Marketwatch posted an article this week titled Why the American Dream is Unraveling, in 4 charts. As usual, the MSM journalist and the liberal Harvard academic can create charts that reveal a huge problem, but they completely misdiagnose the causes and offer the typical wrong solution of taking more money from producers and handing it to the poor, with no strings attached. This has been the standard operating procedure since LBJ began his War on Poverty 50 years ago. Do these control freaks ever step back and assess how that war is going?
The poverty rate had plunged from 34% in 1950 to below 20% before LBJ ever declared war. It continued down to 15% just as the welfare programs began to be implemented. The percentage of people living in poverty hasn’t budged from the 15% range since the war began. This war has been just as successful as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Any time a politician declares war on something, expect a huge price tag and more of the “problem” they are declaring war upon.
The Federal government runs over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Over 100 million Americans received benefits from at least one of these programs. Federal and state governments spent $943 billion in 2013 on these programs at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient (not including Social Security & Medicare). That is 27% of the total Federal budget. Welfare spending as a percentage of the Federal budget was less than 2% prior to the launch of the War on Poverty.
In the 50 years since this war started, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. In terms of LBJ’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has utterly failed. In fact, a large proportion of the population is now completely dependent upon government handouts, incapable of self-sufficiency, and enslaved in a welfare mentality that has destroyed their communities.
The primary cause of their poverty and dependency on government are the policies implemented by liberal politicians which have destroyed the family unit, promoted deviant behavior, encouraged the production of bastard children, eliminated the need for personal responsibility, provided no consequences for bad life choices, and bankrupted the nation. The rise of the welfare state has coincided with the decline of the American state. The proliferation of welfare programs has broken down the behaviors, social norms and cultural standards that lead to self-reliance, generating a pattern of growing inter-generational reliance upon government handouts. By undermining productive social norms, welfare creates a need for even greater succor in the future.
So let’s get to the four charts that supposedly reveal why the American dream is unraveling. The Marketwatch article makes the following claim:
The upper-middle-class families Putnam profiles separate themselves into affluent suburbs, with separate public schools and social spheres from those of their poorer counterparts. As a result, the poorer children not only face greater hardships, but they also lack good models of what is possible. They are effectively cut off from opportunity.
The faux journalist makes the laughable argument the reason poor children don’t succeed in life is because people who have studied hard, graduated college, succeeded in life, and moved out of poor neighborhoods have left the poor children to face hardship and lack of opportunity. This is a classic liberal storyline. Blame those who have succeeded through their own blood, sweat and tears for the failure of those who languish in poverty due to their own life choices, lack of respect for education, and lack of work ethic. Chart number one reveals one thing to the Harvard academic Robert Putnam and another to me. He believes kids of people who have a college education have some sort of unfair advantage over kids of lesser educated parents:
“The most important thing about the experience of being young and poor in America is that these kids are really isolated, and really don’t have close ties with anybody. They are completely clueless about the kinds of skills and savvy and connections needed to get ahead.”
Why are poor kids isolated, with no ties with anybody? Isolated from whom? They don’t have ties to their family? That is a ludicrous contention, supported with no facts. All kids are completely clueless. You don’t get ahead in life through savvy and connections. You have the best chance to get ahead in life through opening a book, studying hard, and getting good grades, all with the support of concerned involved parents. There are no guarantees in life, but education, involved parents, and working hard dramatically increase your odds of success. It’s not a secret formula. Putnam believes the chart below reveals that kids in households with college educated parents have an unfair advantage over kids in households without college educated parents. To me it reveals the complete and utter failure of LBJ’s Great Society programs and the feminist mantra that men aren’t necessary to raise children.
The percentage of children living in single parent households with a college educated parent is virtually the same today as it was in the early 1960’s, just under 10%. The percentage of children living in single parent households with a high school educated parent in the early 1960’s was 20%. Today that number has risen to 65%. Liberals purposely misdiagnose the problem because admitting the true cause of this disastrous trend would destroy their credibility and reveal the failure of their beloved welfare programs. The key point is that prior to LBJ’s War on Poverty less than 10% of ALL children grew up in a single parent households. Today, that number is 33%. The lesson is you get more of what you encourage and incentivize. The liberal academic solution is for college educated households to give more of their money to the high school or less educated households. Academics with an agenda never ask why their solutions haven’t worked in 50 years.
The number of households in the U.S. in 1960 totaled 53 million and there were 24 million traditional married couple with children households, or 45%. There were 3 million single parent households with children, or 6%. Today the total number of households in the U.S. is approximately 122 million and there are only 25 million with traditional married couple with children households, or 20%. Meanwhile single parent families with children households have skyrocketed to 13 million, or 11%. The war on traditional two parent families by the government, liberal mainstream media, Hollywood, feminists, and academics has been far more successful than the War on Poverty.
The drastic increase in households with fatherless children, especially in the black community, is the primary reason the poverty rate hasn’t dropped over the last 50 years. It is the primary reason poor children remain poor. It is the primary reason why every urban enclave in America continues to degenerate into dangerous, filthy, lawless ghettos. The statistics tell the story of decline, depravity, failure, and an endless loop of poverty.
- An estimated 24.7 million children (33%) live absent their biological father.
- Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39% (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers.
- 57.6% of black children, 31.2% of Hispanic children, and 20.7% of white children are living absent their biological fathers.
- Among children who were part of the “post-war generation,” 87.7% grew up with two biological parents who were married to each other. Today only 68.1% will spend their entire childhood in an intact family.
Annual divorce rates are only marginally higher today than they were in the early 1960’s. So that does not account for the drastic increase in fatherless households. But, the differences among races is dramatic. Blacks divorce at a rate twice as high as whites and three times as high as Asians.
Marriage rates of Asians are almost three times higher than marriage rates of blacks. Marriage rates of whites are two times higher than marriage rates of blacks. Is it really surprising that Asian children score the highest on all educational achievement tests?
The facts prove that people (no matter what race) who marry and stay married offer their children a tremendously better opportunity to succeed academically, thereby giving them a much higher chance of moving up the socioeconomic ladder. This doesn’t mean that children from a single parent household can’t succeed. It just means they have a better chance with two parents. It’s just simple math. Two adults working together can provide higher income, more help with school work, and offer a more stable environment for the child. The liberal media and those with a social agenda scorn the traditional family as if it precludes people from living however they choose. The results of the war on families can be seen in the chart below.
The unwed birth rate stayed below 5% from 1945 through the early 1960’s. As soon as the government began incentivizing people to not get married and to have children out of wedlock, the rates skyrocketed. Today, four out of ten children are born out of wedlock. Seven out of ten black children are born out of wedlock. Only two out of ten black children were born out of wedlock in 1964. These births out of wedlock are not the result of dumb teenagers making a mistake. Almost 80% of these births are to mothers over the age of 20, with 40% of the births to mothers over the age of 25. And these horrific results are after the 55 million abortions since 1973. This didn’t happen because of women’s rights or women feeling empowered to raise children on their own. Knowledge about and access to contraceptives is not a reason for unwed pregnancies. Poor women and the men who impregnate them receive more welfare benefits by remaining unmarried and receive additional benefits by having more children out of wedlock.
So all of the data confirms the fact children who grow up in two parent households do better in school, are far less likely to be enslaved in poverty, and have a chance to succeed in life, not matter what the educational level of their parents. In the early 1960s there were very few households with college educated parents. My Dad was a truck driver and my mother was a stay at home mom until we were in high school. We were lower middle class, but all three of their children attained college degrees by studying hard, working part-time jobs to help pay for their education, and having the support of concerned parents. Could we have gotten college degrees if we had been raised by only my mother? I doubt it.
Harvard Professor Putnam prefers to ignore the politically incorrect fact that a return to traditional families would begin to reverse the 50 years of damage caused by the War on Poverty. He believes it is in the moral interest of wealthier families to help improve the economic prospects of poorer children. Liberals also don’t think the $13,000 spent per student per year is enough to educate them properly. He actually believes taking more money from producers and handing it to non-producers will boost the U.S. economy.
“The U.S. economy would get a major boost if the opportunity gap were closed. We cannot continue to live in our own bubbles, or compartments on a plate, without consequences. What I hope people take away is that helping poor kids, giving them more skills and more support would economically benefit their kids.”
The country has spent $22 trillion on the war on poverty and spends approximately $1 trillion per year, but liberal academics think if we just spend more, the complete and utter failure of their solutions will be reversed. They ignore the fact a Democratic President (Clinton) and a Republican Congress instituted welfare reform in 1996 that temporarily stopped the increase in spending, halted the rise in unwed births, and put poor people back to work. Today only one welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), effectively promotes self-reliance. Reforms that created TANF in 1996 moved 2.8 million families off the welfare rolls and into jobs. Those gains were reversed as the Obama administration and congressional leadership undid the employment and training requirements enacted 14 years ago. Liberals think it is cruel and inhumane to make poor people work.
Putnam’s final three charts just reinforce the fact traditional families, involved parents, and higher education lead to higher incomes and upward mobility for children in these settings. The reason children in households with college educated parents get more daily attention is because those households are far more likely to have two parents. The time was equal in the early 1970s when two parent families were more prevalent. Having strangers raise kids in government subsidized daycare centers as a substitute for fathers hasn’t worked out so well.
In another shocker, poor children, who are predominantly from single parent households, without a role model to replace their missing fathers, score far worse in tests that predict success in college. The key attribute to educational success is not the educational level of the parents, it’s the need for poor, middle class or wealthy households to have two parents invested in the future of their children.
Attributing obesity rates of children from non-college educated households to the parents’ eduction is quite a reach. In the early 1970’s the obesity rates were very close between high school educated households and college educated households. So why has it surged? The liberals claim the poor go hungry and don’t have enough food. Shouldn’t that lead to higher malnutrition rates and not higher obesity rates? Maybe the surging obesity rates are due to the government lunch programs, the fast food culture in urban ghettos, no fathers around to encourage outside activities, and using food stamps to buy junk food rather than healthier foods. Bad choices generally lead to bad outcomes. Obesity is a choice. Of course liberals now classify it as a disability which needs to be subsidized by the government.
The American dream has unraveled for many reasons. Not spending enough on welfare programs is not one of the reasons. The welfare/warfare state is bankrupt. We spend $1 trillion on welfare programs, $1.4 trillion on Social Security and Medicare, and over $1 trillion on the military/surveillance apparatus. It’s a bipartisan bankruptcy, as Republicans agree to increase the welfare state as long as the Democrats agree to increase the warfare state. The only thing sustaining this debt based house of cards is a Federal Reserve which provides zero interest financing and a never ending willingness to debase our currency to keep the status quo in power. The current rate of spending on the welfare/warfare state is unsustainable. We could voluntarily reduce the spending before the financial collapse or the spending will stop abruptly when our country undergoes a catastrophic financial implosion that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
Voluntarily putting the country back on a path of self reliance could be done if there was a will to do so. Reversing the culture of dependency would require a major dose of tough love that would upend the entire ideology of liberalism. Able-bodied, non-elderly adult recipients in all federal welfare programs would be required to work, prepare for work, or at least look for a job as a condition of receiving food stamps or housing assistance. This would promote personal responsibility and provide the recipients with some self respect. Obama is a big proponent of national service, why not national service for recipients of welfare?
Anti-marriage penalties should be removed from welfare programs, and long-term steps should be taken to rebuild the family in lower-income communities. Marriage penalties occur in many means-tested programs such as food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, day care, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The welfare system needs to be revamped to reduce these counterproductive incentives. The appeal of welfare programs as an alternative to work and marriage could be reduced by requiring able-bodied parents to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid. Today government advertises in an effort to get more people to sign up for food stamps and dozens of other welfare programs. Government should be promulgating the facts on how marriage prevents social ills – poverty, poor education, juvenile crime – associated with children born to unmarried women.
Lastly, we need to cutoff the illegal influx of low-skill immigrants from the South, whose children will receive far more in welfare benefits than they pay in taxes, if they pay any taxes. The country must reject blanket amnesty or “earned citizenship” for millions of illegal immigrants who then could access the welfare system. The welfare system is already unsustainable and adding millions of illegals into the system would be the tipping point.
Lyndon B. Johnson’ s goal was not to create an ever increasing welfare state, but to give the poor a helping hand towards self-sufficiency. His idealistic aim was to cure and prevent poverty. But, once a program is put into the hands of politicians looking to get re-elected every two years, the unintended negative consequences expand exponentially. $22 trillion later the American Dream is virtually non-existent for the 47 million Americans languishing in poverty and the once prosperous middle class who have seen their real wages stagnate due to Federal Reserve created inflation and taxes increase to pay for the ever expanding welfare/warfare state. One chart provides a major explanation of why the American Dream has unraveled, but you won’t see Obama, liberals or the mainstream media talking about it. Traditional married, two parent families are the antidote to poverty, not government welfare programs.
The debate on how to help the poor has raged for centuries. A wise Founding Father told us how the war on poverty would unfold.
“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” – Benjamin Franklin
A good education and hard work will not beat inflation. I can’t out earn the inflation we have all been facing the past 10-15 years.
Just think Admin, you could have been a Harvard university Professor getting paid 400,000 a year to do research and teach 15 hours a week.In other words you could have been part of the loafing class but no the Lord God in heaven has casted you down so you would not become Proud and Vain.Look at on the bright side .You would have never known any of us if you would have went to Harvard or Wall Street.
A graph showing the beginning of the war on drugs would have been helpful. For the first time in our history, millions of Moms have served time because of non-violent crime.
This is a really depressing thread. I know its true as I see it with the feral kids running around. But what I really don’t get is the out of wedlock births. What are these people thinking? I really don’t think you have to be rocket scientist to know that this scenario almost dooms you to the lower classes. And for those at the upper end of the income/education spectrum that bear out of wedlock children. What are they thinking? Have morals and just good old common sense been thrown out the window for them also? I personally do not know any well educated people who have purposelessly produced a child out of wedlock and I hope I never do, but obviously it happens. If you were to extrapolate the out of wedlock chart out it would seem that say in 50 years all births will be out of wedlock. This is crazy.
Imagine trying to beat inflation then, without a good education and without hard work.
Marty – not sure the “millions” figure is quite correct.
And re the non-violent crime, only 1/4 of those in prison for non-violent crime are in there for drug reasons. Around 2/3 of women are in prison for non-violent crimes, so 1/4*2/3 = 1/6 of women in prison are in there for drugs.
And although women prison populations have grown substantially, to around 200,000 currnetly, prior to 2000 there were under 100,000 in prison. So your “millions of moms” in prison for non-violent crime is suspect, and your linking it to drug convictions is totally bullshit. (And given around half of women in prison are black, and given that demographic is not filled with model moms, your point is somewhat cloudy at best.)
Might want to do a bit of fact checking next time, before you post. We can smell bullshit a mile away around here.
“Reversing the culture of dependency would require a major dose of tough love that would upend the entire ideology of liberalism”. In my experience, most/all humans are not ready for “tough love” until they hit bottom and utterly fail. Not a good omen for good ole USA. Like a drunk/addict the descent into oblivion will continue until things get really bad. Then we’ll see what this society is made of. I am not hopeful. One only need to look at the first commenter here, she made your point for you. Not my fault, some else’s fault and I CAN’T.
It is great entertainment from my vantage point however.
Thanks for a great article.
@Marty Smith……If you disagree, lay your proof out.
Putting aside the moral issue of abortion and given that preventive measures are readily available, why do fatherless births happen? It is a convenient way for braindead young women to secure a meal ticket without having to depend on an indecisive or indigent man to support her.
They will be the pack leader and homemaker. Men are simply drones available for impregnation whenever they are out of prison for a few weeks with no say in the direction of the family unit. This economic idea has taken off and women now follow their own crazy flights of fancy in sexual liasons and drinking bouts.
I recall back in the 60’s we heard quite a ruckus in the neighbor’s house, as kids we had no idea of what was going on and our parents, unlike today, did not interfere in the neighbor’s business. A few days later we saw the young girl outdoors with a cast on her arm. She was at the forefront of the women’s liberation movement, I suppose, because she was soon to be an unwed mother.
The social order has been cast aside and as soon as Hillary comes into power, men will become obsolete.
“$22 trillion later (after LBJ launched the War on Poverty), the American Dream is virtually non-existent for the 47 million Americans languishing in poverty.”
—-from the article
At those who want to hang your hat on the War on Drugs, which started in Nixon’s second term, as the big bugaboo for the ills in our society, the cost of that drug “war” has been just over $1 trillion since its initiation. $1 trillion versus $22 trillion.
For you pro-drug legalization fools, please tell me again what the main problem is. I just know you can clear up the picture. Ready. Set. Go.
I wish there was as much fear-based indoctrination about illegitimacy as there is about getting a flu shot.
The american decline was bound to happen regardless. At the end of WW2, the US had 50% of world GNP. That could never be maintained forever.
I like the subtle evolution in your thinking, jim. You seem to be shifting from figuring out what’s wrong, to why it’s gone wrong. Great path for a no bullshit mind. Keep up the good work. Many will benefit from your clarity, myself included.
My opinion, fwiw, is the lions share of the blame for the breakdown and disintegration of the traditional family can be traced to the liberalization of divorce and the creation of no-fault divorce as well as the move away from grounds-based divorce. This, as well as the creation of family courts which have transformed the economic importance of men and their importance to the maintenance of a stable family into a lottery payout for the wife who initiates a frivolous divorce (women initiate the vast majority of divorces).
When one can get the house, car, savings, kids, and an ongoing payout for every kid until they reach 18, and they can shack up with as many transient men as they like, is it any surprise that men are increasingly refusing to marry? Families are being destroyed by the vagaries of selfish slutty women set free from the economic necessity of stable marriage to a good provider, and this is enabled and aided and abbetted by the state for God knows what reason…
Encouraging marriage without doing something about the completely broken divorce system is ultimately doomed to failure. At a minimum, no-fault divorce laws should be completely eliminated; same goes for making one party pay the other’s legal expenses. Divorce should be costly, expensive, and humiliating for anything but proven physical abuse. When divorce means no lottery payout because you were an adulterer, all manner of social pathologies will start to be reversed.
As to illegitimacy, I would change the laws to require both parties to be on the hook for the cost they impose on the rest of society. A single mother and the father would be required to reimburse the state for the costs the state incurrs. If this would encourage use of contraceptives, abortion, puting a child up for adoption, or marriage, the cost to the taxpayer would be minimized, and the cost to society would be far less. The problems all boil down to parties not being held responsible for their actions; restore accountability and the problems fix themselves…
Admin – thanks. The shift from personal responsibility for ones actions and outcomes to governmental nanny state will in the end be the death of the nation.
If people are paid not to work, especially those with limited skills and abilities, then they will not work. If you pay people to have children out of wedlock, then they will have them.
You said it very well, and right you are.
Thanks.
Simon, nice post. Reagan said signing no fault divorce as governor of california was his biggest mistake. As husband, if you screw up your marriage, you’re going to pay through the nose till the kids are 18. If your wife destroys the marriage, you’re going to pay through the nose till the kids are 18. But it’s bullish for GDP, cause now junior needs 2 beds
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Simon, the no fault divorce will be the downfall of the white middle class. The welfare state has thoroughly destroyed the black family by gov’t intervention to gain a buck. Whites on the other hand are well on their way to destroying their traditional family structure through bullshit feminism and man hating. My ex left me because she was “unhappy.” The only thing that could apparently make her happy was living on her own, fucking other men and buying an Audi (on credit) as a congratulations gift to herself for leaving a stable, non-abusive home. Thank God we didn’t have kids and I came out relatively unscathed minus halving a nice nest egg I had worked hard to build in a marriage partnership. That experience sure made me a better judge of character than I was when younger. Now imagine a couple kids in that mix, yep, little to no difference from the welfare queen, except I’d be paying the benefits every month.
My wife and I had a long conversation over wine on date night about conspiracy theory vs. incompetence theory.
Incompetence theory says that all of these outcomes are the result of failed policies or poor implementation or inadequate funding. If only we tweaked them, added more money to them or tried something even more radical everything would…what? be more like the world of the 1950’s that never existed? Reinstall the patriarchy? Go back to the Jim Crow era of misogyny and homophobia?
Of course not.
This is the planned outcome, this is what was desired by the ones who created the programs, this is the exact outcome one would expect from the behavior encouraged. In each case the intended desire was to create a more fractious body politic requiring increasing intervention by the State, ever growing demands for the restriction of freedom due to increasing crime, ever more dependence upon the very system that created the problem. If this was all the outcome of incompetence then how is it possible that those running the show have managed to solidify their power, expand their reach, increase their budgets, create even more departments and offices and eradicate all but a few remaining freedoms while at the same time ruining every functioning system (like families) that didn’t fall under their jurisdiction?
This is the intended outcome. It will never “get better” under the control of the people who made it worse, never cost less than at this very moment, impose it’s will with anything but total compliance from the populace and deliver any type of outcome that doesn’t serve to cement further the dominance of the ruling class upon the whole of the population. Period, end of story.
There are few options left, but the first duty of anyone who sees this and objects is to stop participating in the paradigm that allows for further involvement of the criminal class in charge. One does not plead with their tormenter for mercy when the object of the tormenter is to see you beg. Those complex societies that collapsed in the past did so based on factors such as natural disaster and resource depletion, but the ones that collapsed with complete finality did so because the populations no longer played the game. They abandoned not just the cities, but the philosophical and social framework of that society- in short, they simply walked away.
The photograph of that young man above is all the proof that you will ever need that we have fallen beyond the point of salvation. It is a plea to demeaned, a cry for help that can never be answered, a final finger in the air to the very system that spawned it’s dysfunction. It is a slow motion self immolation so that everyone can see the flames and understand that the entire structure is on fire.
I don’t know how no fault divorce works, but as a grateful recipient of one in PA, I know you cannot get one if you have kids.
One more way to curb this, cut off all additional 1040 child support on children born after 2015. Your charts will magically change over time.
You all are not diving deep enough.
The Progressive Era is characterized by people trying to ameliorate the evils of our existence via judicious application of force via the political system (AKA the state.)
I see people cite the war on drugs, high taxes (sending mom to work), liberalized divorce laws, and yet who connects the dots? The War on Poverty is simply the crowding out of voluntary charity in favor of coercive (tax-paid, state-administered) welfare, which predictably destroys the families of all who it touches.
It’s the state, folks. It’s raising the state to the level of an Earthly God, and worshiping it fervently.
What else is, “Wow, look at that “bad thing,” why, there OUGHT TO BE A LAW!”
A prayer to the God of the State, that’s what that is. How else do we wait with baited breath each January for all last year’s New Laws to take effect, inching us ever closer to that Nirvana, that promised “Heaven on Earth?”
How is it we don’t automatically ALL see this is absurd?
Regardless whether one subscribes to belief that the moral codes of ancient Hebrew and Christians were divinely inspired is irrelevant to the fact that these values , in particular those related to sex and family were the cohesive force binding families, communities and tribes together in a mutually beneficial order which was absolutely a prerequisite for survival in times when you either contributed to the whole of you were cast aside as a unnecessary burden.
Strict moral codes developed in ancient times allowed for no free rides as resources where finite and scarce as is still the case today, but the reality that no amount of debt based money equals the value of a loaf of bread in times of famine has been lost on the modern American. If government wills it and the central bank finances it then so must it be , right up until it isn’t , and that will be the day that family and tribe began anew to enforce a new morality code and the goverment gravy train ceases to roll.
The sad fact is that in times of plenty the hard learned lessons of the past are easily forgotten and have to be relearned at severe cost by those that failed to preserve the guidelines set forth by those that came before…and so forth.
1 Corinthians 10:11
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
Proverbs 1:1-33
The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, …
Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
G. K. Chesterton
There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They–the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism–will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.
Hans Herman Hoppe
2015-03-22 06:15 by Karl Denninger
Oh Nonsense (Republicans and Entitlements)
The newsspeak is completely out of hand here.
The Senate GOP budget released Wednesday calls for saving $5.1 trillion over 10 years, including $4.3 trillion by repealing the Affordable Care Act and curbing entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.
But one of the most notable elements of the Senate budget was what it omitted. The plan, the first budget from Senate Republicans since they took control of the chamber, provides few details on how or where Congress would produce those savings from Medicare and other so-called entitlement programs.
“Compassionate suicide” anyone?
Then there’s Bernie Sanders’ latest, which you read if you’re on his email list:
The Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday began to debate a plan drafted by the new Republican majority. The bad news is that they want devastating cuts for working families, children and seniors. They want to throw millions of Americans off health insurance. They would cut aid to college students.
As bad as those and other cuts would be, what the Republican budget leaves out may be even worse. It doesn’t create any jobs. It doesn’t address the 11 percent real unemployment rate in the United States. It doesn’t fix crumbling roads and bridges. It doesn’t make college more affordable. It doesn’t raise the minimum wage. It does nothing, despite Republicans’ professed worries about deficits, to close tax loopholes that help the rich and profitable corporations avoid paying their fair share of taxes and make deficits worse.
Cut the crap Mr. Sanders, before someone indicts your sorry ass for grand theft or worse, someone not of age today (and thus unable to vote your sorry ass out of office) refuses to pay that which they had no voice in contracting for and decides to resist by any means necessary — and possible.
Perhaps it is time that we start talking about a second Declaration of Independence, listing the lawless behavior of these so-called “lawmakers.” Hillary is a great example of “I am Queen, therefore I shall do whatever the hell I want law be damned” but those in Congress are not far behind.
The simple fact of the matter is that every dime spent in deficit is an act of fraud, an act that in private enterprise or life is, if contracted with the same intent, a felony.
That’s right folks — it is a crime to take on debt you have no intention of paying back. It is not a crime to go into debt and unable to pay, but if you do it with the intent not to pay, which is quite-clearly demonstrated when it is mathematically impossible to pay given the actions you are undertaking in the civilian world that is a crime.
So why isn’t it in the halls of government? In point of fact there is no distinction in the law in this regard nor should there be. There is only the fact that we have 536 Kings and Queens who have arrogated to themselves powers that they do not, under our Constitution have nor can they legitimately acquire them irrespective of any law they may subsequently pass.
I fully understand the political expediency of simply spending whatever you want and then tampering with the money and credit supply via so-called “mandates” to The Fed (or banks generally) to hide what you’ve done. But the fact of the matter is that such hiding is nothing more than putting on a ski mask before you rob me in order to obscure who you are; what you did has not changed.
I refuse to show respect to such people and strongly urge others to do the same. That one chooses to give deference to avoid being shot or imprisoned is not the same thing as respect; one is a matter of survival and (relative) freedom, the other must be earned.
I have written myriad articles on the budget and the fraud contained therein through the time that The Market Ticker has been in operation; you can find the pinned ones by simply going here and reading as you wish. The most-recent, published on the 19th, is found here.
The simple fact of the matter is that the debate about the size of government must come to the forefront of political discussion inextricably married to the fact that basic algebra makes indefinite deficit accumulation incompatible with economic and political stability.
For this reason deficit spending must cease right here, right now and forevermore.
We, as a nation, as with all nations, can have whatever size government we wish but we must pay for that government in the present tense by giving up our productive surplus in the form of taxes in the present tense.
Any spending by government of funds it does not first tax from the citizens is theft and an act of fraud as there is no intent to repay, ever, said funds. There is at this point a more than 30 year history in support of this fact. You or I would go to prison for such an act and we must, as citizens, demand that those in our government who commit the identical act of theft and fraud also be indicted and imprisoned for this very same crime.
Try testing your theory against what Republican President George Bush did, when starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did he have the money, in advance???? All the Republicans preach lower taxes, for the wealthy, and cutting support from the poor and seniors. Who do they expect to pay for the upkeep of this country??? Our roads and bridges are rotting. Our water is getting more contaminated each year> Our climate is changing rapidly. As long as the wealthy are allowed to pay the politicians, to keep giving them money, it will never end.
When we shipped all out good paying manufacturing jobs overseas, it was the beginning of a massive growth in the poverty level population, and a large loss of tax money for the US, when corporations were allowed to get foreign addresses, and PO Boxes, to hide their income. Even Wall Street got in the act. They were splitting up mortgages and selling derivatives, that destroyed the economy, and it all started coming apart in 2008.
Ask yourself the question, are we better off today, than we were in 2008, when we were crumbling, in two wars, thousands of our kids getting killed and mangled, what jobs we had, were being lost. the auto industry was crumbling, people were losing 40% in their savings accounts ???
I know I am a lot better off, today, as I regained 60% of my savings back. The auto industry is doing great today. Our kids are not getting killed by the thousands, millions of people have gained medical insurance, and if the Republicans can so something, except say NO to everything suggested to make thing better, I’m sure we could do even more like fixing immigration and bring jobs back to the USA.
My point?
This is PREDICTABLE. Yet it is also cyclical.
Humans appear to always wish for a centralizing theme, a Grand Narrative that guides their existence and makes predictable their lives in some way, promising “better” tomorrow (however the Narrative defines “better.”)
700 years ago it was Christianity in Europe. It guided every person’s daily life and they suffered the staggering difficulties of those times by clinging to the promise of the Next Life.
Today we have a different religion. We have daily faith in the efficacy of “democracy,” or “American Exceptionalism,” or whatever term you choose, and it is so pervasive that to discuss it with you all is like trying to describe “being wet” to a fish.
This is the Grand Narrative that “regulates” (as in “make regular”) our daily lives, yet it is a False God. The typical religion promises rewards not here and now but in a life not yet encountered. The secular religion of Statism promises those rewards today, tomorrow and next week.
You get your Section 8 housing voucher today.
You get your Obamaphone today.
You get your medicaid-paid visit to the ER today.
You get your subsidized student loan (Stephanie S.) today.
Never does it penetrate anyone’s consciousness that these promises warp EVERYTHING around us.
Prices are driven higher by the state-supported and state-subsidized availability of endless credit. That’s where most price inflation flows from, and why Stephanie is correct to say that no one can keep up with this baloney.
Taxes are a crushing burden now, and must either exponentially rise to make good on all the IOU’s now issued or (and this is what will actually happen) the value of those IOU’s and delivery on their promises will be defaulted, plunging into poverty everyone who counted their present value as wealth and counted upon the delivery of those promises in future years.
Everywhere we look the mighty FIST of the state has crowded out civil society and the family. Why raise your kids when Hillary’s tax-supported Village will do so. Why be productive and self-controlled when the state absolves you of all responsibility, leaving you to wallow in a life of permanent adolescence, wall to wall entertainment, screwing and chest-beating?
Our entire society embraced this false Grand Narrative over 100 years ago. This column simply shows the signs of symptoms of the pathology, of a disease so pervasive, pushing us all into a hole so deep that no light is visible above.
Apparently to protect and serve pays very, very ,well….eh Super Sleuth ?
How Much Does an FBI Agent Make?
By David Hathaway
$121,097. Every journeyman, non-supervisory, regular ordinary plain-Jane FBI agent with five years on the job and with no particular job specialty or unique pay enhancement (like flight pay, Sunday pay, scheduled overtime pay, hazardous duty pay, foreign COLA pay, post differential, night differential, housing allowance, danger pay, travel per diem, temporary quarters allowances, or reimbursable undercover expenses), makes $121,097 if he works in the Washington, Baltimore, Maryland, or Northern Virginia area. If he works in the San Francisco area, he makes $131,752. If he works in Houston, he makes $125,475. The differences are based on “locality pay” which is an automatic premium pay added onto the salaries of all federal law enforcement officers. Agents, in all locations in the U.S., even the ones with the lowest cost of living, receive extra law enforcement locality pay. The lowest paying locale in the U.S. would have this same agent earning the bottom rung locality-enhanced salary of $111,290.
After five years (sometimes as few as three) on the job, most FBI agents cross over into the journeyman non-supervisory pay grade of GS-13, typically landing at the level of GS-13, step 3 on the pay chart after spending the prior three years as a GS-12. The first and second year on the job are spent at the GS-10 and GS-11 levels. The standard pay for all FBI agents is calculated by starting with the base pay from the General Schedule (GS) pay chart and adding the percentage for locality pay. The extra locality pay varies by geographic area from 14.16% on the low end to 35.15% on the high end.
When they reach this cap, they are, as are all GS employees, restricted from earning more. This pay cap is often reached during an agent’s career progression with only the two automatically received (availability and locality) forms of premium pay factored in. The limit may be exceeded, in effect, when certain other forms of pay and benefits are received that are not included when computing progress towards the limit. The cap is currently set at $158,700 and goes up occasionally.
@Flash,
Today everyone embraces everyone. That’s the liberal (actually, collectivist) order.
We are at the apogee of this Narrative, and it is visibly breaking down. Leading edge data informs me that the wave has crested and the early part of it is already crashing toward a New Narrative. People are talking about things today that they wouldn’t even allow themselves to THINK five years ago.
The New Narrative will be increasing distrust. Those haranguing us to embrace other races, cultures, religions, etc. will be silenced and walls topped (figuratively, then perhaps literally) by razor-wire will be erected.
Eventually we’ll see what amounts to tribalism and even clan-ism resurface, and the circles of trust shrink and shrink and shrink. The family will be the locus of allegiance, just as it has throughout history, and the state’s Total War on it will fail where families regain power. Those continuing to eschew family in favor of the state will surely suffer.
Those who attempt to freeload or counter that new Narrative will be shown the gate and expelled into the no-man’s-land between fortified trust-structures. Or they will simply be shot and placed in the pile with the rest of those who were inside the gates but who were not part of the circle of trust.
Yes, this sounds repugnant and I hate to see it come, but these things are cyclical. We’ve been at the extreme edge of this cycle for decades, and none of us will recognize things when we finally reach the other extreme of the next deflection in the cycle.
The shrillness of the MSM and Social Justice Warriors (SJW’s) today is evidence that they intuit their loss of traction. They pushed too far and too long, and they neither grasp the pathologies their folly fomented nor can they reverse the growing perception of the symptoms of pathology (e.g., black on black and black on white crime.)
If you fund something you get more of it. Bad behavior is no different. I agree with Hardscrabble (wait, did I really say that?), the ruling class doesn’t see this as a problem to fix but rather an opportunity to be exploited. Quinny’s 30 Blocks of Squalor delivered 107% of its vote to Obama. Why would a liberal ever want to fix it?
Interesting to compare the comments and discussion going on here to the comments to this same article on Washington’s blog.
TJF
I took a shot across their bow to fire them up some more.
DC, I agree %100 .Democracy , like all other forms of collectivism has proved a dismal failure and one needs to look no further than state or national leadership to get a good visual on the affect on government of allowing a nation of morons the right to vote.
The nature of government is cyclical and I believe , as we now see with the Bush /Clinton dynasties , that the wheel of fortune is again spinning back to government by aristocracy .
Democracy will only tolerated by the productive as long as the price of government does not exceed the price of a comfortable lifestyle, and when the Democracy fails to provide for the security and accommodating wealth necessary to maintain that middle class lifestyle, rule by mob will outworn it’s welcomes and the gloves will come off.
I’ve been reading a good bit of Hans Herman Hoppe on this subject and he certainly leans toward the same conclusion .Democracy is done.
In my book Democracy, The God That Failed I not only defend the right to discrimination as implied in the right to private property, but I also emphasize the necessity of discrimination in maintaining a free society and explain its importance as a civilizing factor. In particular, the book also contains a few sentences about the importance, under clearly stated circumstances, of discriminating against communists, democrats, and habitual advocates of alternative, non-family centered lifestyles, including homosexuals.
For instance, on p. 218, I wrote “in a covenant concluded among proprietors and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, …no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant … such as democracy and communism.” “Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. … (violators) will have to be physically removed from society.”
In its proper context these statements are hardly more offensive than saying that the Catholic Church should excommunicate those violating its fundamental precepts or that a nudist colony should expel those insisting on wearing bathing suits. However, if you take the statements out of context and omit the condition: in a covenant… then they appear to advocate a rights violation.
“To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.”
Thomas Sowell
As always events will be ultimately controlled by those with the best leadership and the most weapons. I don’t know whether we will emerge into a new day or descend into a dark age.
The crisis period will not be pretty and America will share in the trauma it barely experience the last time.
When the bums ask me if I have any quarters I now respond with “Yes I do.” and continue walking instead of apologizing and saying no. If you are too lazy to figure out how to abscond with your own little piece of the massive pile of already stolen welfare wealth you don’t deserve anything. The few of us who continue to work to pay for the bountiful cartloads of others at Wall Mart at least deserve to walk the streets unmolested.
Funny, nobody mentions calling moms to work then shipping the family-supporting jobs to China.
Nor the unsustainable, once in a lifetime, build up of tech thanks to dotcom and Y2K, which added millions of other, skilled not educated, family supporting jobs. That ended in 2000.
Thanks to the war on terror, we didn’t notice that either. Then, of course, housing jumped in to further in-debt, and indenture, people that were/are being made redundant by wage and protectionism arbitrage.
We are regulating and taxing JOBS out of existence and we focus on the, as usual, users of the lifelines.
THE JOBS ARE IN CHINA. Do you people not SEE what I see? Are your business parking lots full of employees? Are your industrial parks adding on and booming enough to take up the continued growth of our population?
The “wealth” that was left, and what shows up in the government’s fake number reports, has just been siphoned up by those at the very top. And things like insurance, tickets, taxes, fines, penalties and bullshit added to every thing we need to survive in this country.
Whatever.
As for the right-wing, conservative, statist-loving (a rose by another name), version of future Utopia and God, I feel so sorry for our future.
There are many paths to God and none of them include murdering people in his name and morality.
The REAL Satan, for me, is the worship of authority and science. Especially paid for science.
Our real god is blind faith in the government-mandated and sponsored experts, exactly like the douche that wrote the study and wants to destroy more productive to create Utopia.
It makes my heart ache. Then I pray, and I feel peace that those that misunderstand will someday atone, and feel the hatred and pain they spewed in this realm. As will I. Everybody pays if he wants into heaven. No matter what flavor they profess themselves to be.
Here’s something we could try:
Spend the same on welfare as we do now, but make a lifetime of welfare benefits contingent upon NOT having kids. These folks know what they’re doing. If they’re going to have kids in order to get a free ride and never have to work, just imagine how much happier they would be to get one for NOT having kids.
Just tell everyone when they reach the age of 18, if you don’t want to bother getting an education or a job, you can get permanently sterilized and then you will be taken care of in a First World standard of living for life.
If you want kids, though, you’re on your own. They’re your responsibility.
In one generation, we’d have full employment and almost no one on welfare.
Pirate Jo
I actually like your idea.
HS said: “This is the planned outcome, this is what was desired by the ones who created the programs, this is the exact outcome one would expect from the behavior encouraged”
What you describe is known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, which IS a conspiracy. The definition below only states the welfare system, but the strategy has metastasized into immigration and healh care also. The intent is to eventually bring full socialism as the defacto form of government.
Wikipedia: “The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”.
The strategy
Cloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of the United States Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They stated that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare “would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments” that would: “…deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.”[3]
They further wrote:
“ The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.[3]
@ TJF…..Let me guess, those on Washington’s blog pretty much maintain that as long as there’s still flesh to be consumed by the entitlement cancer that everything is fine.
The truth is that the cancer has gotten so big that to cut it out would kill the patient, and to leave it will kill the patient. The patient of course being the status quo, that entity that every politic in America is sworn to save.
@Rise Up, while I agree, I also think C-P is but one of the guiding memes. Agenda 21 is a big one. Reduce population while clearing out the country to the coasts. When the welfare spending slows, as it eventually must (that which is mathematically unsustainable, will not be sustained), then the real bleed out will begin.
I expect turf wars, with the havenots storming the “prepper” haves, and authority stepping back and allowing it to occur.
Since so many businesses are already shuttered, and so few start ups that are bricks and mortar not depending on the remaining middle, it isn’t as difficult to convince worker bees there is a better life. Free housing and hot food would do it after any length of deprivation and hostilities.
Our entire way of life depends upon the utility grid, which degenerates year by year, our shipping infrastructure, again deteriorating while building bullet trains to nowhere, and Asia continuing to ship us our daily needs.
If any one of them goes down, the average, victimized, worker bee would be scared, confused, and probably sick as hell as they come off the prescriptions. I can easily see being led to a promised land, which in most histories, turns into living hell.
Yep. Trusting there is a purpose, and safety, for those I love. That is about as far as I can allow myself to think anymore.
Hell on earth is coming. Whom truly can figure out the flavor? I get the feeling it won’t matter anyway, as a shit sandwich tastes bad no matter the condiments you pour upon it.
Our religion, Crony Capitalism, has made huge swaths of people redundant, superfluous, un-needed and unwanted – so they must be kept as pets or starve in the streets.
The illusion that if their entitlement monies were cut off that miracle of miracles “Capitalism” would rise from the ashes and these same people would either sink or swim is ridiculous – they would all sink.
And so will the rest of us in due time.
Unless you have connections, an “in” in an ever shrinking pie, it is just a matter of time before the Crony Capitalism kicks you and yours to the curb – you can kiss any vestiges of a middle class life good-bye.
Call it whatever, the slow burn, the boiling frogs, the drip-drip-drip of Fabian socialism, CP, the welfare state is the stepping stone to a two class society. The power that existed in the communities has been removed, local politicians are limited in what they can achieve and marginalized in any larger venue – they no longer matter. To move up in politics is to sell out to the power of the connected.
Opportunities for the unconnected were removed as much for the ridiculous notion they might feel as if they had something to contribute but that they had a right and a responsibility to contribute.
You are either connected and therefore compromised or you are unconnected and disregarded.
It’s like LLOPH said – the middle class was an aberration and it’s time is over.
@TE, agreed, we are being assaulted on many fronts. 4th turning is gaining steam.
Yep, those damn liberals did it all. A congress so divided they can’t make a decision to go to the toilet in less than a year. Government corruption top to bottom. An out of control military waging war in countless un-named countries. The worst, most expensive health care system in the world, Ever increasing income inequity. A crumbling infrastructure everywhere. Presidents with the capability of a 15 yr old. An educational system that ranks somewhere in the low 20s when compared to the adult world. Yep, it’s those damned liberals!!
Frankly, I think it’s all of us as I see little difference. I don’t think there’s a “liberal” element at all. All I think we are a nation of fanatical right wingers.
And those low life bastards living off the system. You know, those making $10-15 an hour. What is it, one fourth of American families making less than 25K a yr? The answer appears to be let em starve as I gaze out from my McMansion or maybe from my private island. Tell you what, all you whiners, if the bottom has it so damn good, come on down. There’s plenty of room.
I do a fair amount of studying history and not the propaganda shit we got in high school. As a system collapses, a segment(s) of society are selected to direct anger at. As far as I can read, it’s not the top levels. It’s always the powerless. So lets all climb on board with the hateful rants.
@eugene, I agree with all you said, except the “congress so divided they can’t make a decision…”
That is UTTER bullshit. They get together and vote, in a million ways, to screw us harder, nearly everyday they are in session. SO much HAS been passed. They are passing legislation at a near record breaking pace.
It is UTTER myth that “nothing is getting done.”
We are getting screwed, good and hard, by CONgress. The “fighting” is Kabuki theatre designed to keep us distracted from that which is actually happening.
So easily divided and distracted. So damned easy…
While generally sympathetic to your point of view, there are two things you have overlooked:
[1] The changing position of women.
[1.1] The influx of women into the labor force has separated society largely into households with two jobs and those with zero, contributing to the downfall of the latter.
[1.2] The extra income generated by women has bid up scarce (unmanufactured) goods such as land, sinking most of the extra income into more expensive housing, and simultaneously putting it beyond the reach of a good part of the population.
[1.3] The legal/divorce backdrop has made it unappealing for responsible men to marry a been-around-the-block-53x slut to whom they will forever owe alimony and who will take half of their assets as well as their children on the flimsiest of excuses.
[2] Self-reliance is great, but there is no point to being a billionaire if you are self-reliant: Who would you pay to do stuff unless involved in society, as are we all. The work is simply not there.
[2.1] In the great depression (and prior depressions) half of the unemployed survived by going back to the family farm where you could at least raise your own food. That avenue of survival has closed.
[2.2] If the work programs are not simply punitive (that is, useless work), they will compete with the bottom slice of the current labor market, making things even worse than now.
[2.3] Our powers of production have increased significantly, reason why since the eighties there has been structural unemployment (counting simply the proportion of working aged men with full-time employment): We can easily increase production without creating a proportional number of jobs. This trend is accelerating: there is nothing for all those people to produce that we cannot easily produce in quantity already. Even in China >50% of jobs are in the services industry.
Mankind existed100.000s of years by hunting and gathering. 10.000 years ago we transitioned to agriculture, but every hand was needed, if only for physical energy. 200 years ago we industrialized, and needed factory hands (and unemployment first made itself felt). 35 years ago we shifted to a services economy. The next stage is is automation (of manufacture, transport, and of most services, including those provided now by highly paid professionals). Nothing close to universal employment will ever return, and if mankind as a whole does not somehow share in the dividends to this progress, society will fall apart.
“The welfare system is already unsustainable and adding millions of illegals into the system would be the tipping point.” A bit of pomposity doesn’t hide the likelihood you are seriously mistaken about the economics involved here.
I bit of idiocy and inability to grasp simple mathematics doesn’t hide the fact you are a fucking moron.
The first poster up there is a woman who says “A good education and hard work will not beat inflation. I can’t out earn the inflation we have all been facing the past 10-15 years.”
Well Stephanie, white men started feeling that way about the time women began taking their jobs away under the guise of non-discrimination. Women decided that they didn’t like the job they had at home because taking care of children, cleaning and washing dishes was beneath their dignity. So then they decided they would leave the kids with an artificial babysitter and go take mens jobs away from them for the next generation. It seemed to work fairly well for a few years because having two incomes helped pay off the mortgage and get a new car sooner. But then came a new problem. Women found out that they couldn’t get along with their husband anymore because they were making money now and wanted more control and ended up losing their marriage to the tune of 80% divorce while keeping their jobs and their kids. The courts took the kids away from the Dads because it favors women in divorce settlements. So next the women had the kids and they still had a job to support the kids, but no husband. Husbands were just kind of an appendage and it really didn’t matter if you had one or not. After all, they were just men and you could pick one up anywhere. So as soon as the economy adjusted to having both the man and the woman in the work place, taxes and inflation went up relative to 2 incomes. The problem was that this tax thirsty government which wanted women to go to work so it could double dip on taxes still wanted that tax money regardless of the fact that Mom and Dad were divorced and it really didn’t care that the inflation rate was over the top and getting worse. Employers just did what the government told them up to the point where it put them out of business. Then the real down cycle started, only this time there was no one to help keep the kids, pay the bills and make the living all at the same time. Not to mention that after a generation of this behavior where kids have no Dad to raise them, it took even more tax dollars to build enough prisons to hold all of these kids whose Moms were too busy getting self fulfillment in a work place where no Dad was necessary.
Now the problem has come full circle. Since women took the jobs that men once had and men are out of work, women now have to pay the taxes that men were paying, but the jobs that women can do just don’t earn enough to satisfy the new insatiable appetite of a tax scheme and social structure that has nothing but scorn, ridicule and mockery for all things masculine. Oh, and that’s the other thing. Women continue to vote for the most liberal candidates who promise them more and more giveaways. What they don’t realize is that men are already at the poverty level and have nothing to giveaway. So what women are really voting for is to have the government take what little pay a woman can make and give it to others.
Ain’t equality and feminism just great? Hope you gals are proud of what you did.
Ghetto birth control ideas:
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Where the notion of social justice went off the rails is when “social” began to eclipse “justice.” The desires of the collective became preeminent over fairness to the individual.
I watch my adult kids work their asses off to maintain something akin to a productive middle class life
for themselves and their children. They pay plenty in taxes so others can be manifestly unproductive except for indiscriminate breeding, then they get to pay for raising the resulting offspring. One wonders how much longer this can go on.
The mandate to care for the weak (specifically widows, orphans, and immigrants) is clearly manifested throughout the Bible. Bastard children and their mothers are not part of this group. Why enable a behavior that is destructive to the mom, the kid, and the community? Our grand and compassionate experiment in opposition to this construct has resulted in complete disaster.
Would it be so hard for a state to decide and declare “One year from this date all federal, state, and local programs offering financial assistance to children afterward born outside of marriage and their mothers will end for our residents. Make plans accordingly.”
Of course, illigitimacy would not disappear; accidents or poor choices would still occur. The numbers would be small enough, however, that families or charities could provide assistance.
What would have to disappear is the bureaucracy that feeds off this social pathology, and that of course is the biggest obstacle to the restoration of sane policies.
Unfortunately, Eugene sentiments are pervasive.
Society collapses or rather the government collapses because it can’t get enough tax revenue from the people. Always, everywhere at all times.
It issues debt to postpone the future when it will renege. It tries to devalue its currency first. People respond by using shaved coins for transactions(deflation) and hoarding the good ones. People accept that money because it’s as good as it gets because there is no confidence in the future.
Collapse means there isn’t enough tax revenue to harvest Eugene. And in the final stages the powerful you speak of. The people with the guns and ability to wipe out a savings account at a bank is not the greedy corporations or the ill defined rich.
Whom, incidently are the first to get wind of the governments intentions and begin to move resources elsewhere. Even if it means leaving their mansions to the city of Detroit or Ancient Rome.
@ admin….Ghetto Logic fails Prison Reality 101 …bitches named Paul get “fucked” every day “up in’ the State owned Gray Bar Motel.
Pirate Jo, it won’t work.
For welfare (as we know it) to end, you have to have a consensus evolve accepting of children suffering.
It ain’t gonna happen.
It is impossible to ameliorate the suffering of the child without either:
1. Forcibly removing the child, forcibly sterilizing the mother and Village-Raising said child (a disaster), or
2. Enabling the parent.
For this reason it is IMPOSSIBLE to ameliorate the suffering of the child without embedding even more problems. The paradox is that no one will accept the kind of suffering you’d see. Credible reports from India suggest kids will be intentionally crippled to enhance their take as beggars. Does anyone doubt such things would be done in North America as well, if it “paid?”
Welfare is here until collapse. Ditto Warfare. And there’s a whole lot of ruin still left in this country.
@Admin, the “best” ghetto (or ghetto-turning middle class ‘burb, don’t have to be dark to be a worthless sucker of societal tit) birth control is thus:
Raise your girls to value their body, in an age of cheapness. Hold it up, idolize it, point out the fact when you didn’t value it not easy things/bad outcomes happen. Teach truth about people, especially horny teen boys, teach birth control.
Value education and the ability to take care of yourself – through skills and hard work – instead of continuing of our overcrowded species.
Denigrate, and pity, the members whom believe all the lies and suck from the system – rather they be tit-sucker, or tit-administrator, or tit-bankster (as JP Morgan makes BILLIONS running the EBT and other plastic benefits), at every opportunity.
Expose the hypocrisy of asking for equality while demanding special treatment. Make it well known that life, and raising children, is so much easier with a WORTHY mate.
And finally, most importantly, let her know that just because she is female, it does not mean she has to be doomed to a poverty-stricken brood of children dependent on the continued farce of our fiat, or generosity of men that have already proven they cannot do the right thing by their own offspring.
Or a life of working full time and part time parenting. True equality is the security of providing for oneself, with or without a man.
A girl with all that in her head won’t likely jump into the sack with the first guy that says he loves her. At least this momma hopes. And will have condoms.
JWRebel,
It used to be, if you didn’t work you didn’t eat.
Food allocation was justifiably, inextricably related to food production. Industrializing the economy only built on the division-of-labor economy that preceded it; if you didn’t do something productive, you didn’t eat (wives raising kids is highly productive, BTW.)
Now we head into a brave new world where scarce resources are turned into great wealth via automation, involving fewer and fewer people’s input.
How do you propose resources be allocated? Right now the answer to that question is “politically,” and it is clearly headed for the same disaster as Plymouth Colony while it attempted to employ a socialist approach.
I don’t have an answer. I just pose the question, knowing that paying unproductive people to sit around have have kids they don’t care about is a prescription for eventual, complete collapse of human civilization.
TE, good luck with that.
To me, girls who give away sex are fools. Would they as easily give away their clothes, their phone, or their shoes and underwear? The devalue their bodies to zero. I’m not a prude, I get that people might have sex prior to marriage, but casual sex is beyond stupid.
The same holds true for males, however. Everything you do becomes a part of you, and every action is embedded in your memory. Who is so stupid that they disrespect their future wife by embedding lots of intimate memories with other girls in their minds?
I still recall an acquaintance who told me that the girl he married was not the one with whom he had shared the most passionate relationship. Small wonder that 3 kids later they’re divorced…bitterly.
Also, physical intimacy is a wonderful system for enhancing emotional intimacy…unless you’ve conditioned yourself to experience physical intimacy without emotional involvement. If someone thinks they can habituate to casual sex and then suddenly revert to where sex is emotionally meaningful, I have a bridge to sell them.