Jeremiah Wright, Europe might still be in the Dark Ages.

It is hard to reconcile “exploitation” theories with the facts. While there have been conquered peoples made poorer by their conquerors, especially by Spanish conquerors in the Western Hemisphere, in general most poor countries were poor for reasons that existed before the conquerors arrived. Some Third World countries are poorer today than they were when they were ruled by Western countries, generations ago.

It’s sad, because when I talk to many people from other countries, like Mexico and Greece, they blame the United States for their own bad decisions, instead of imitating United States policies. Maybe if Mexico and Greece stopped blaming others and started trying to imitate the best countries, then they would be more like Chile. A few decades ago, Chile made a decision to re-make their economy to be more American than America. And the result is that they are seeing record economic growth. Prosperity has nothing to do with skin color – just with policies. Chile embraced good economic policies and now they are much richer than before. The main thing to do is to make sure that you have economists in charge, not community organizers. Canada has an economist in charge, and they just scored DOUBLE the GDP growth of the United States. Knowledge matters.

News

Republican Allen West debates economic policy on Fox News Sunday

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From Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

Here’s the transcript.

Excerpt:

WALLACE: Congressman West, as we saw in the special election up in New York state this week, where the Democrat beat the Republican and Medicare was a big issue, as we see in the national polls a lot of people, especially seniors, don’t want to see Medicare changed this way.

WEST: Well, I think when you look at Paul Ryan’s plan, first of all, there is no change for anyone who is a senior 55 years and above. But as I sit here right now, I’m 50 years of age. And we already know that the board of trustee has said, you got 13 years and something very bad is going to happen with Medicare. So, what is going to be there for myself when I get 63 to 65?

So, I think the thing that we see is at least there’s a plan out there to try to have some type of reform.

And there was a great article by Mr. Stanley Druckenmiller in The Wall Street Journal back in the 15th of May that talked about the fact that the financial markets, a lot of these, you know, bond markets are looking to see: are we going to have some type of long- term viable solution and plan as we go forward?

WALLACE: But let me pick up on that, Congressman Edwards, because the knock against the Democrats is you don’t have a plan, that congressional Democrats didn’t pass a budget last year. Senate Democrats aren’t offering a budget this year — President Obama talks having an independent panel of medical experts who are going to find $20 billion of cuts somewhere. At least they’ve got a plan.

EDWARDS: Well, I think it’s not true that we don’t have a plan. And, in fact, when we passed the Affordable Care Act last year, we put in some real markers for Medicare that in fact reduced Medicare costs. We invested in preventive care for seniors because we know that the real drivers of Medicare are these long-term costs for chronic care that happens at the — you know, at the end of life.

You know, Republicans are very interesting because in their budget what they would do is repeal preventive care. Prescription drug coverage — we also closed the donut hole there, which is costing seniors a boatload of money and is not very efficient on the system.

So, to say that Democrats don’t have a plan I think is incorrect. I mean, in fact, the plan is to preserve and protect Medicare for future generations. And Republicans want to dismantle that.

WEST: Yes, but I think as you sit here and look at the two of us, one of us has voted to cut Medicare. When you look at the fact you voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which had $500 million of cuts of Medicare. And we also have this independent payment advisory board, these 15 bureaucrats, that are supposed to control the cost of Medicare. I mean, that’s something that really does scare seniors.

What we are talking is something that does not affect any senior, anyone 55 years and above. We’re talking about something that does put in some type of viable plan to sustain Medicare for the future, because as we know, it was put out three weeks ago, it won’t be there.

EDWARDS: Well, the congressman thinks the seniors are only interested in what’s good for them. And what we know about seniors, whether they’re in south Florida or in Maryland, is that they actually care about what happens with that next generation. They care about whether we’re going to cover preventive care and prescription drug.

WEST: But if you don’t have a plan, there is nothing for the next generation.

EDWARDS: And that they are — and that they are not sent in the private market to negotiate with insurance companies. We know that that would be a failure. And that’s exactly what the Republican plan calls for. I can’t negotiate on —

WALLACE: Let me move on to another thing, because the biggest difference, it seems to me, looking at your two positions on how to deal with the deficit is over taxes.

Congresswoman Edwards, you have a big plan to increase revenues. And let’s put it up on the screen. You would raise tax rates for the wealthy. You would raise the estate tax. You would tax capital gains and dividend as ordinary income and you would end tax subsidies for oil and gas companies.

So, raise taxes in the middle of a weak recovery?

EDWARDS: Well, let’s be clear — raise tax on the wealthiest 2 percent who have run away with the store for the last 10 years and haven’t put money back into the economy. I mean, that’s a fact, because if that trickle-down theory had worked, our economy would be in good shape right now.

And so, we do — I do subscribe to a plan that says, you know what? Middle income earners, you’ve already shared a fair burden of your taxes. But the wealthiest 2 percent have not.

And there’s no excuse whatsoever for continuing taxes for people who make over $500,000 a year.

WALLACE: Congressman West, you got something there?

WEST: Yes. I got a very interesting article which was written on the 26th of May by Steven Moore for The Wall Street Journal that talks about — we are talking about a 62 percent top tax rate and the absolutely abysmal effects that it will have on this economy.

And one of the great things he says here is, in the end, “The Tax Foundation recently noted that in 2009, U.S. collected a higher share of income and payroll taxes, 45 percent, from the richest 10 percent of tax files than any other nation, including some such socialist welfare states.”

So, I think that we are already getting a lot of the juice from those top brackets. But go back and look at history, Donna, when we looked at Coolidge and Harding. It took those marginal tax rates down to 29 percent. And the percentage of revenues for GDP grew. But after them came Hoover and Roosevelt who took it from 24 percent up to 83 percent, and the percentage of revenues decreased. Even John F. Kennedy, when he came in and saw a 91 percent marginal tax rate said that was too high. He took it down to 71 percent.

He seems to have all the facts and figures at his fingertips! Just like William Lane Craig, except he’s a former Army Lt. Colonel.