Tag Archives: Incentives

Melanie Phillips: the UK should reform the Child Benefit to favor marriage

Dina send me this UK Daily Mail article by Melanie Phillips.

Excerpt:

I would say that Child Benefit itself was always a really bad idea, and real reform should get rid of it altogether.

This is because it rewards the wrong thing. It incentivises having children, whereas the state should only incentivise having children in circumstances which are advantageous for society. Since Child Benefit is awarded with the birth of every child regardless of circumstances, it has put rocket fuel behind Britain’s astronomical rate – and rising – of fatherless children born to elective lone mothers.

The rationale for this is, first, that welfare benefits should be focused on solving child poverty. This totally ignores the fact that lone parenthood is itself a major cause of child poverty; and no less important, that even more than material goods children desperately need their fathers.

The second great cry that went up when Child Benefit was first introduced was that benefits for children should be given to the mother alone, because men are feckless no-goods and would only blow such money on drink and fags. And then people were surprised that young men felt marginalised and felt no need to anchor themselves to a wife!

The unmentionable fact is that Child Benefit has been a disaster and should be replaced by incentives for marriage in the tax and benefits system — incentives which in turn do not penalise single-earner households. But that, of course, would require courage to face down the shibboleths of the left.  And that is one thing that the Cameron government shows a near-pathological aversion to displaying.

UK conservatives aren’t very conservative.

Caterpillar decides to not build its new manufacturing plant in Illinois

Central United States
Central United States

From the Peoria Journal Star.

Excerpt:

Caterpillar Inc. will not be building its new North American plant anywhere in the state of Illinois, officials with the company told local leaders Tuesday, with part of the reason being continued concerns about the business climate in the state.

The company will instead focus on a location closer to its division headquarters in Cary, N.C., Peoria County officials were told in an email sent to them shortly after the close of business and later obtained by the Journal Star. The plant stood to bring with it from Japan roughly 1,000 jobs manufacturing track-type tractors and mini hydraulic excavators.

Peoria County had submitted a regional proposal for the facility at the end of last year, and the Galesburg area also had a proposal on the table for the manufacturer. Peoria’s proposal reportedly included economic incentives as well as a promise of a legislative effort to establish a tax increment financing district to benefit the company.

At its core, Caterpillar’s decision reflects some concerns its officials had previously expressed about the economic condition of the Land of Lincoln.

“Please understand that even if your community had the right logistics for this project, Caterpillar’s previously documented concerns about the business climate and overall fiscal health of the state of Illinois still would have made it unpractical for us to select your community for this project,” the letter reads in part. “Caterpillar intends to continue calling for long-term changes in Illinois and to offer help to the state as it works toward real and fundamental reforms that will position communities like yours to compete for future projects.”

And:

Still, the rejection didn’t come as much of a surprise to state Rep. David Leitch, R-Peoria.

“I think Caterpillar has been very frustrated by the state’s inability to improve the business climate,” he said. “I still think that workers’ comp is a very serious issue for Caterpillar and others. I think there’s great concern about the financial situation within the state itself. The precarious nature of the state’s finances and having the worst bond rating in the country and huge liabilities … have not been addressed.”

The decision to locate elsewhere — and the reasons for it — should serve as a wake-up call to the region and the state as a whole, Rand said.

“I think the lessons learned here shouldn’t read like recriminations but instead resonate like a call to action,” he said. “Perhaps someone in Springfield will take notice. It’s our job to make certain they do.

“You can’t move a mountain while wearing a pair of roller skates. The disadvantages Cat identifies in Illinois are all man-made. We have to make ourselves competitive. It won’t happen because of a wish.”

Illinois is one of the bluest states in the union – totally dominated by Democrats. It’s very important for working Americans to understand that a Democrat can stand up and complain about outsourcing and greed and corporations and income inequality until they are blue in the face. It doesn’t mean a thing. Democrats are for higher taxes and more regulations on businesses, and that’s what causes outsourcing. Democrats cause unemployment. It doesn’t matter what they say. What matters is how job creators respond to the incentives created by Democrat policies.

UK Liberal Democrats oppose tax breaks for getting married and staying married

From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

 In a speech designed to reassert the Liberal Democrats’ voice in government, the embattled Deputy Prime Minister will also set out his vision of an “Open Society” — in direct contrast to the Big Society trumpeted by David Cameron, the Prime Minister.

Tax breaks for married couples are a key demand of the Tory faithful and Mr Cameron has committed to their introduction before the next election. The issue has the potential to become a major source of friction within the Coalition in the New Year.

As Mr Clegg delivers his speech in Westminster on Sunday, a number of Tory MPs will meet David Gauke, the Treasury minister, to press the government to introduce the tax break for married couples as soon as possible. It means Mr Clegg is now in open disagreement with the senior Coalition partner on two major areas of policy — the marriage tax break and Europe.

In his speech to Demos, the Left-leaning think tank, Mr Clegg will say: “We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, breadwinning dad and aproned, homemaking mother, and try and preserve it in aspic.

“That’s why Open Society Liberals and Big Society Conservatives will take a different view on a tax break for marriage. We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.”

[…] Research has suggested that children brought up by two married parents living together are happier, fare better at school and are less likely to become heavily involved in alcohol, crime or drugs.

The Centre for Social Justice [CSJ], a pro-family think tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said that just one in 11 married couples separated before their child’s fifth birthday, compared with a third of unmarried couples.

Gavin Poole, its executive director, said: “Nick Clegg’s stance flies in the face of all the evidence, completely ignoring national and international data demonstrating how important marriage is to the health and wellbeing of children and families.”

And this isn’t surprising – Obama has said the same thing about not preferring traditional marriage over other arrangements.

Excerpt:

President Obama has included homosexual couples raising children in a list of “American families” in a recent proclamation declaring Monday National Family Day.

“Whether children are raised by two parents, a single parent, grandparents, a same-sex couple, or a guardian,” said Obama in the proclamation, “families encourage us to do our best and enable us to accomplish great things.”

The president went on to encourage participation in Family Day by sharing an evening meal as a family unit.  “A strong nation is made up of strong families, and on this Family Day, we rededicate ourselves to ensuring that every American family has the chance to build a better, healthier future for themselves and their children,” he said.

The family day proclamation is in keeping with Obama’s oft-professed support for the homosexualist agenda.

When Obama proclaimed June “LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Pride Month,” he reiterated that he supports several issues on the homosexual docket, including homosexual hate crime legislation, homosexual “affirmative action” in the workplace, allowing open homosexuals in the military, and adoption to homosexual couples.

During the same month, Obama signed a presidential memorandum extending spousal benefits to homosexual partners and other unmarried partners of federal employees.

It’s important to realize that the secular left, including our own Democrats here at home, are committed to the destruction of marriage. They support policies like sex education, single mother welfare, no-fault divorce, redefining marriage, and so on. They do not support traditional marriage. And they will oppose and and all incentives given to people who choose to marry and who choose to stay married. They do not care about providing children with a stable environment to grow up in, with a mother and a father who are biologically linked to the children. They would rather have more children growing up in poverty and exposed to violence, neglect and abuse than promote traditional marriage.

The secular left opposes traditional marriage for 2 reasons. First, they do not like the way that traditional marriage tends to lend itself to the man working and the woman staying at home – they want both people to work and pay taxes, so the parents are “equal” and they want the government feed and educate the children instead, so all the children are “equal”. Second, they do want to encourage “healthy attitudes” about sex, so that people who have sex before marriage do not feel guilty about it – since the school has told them that “everyone is doing it”. The left doesn’t want people who decide not to marry to feel bad about sex. They prefer to remove the moral boundaries that protect children.

In fact, if you are a woman, and you vote for the leftists, and you are wondering why you are not married, you should understand that the very policies you vote for are the policies that take away a man’s willingness to marry and his ability to perform the traditional obligations of a husband and father. He has no reason to commit in order to get sex – you’re giving him sex for free. And he has no money to provide for a family – he paid it all to the state in taxes. And he has no ability to lead on moral and spiritual issues – that’s all been beaten out of him in the public schools, where objective morality and theism are frowned on. Think before you vote.