Tag Archives: Single-Motherhood

Commentary

Melanie Phillips: the Left’s war on the family has left us with millions of lonely people

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Dina has been really wonderful lately, calming me down after Tuesday’s election loss. I’m trying not to write about politics for a little while. For me the biggest impact of the election will be on the children. The children who will be aborted by their mothers, the children who will be raised without their fathers, the children who will be raised with no mother or no father in same-sex “marriages” and the children who will be saddled with over $200,000 of public debt the day they are born. Truly, leftism is a philosophy that makes war on children.

Dina sent me this related article from Melanie Phillips, a well-known Jewish conservative based in the UK. It’s a really good article.

Excerpt:

Britain appears to be turning into a disunited kingdom of solitary and lonely people.

Recent figures have shown that ever-increasing numbers of middle-aged men and women are living alone.

According to the Office of National Statistics, almost 2.5 million people aged between 45 and 64 have their own home but no spouse, partner or children to live with them. Since the mid-Nineties, their number has grown by more than 50 per cent.

[…]A devastating study published last week revealed that, by the time they are 15, little more than half of British children are still living with both their natural parents. That means nearly half of 15-year-olds are not.

First the broken links between parents and children:

[I]f a parent disappears from his or her children’s lives, those children are far less likely to want to look after that parent when he or she becomes old and frail.

Nor will children want to look after a step-parent who, even if not actively resented, will not command the same bonds of love and duty as someone’s natural father or mother.

And the broken links in romantic relationships:

[O]ur post-religious, post-modern, post-moral society prizes above all else independence, which is seen as essential to fulfilling one’s potential without any constraints or interference by anyone else.

This fact more than anything else helps explain the rise and rise of cohabitation, and the reason why so many now prefer it to marriage.

The key point about marriage is that it is not a partnership or a relationship but a union in which two people bind themselves to each other for ever in solemn obligation.

By contrast, those who choose to cohabit regard their relationship as a partnership of independent individuals — in which they reserve for themselves the right to opt out, with no binding obligation on either side.

[…]Nor is it surprising that a principal reason why cohabitations collapse is the arrival of a baby. For a child demands unconditional obligation to another human being. And that’s what cohabitants don’t want.

And children who grow up without both of their biological parents:

Of course, there are lone parents who do a heroic job in bringing up their children against all the odds, but in general children in fragmented families suffer in every aspect of their lives.

They do worse at school and are less likely to get a job, are more prone to drugs, teenage pregnancy and crime, suffer more from depression and other mental disorders and are more vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

Worse still, they go on disproportionately to replicate in their adult lives the very same disordered or broken family patterns that did them so much damage.

For in fractured families, where one spouse has betrayed or abandoned another and where partners may come and go, the children grow up without any understanding of what it takes to overcome difficulties in a relationship, or what things such as trust, loyalty — and yes, real love — actually mean.

[…]From easier divorce to the abolition of laws covering illegitimacy; from the promotion of unmarried motherhood to the feminist demonisation of men; from the doctrine of non-judgmentalism, which gave a free pass to the abandonment of children, to the loading of the tax and welfare dice against marriage and in favour of lone parenthood — the wrecking ball of the Left has succeeded in smashing the traditional family to bits.

I love Melanie Phillips! And, like Dina and I, she also likes Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith – the best MP in the UK.

Now everybody click here and go read the whole thing.

News

Government spends $61,194 on welfare for each household below the poverty line

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From the Weekly Standard. (With a rant from me below)

Excerpt:

New data compiled by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that, last year, the United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty. The calculations are based on data from the Census, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Services.

“According to the Census’s American Community Survey, the number of households with incomes below the poverty line in 2011 was 16,807,795,” the Senate Budget Committee notes. “If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194 in 2011.”

This dollar figure is almost three times the amount the average household on poverty lives on per year. “If the spending on these programs were converted into cash, and distributed exclusively to the nation’s households below the poverty line, this cash amount would be over 2.5 times the federal poverty threshold for a family of four, which in 2011 was $22,350 (see table in this link),” the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee note.

To be clear, not all households living below the poverty line receive $61,194 worth of assistance per year. After all, many above the poverty line also receive benefits from social welfare programs (e.g. pell grants).

How do people become poor anyway, in a rich country like America? Is it someone else’s fault, or is it a result of their own poor decision-making? Let famous black economist Walter Williams – chair of the Department of Economics at the prestigious George Mason University –explain it for us:

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.

To augment what Dr. Williams said with a study:

Nearly three out of four poor families with children in America are headed by single parents. When a child’s father is married to his mother, however, the probability of the child’s living in poverty drops by 82 percent.

The collapse of marriage, along with a dramatic rise in births to single women, is the most important cause of childhood poverty but government policy doesn’t reflect that reality, according to a special report released today by The Heritage Foundation.

I had to spend all day Saturday and all day Sunday this weekend working to fix a defect so that I could get back on track on my next project. I am still 4 days behind schedule on that new project. If I can’t catch up, I’ll probably have to cancel my November vacation, and maybe even my December vacation. The massive expenditures on welfare for “the poor” is the reason why I have to come in on Saturday and Sunday to work. I have to  to work to pay for these people, and their enablers in the Democrat party.

Don’t I have a right to pursue my dreams and my marriage plans and my plans to be a public, effective Christian, with the money that I earn through my work? For example, on Saturday, I sent $125 to a young Christian scholar so that he could attend a conference and present a paper on a moral issue that we both care about. The government would never give him money, but they will tax me to pay for contraceptives for everyone else. I am a virgin – I don’t even buy contraceptives for myself! I really have better things to do with my earned income than buying “Obamaphones” for people who spend their entire lives collecting welfare. Don’t I have a right to spend what I earn on my own goals and priorities?

UPDATE: The Manhattan Institute explains how welfare waivers water down the work incentives for welfare.

Related posts

News

New report: welfare spending hits record $1 trillion, up 32% in Obama’s first term

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Democrats control the House and Senate in 2007
Democrats control the House and Senate in 2007

Dad sent me this excellent article from the Daily Caller.

Excerpt:

The government spent approximately $1.03 trillion on 83 means-tested federal welfare programs in fiscal year 2011 alone — a price tag that makes welfare that year the government’s largest expenditure, according to new data released by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.

The total sum taxpayers spent on federal welfare programs was derived from a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on federal welfare spending — which topped out at $745.84 billion for fiscal year 2011 — combined with an analysis from the Republican Senate Budget Committee staff of state spending on federal welfare programs (based on “The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government Finance”), which reached $282.7 billion in fiscal year 2011.

[…]According to the CRS report, which focused solely on federal spending for federal welfare programs, spending on federal welfare programs increased $563.413 billion in fiscal year 2008 to $745.84 billion in fiscal year 2011 — a 32 percent increase.

[…]The total federal spending on federal welfare programs vastly outpaced fiscal year 2011 spending on such federal expenditures as non-war defense ($540 billion), Social Security ($725 billion), Medicare ($480 billion), and departments such as Justice ($30.5 billion), Transportation ($77.3 billion) and Education ($65.486 billion) — a fact that alarmed the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who requested the report from CRS.

“These astounding figures demonstrate that the United States spends more on federal welfare than any other program in the federal budget,” Sessions wrote The Daily Caller in an email. “It is time to restore — not retreat from — the moral principles of the 1996 welfare reform. Such reforms, combined with measures to promote growth, will help both the recipient and the Treasury.”

When state spending on federal welfare programs — specifically Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program — was thrown into the mix, the amount spent on federal welfare increased 28 percent, from $798.813 billion in fiscal year 2008 to $1.028.54 trillion in fiscal year 2011.

“No longer should we measure compassion by how much money the government spends, but by how many people we help to rise out of poverty,” Sessions continued. “Welfare assistance should be seen as temporary whenever possible, and the goal must be to help more of our fellow citizens attain gainful employment and financial independence. This is about more than rescuing our finances. It’s about creating a more optimistic future for millions of struggling Americans.”

With food assistance spending increasing the most out of every category, Sessions, who has been sounding the alarm on the expanding food stamp rolls, noted that the Obama administration has allowed for the food stamp increase through misleading promotion and a disregard for self-reliance.

“The administration ludicrously argues that every five dollars in food stamp spending results in nearly 10 dollars in economic benefit. They insist that communities ‘lose out’ when more people don’t sign up for benefits,” Sessions noted. “[The United States Department of Agriculture] even awarded a recruitment worker for overcoming people’s ‘mountain pride.’ Is this a hopeful vision for the future? Do these priorities make our country stronger and our economy more secure?”

Do these numbers surprise you, because of what you hear from Obama and his allies in the media? Well, Democrats are always lying about how the Bush tax cuts caused the deficits. The truth is that revenues went up after the tax cuts because more wealthy invested their savings since they stood to keep more of the gains if their risks panned out. People invest more when they are allowed to keep more of the profit, if they get a profit. That’s how investing works – when you stand to gain more for the same risk, you risk more. And risking money in a business venture means MORE JOBS, since people get hired to take the risk, and do the work.

Bush’s tax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003, and look what happened to revenues:

Did the Bush tax cuts make revenues decrease? No!
Did the Bush tax cuts make revenues decrease? No!

Not only that, but the unemployment rate went down to just over 4% after the tax cuts. The two wars cost about $550 billion, and we actually got national security out of it. What do we get for paying people not to work? Is it government’s job to pay people not to work? I think that charity is best done by individuals, businesses and especially churches, where we can expect some moral accountability from the recipient – some improved decision-making and personal responsibility. That’s simply lacking when government mails out checks paid for by working families and their employers.

Not every Republican is good on cutting spending, but Jeff Sessions is one of the Republican majority who opposes spending. We just just need to keep getting rid of the RINOs and Democrats, and this problem will get solved. We are never going to turn this economy around when people who think that more dependency and fewer jobs cause economic growth. They are wrong about the facts and they need to go in November.