Tag Archives: Taxes

Typical working UK mother spends 19 minutes per day with her children

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

According to the Office of National Statistics, a typical working mother spends as little as  19 minutes a day with her children; working fathers even less.

Time-neglect is what child psychologists call it, and they are studying its effect in middle-class families with increasing concern.

‘We are seeing some of the most privileged and yet in some ways the most neglected children in history,’ says child psychologist Dr Richard House, from the University of Roehampton.

We have some of the longest working hours in Europe and the recession is piling pressure on parents to be the last to leave the office. The guilt parents feel about this has consequences for when they are with their children.

‘Parents are reluctant to say “No” when they need to. They try to compensate by lavishing gifts on them. Neither is good for children’s well-being and healthy development,’ says Dr House.

His warnings follow a Unicef report that admonished British parents for trapping their children in a ‘cycle of compulsive consumerism’ by showering them with toys and designer labels rather than time.

[…]Unicef’s research also shows that what children actually want is more stable family time, as do many of the parents struggling to provide for them.

More than two-thirds of mothers work, and no one would want to see the progress women have made in the workplace reversed.

No one except the husbands and the children, but who cares about them?

More:

Historian Rebecca Fraser, mother of three daughters and author of A People’s History Of Britain, says that while nostalgia for the Fifties is understandable, the progress of women in education makes a return to that model unlikely.

‘In 1951, only one quarter of the tiny British student population (5 per cent of adults) were women, while in 2011 more than half the student population are female,’ she says.

‘With so many attending university, it is probably inevitable that most women are going to continue to want a career.’

[…]Child-care experts warn that time-neglect by high-achievers  can have serious consequences on their children.

Professor Suniya Luthar, a world expert in the welfare of children from affluent homes, has just completed research that shows the numbers of teenagers with significant mental health issues can be up to three times higher among those from high-achieving and prosperous families.

‘Traditionally, the view is that these children have it all, but the pressures on them are immense,’ says Professor Luthar.

‘The solution for any parent is to spend time with them.’

They also need clear boundaries, she says, something that ‘uber-working’ parents often are less able to enforce.

Every decision a woman makes has to be based on the plan for a marriage, family and children. Ideologies like feminism and socialism are incompatible with marriage and family. What is the use of a woman crying crocodile tears over her voluntary neglect of her own children when every decision she made prior to marriage and after marriage is based on an anti-family, pro-government worldview?

When a woman votes for government to tax her future family, regulate her husband’s employer, and restrict the family to purchasing  government services only (day care, public schools), then she must not complain when she is forced into the workplace and her child is handed to strangers to raise. That is the end result of being taken in by fashionable ideologies. When you oppose low taxes and small government, you oppose keeping money in the family. And that means that the wife will work, and the children will be raised by strangers. Women who vote for socialism, environmentalism, feminism, etc. are forcing themselves away from their future children.

Think before you act – don’t act on feelings and intuitions. If you want a marriage and a family, then vote accordingly.

Who gives more to charity? Religious people or secular people?

Barbara Kay explains in the National Post.

Full text:

No matter where you live, charity begins at home. But, as we learn from the Fraser Institute’s newly released annual report on charitable giving, the question of where charity ends depends on where you live. For the 13th year in a row, Quebec has come out on the bottom of the Fraser Institute’s charity scale.

Of the provinces, Manitobans are the biggest givers, with 26% of those filing taxes donating to a registered charity, and 0.89% of total income being donated. Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island tied for second place. Ontario, Canada’s largest province, tied Alberta for fourth place with 24% of its tax filers donating 0.74% of total income to registered charities.

And then there’s Quebec. Oh dear. Only 21.7 % of Quebecers claimed donations to registered charities, and gave only 0.30% of their total income. On average dollar value donated, Alberta led with $2,112. And Quebec limped in at $606, half the national average of $1,399.

Lest Albertans and Manitobans get swelled heads, they should know that no Canadian provinces are a patch on the Americans. Almost 27% of American tax filers donated to registered charities, compared with 23% of Canadians. Countrywide, Americans gave 1.32% of their aggregate personal income to charity, more than double the 0.64% that Canadians gave.

What’s up with these statistics? Aren’t we supposed to be kinder and gentler than Americans?

Well, one clue to deconstructing the Canadian figures, and in particular Quebec’s lousy performance, comes from the news release: “Utah was by far the most generous jurisdiction in North America, with 33.4% of tax filers donating 3.09% of the total income earned in the state, nearly three-and-a-half times the share of aggregate income donated by Canada’s top province (0.89%), Manitoba.”

Why? Here’s a clue: Mormons constitute about 60% of Utah’s population. Mormons give a lot to charity, in part because of their tithing system. And, countrywide, it’s not just Mormons. The United States is a religious country – and research tells us that observantly religious people generally give more to charity (both in time and money) than non-religious people. Canada’s secularism makes it a less generous place, no matter what we tell ourselves about the virtues of being Canadian.

Another well-observed sociological phenomenon is that big government tends to discourage charity – both because people have less money to give to charity in high-tax jurisdictions, and because coddled nanny-state citizens believe that taking care of the poor huddled masses has become government’s job. Statism dampens the impulse to be generous at an individual level.

Quebec scores high on both secularism and nanny-statism. In fact, it is the least religious of the Canadian provinces (and in fact the most militantly anti-religious). Quebec also is the most statist (and highly taxed) of the provinces. Quebecers figure their taxes are taking care of all the social problems, or should be taking care of them, and it is therefore no surprise that they are the least likely to take responsibility for the afflictions of others.

Taking personal responsibility for alleviating the sufferings of others is the mark of a mature individual. Statism tends to suffocate the blessing of empathy, and thereby promotes civic immaturity. One more in a long litany of reasons for working to bring down the size of government.

These findings echo Arthur Brooks’ study on who gives most. Religious people give more than secular people, and that just stands to reason, given that the former generally takes morality to be objective, and the latter generally takes it to be subjective.

Navy buys fuel for $15 per gallon from Democrat-connected green energy firm

I found this Hot Air story on Right Wing News. Hot Air was at the top of John Hawkins’ list of the top 40 conservative blogs.

Excerpt: (with links removed)

This is going to help the Defense Department weather looming budget cuts, for sure.  Teaming up with the Department of Agriculture (which has a cheery Rotary Club ring to it), the Navy has purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuel for about $16 a gallon, or about 4 times the price of its standard marine fuel, JP-5, which has been going for under $4 a gallon.

You won’t be surprised to learn that a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy.  Glauthier worked – shock, shock – on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.

The Navy sale isn’t Solazyme’s first trip to the public trough, of course.  The company got a $21.8 million grant from the 2009 stimulus package.

See, this is why we need to vote for lower and lower taxes. The more money that you give the government to spend, the more likely they are going to waste it buying votes and rewarding their supporters and fundraisers. Do you think that a private company could waste money like this, and stay afloat? No way – they have competitors to worry about. If they waste money, then they will go out of business. However, the government can just spend the money with abandon – it just gets added to the national debt. Eventually, the young people, who vote for for Obama in droves, will have to pay the money back. This will be hard for them to do given the fact that many of them are growing up without two parents supporting them, and often without a good education. What a mess. Leave the money in the hands of the private sector schools and private sector job creators – they actually have to care about pleasing customers and reducing wasteful spending.

Let’s do a quick review of more instances of stimulus spending.

What exactly was he trying to stimulate? His 2012 election campaign?

By the way, check out John’s list of the top 40 blogs – I am number 40.