Help me understand human nature

[Dr Strangelove]

As assessed by... you?

By a socially responsible People's Committee .....of robots.

[N35t0r]

[molly bloom]

Inception? Memento?

The latter adapted from brother Jonathan Nolan's short story.

[molly bloom]

Insomnia!

The one that's a re-run of a Scandinavian original ? With Stellan Skarsgard ?

[Elok]

To elaborate on my cost concerns:

Let's keep it abstracted, and say that we want to deliver $10,000 worth of funds, goods or services to every single mother. This could take the form of tax breaks, or cash assistance, or childcare, or whatever. For simplicity, we'll also ignore the cost of overhead, waste, fraud, etc., and suppose that all of those ten thousand dollars are going directly to parents. Note that ten grand ain't that much; it's less than you'd get working full-time for a year at minimum wage, even after taxes. A pretty poor substitute for having an actual second breadwinner, even from a purely financial perspective.

Suppose in addition that there are ten million single mothers who direly need these services at some point in time; daddy is either dead, or in jail, or a successful dodger of paternity suits, or completely unknown, etc. Ten million is, again, something of a lowball. But if you multiply ten grand times ten million, you get . . . a hundred billion dollars. A tenth of a trillion dollars, to provide an inadequate service to a relatively small number of women at an impossible rate of efficiency. And this isn't like ordinary welfare, which is intended to get struggling people back on their feet, and IIUC frequently does. No, this is something that has to continue year after year until the kids are grown.

Where is this money coming from, in addition to all our other entitlements? Everyone's feeling pinched already. And I imagine the real figure would be at least twice as large from various administrative costs. Grow it enough to make it actually effective (again, from a purely financial standpoint), and you're looking at something almost as gigantic as Social Security. "Government paternalism" metaphors aside, the government really can't be everybody's dad.

[ricketyclik]

The original Insomnia!

[molly bloom]

The original Insomnia!

It's very good. I have a copy.

[Kidlicious]

To elaborate on my cost concerns:

Let's keep it abstracted, and say that we want to deliver $10,000 worth of funds, goods or services to every single mother. This could take the form of tax breaks, or cash assistance, or childcare, or whatever. For simplicity, we'll also ignore the cost of overhead, waste, fraud, etc., and suppose that all of those ten thousand dollars are going directly to parents. Note that ten grand ain't that much; it's less than you'd get working full-time for a year at minimum wage, even after taxes. A pretty poor substitute for having an actual second breadwinner, even from a purely financial perspective.

Suppose in addition that there are ten million single mothers who direly need these services at some point in time; daddy is either dead, or in jail, or a successful dodger of paternity suits, or completely unknown, etc. Ten million is, again, something of a lowball. But if you multiply ten grand times ten million, you get . . . a hundred billion dollars. A tenth of a trillion dollars, to provide an inadequate service to a relatively small number of women at an impossible rate of efficiency. And this isn't like ordinary welfare, which is intended to get struggling people back on their feet, and IIUC frequently does. No, this is something that has to continue year after year until the kids are grown.

Where is this money coming from, in addition to all our other entitlements? Everyone's feeling pinched already. And I imagine the real figure would be at least twice as large from various administrative costs. Grow it enough to make it actually effective (again, from a purely financial standpoint), and you're looking at something almost as gigantic as Social Security. "Government paternalism" metaphors aside, the government really can't be everybody's dad.

How many would sacrifice 10k/yr to be married?

[Bereta_Eder]

To elaborate on my cost concerns:

Let's keep it abstracted, and say that we want to deliver $10,000 worth of funds, goods or services to every single mother. This could take the form of tax breaks, or cash assistance, or childcare, or whatever. For simplicity, we'll also ignore the cost of overhead, waste, fraud, etc., and suppose that all of those ten thousand dollars are going directly to parents. Note that ten grand ain't that much; it's less than you'd get working full-time for a year at minimum wage, even after taxes. A pretty poor substitute for having an actual second breadwinner, even from a purely financial perspective.

Suppose in addition that there are ten million single mothers who direly need these services at some point in time; daddy is either dead, or in jail, or a successful dodger of paternity suits, or completely unknown, etc. Ten million is, again, something of a lowball. But if you multiply ten grand times ten million, you get . . . a hundred billion dollars. A tenth of a trillion dollars, to provide an inadequate service to a relatively small number of women at an impossible rate of efficiency. And this isn't like ordinary welfare, which is intended to get struggling people back on their feet, and IIUC frequently does. No, this is something that has to continue year after year until the kids are grown.

Where is this money coming from, in addition to all our other entitlements? Everyone's feeling pinched already. And I imagine the real figure would be at least twice as large from various administrative costs. Grow it enough to make it actually effective (again, from a purely financial standpoint), and you're looking at something almost as gigantic as Social Security. "Government paternalism" metaphors aside, the government really can't be everybody's dad.

I'm quite positive that your whole reasoning is wrong.
In Europe the countries with the largest number of single parent families are also the richest.
So only if we could all be like them.

It's also starting to feel a bit childlish. Health care is evergoing so are benefits for unemployment etc etc (again, richest countries with large number of single parent families excel on those too).

[Ben Kenobi]

In Europe the countries with the largest number of single parent families are also the richest.

Latvia is number 1.

I think you're going to have to recheck your facts.

[C0ckney]

The phrase "turning back the tide," to me, implies that history moves in a set direction. Attitudes and values shift all the time--not always rapidly, or consistently, or sensibly, but they shift. Be that as it may, suppose for the sake of argument you're right. What exactly do you propose we do that is:

A. Not an utterly token gesture, and
B. Even remotely affordable?

This is setting aside the social-dysfunction side of the equation, and treating it as a purely economical problem. Too late at night to get into the rest of it now.

that's not what i mean to imply. i mean to say that society, history if you like, moves and changes because of the factors which push it in a certain direction; that shape and influence things. you can't just say 'maybe things will swing the other way' based on nothing more than wishful thinking.

as for what to do, i have already mentioned a few things, but basically it boils down to changing working practices to accommodate single parents, making child care cheap/free, and finding ways to address educational underachievement and related issues. this will probably mean diverting some more society's resources towards single parents.

looking at your post about cost concerns, i don't see why we need a thought experiment of this kind, full of questionable assumptions, when we have real figures and examples from all over the world.

[Ben Kenobi]

because of the factors which push it in a certain direction; that shape and influence things. you can't just say 'maybe things will swing the other way' based on nothing more than wishful thinking.

What Elok's saying is that the factors underpinning it are going to change. Right now, society can afford it. What happens when the train stops and family instability becomes too commonplace?

[Kidlicious]

Women get all kinds of free stuff in the US. Single mothers get double.

[Kidlicious]

What Elok's saying is that the factors underpinning it are going to change. Right now, society can afford it. What happens when the train stops and family instability becomes too commonplace?

And that's because when kids see that a lot of people do it they think it's ok. And the feminized education system doesn't even try to educate them correctly on it.

[Elok]

Bereta: Correlation does not equal causation. The boom in single parenting is largely the result of a set of beliefs and practices common to most of Western Civilization. Western countries are more wealthy in general; these countries have merely inherited Western vices, and are strong in spite of them.

C0ckney: Single parenting is bad in part because of the lost income. If you're going to say with a straight face that you can even begin to make SPF healthy, you need a plan to make a good part of that second income, or its equivalent in services, come from somewhere. If my math is wrong, give me the right math, and show me just how you're going to manage it. Because from where I'm standing it ain't gonna work. Changing working practices--e.g. more flexible hours? Not that meaningful. Mama still has to be away from home X hours to support herself and the kids. Subsidized child care? I have doubts about its affordability when adopted on a grand scale, especially in combination with other efforts, and in the end more time spent in institutions supervised by distracted non-parents with no direct stake in their upbringing is not what they need. Education reform? In America, at least, the bulk of real education problems are poverty problems. And poverty, in large part, is caused by things like single parenting.

But money isn't the whole picture; kids need love, too. Lots of time, lots of attention. Single parents have a severe deficiency of both, and I don't see how you're going to fix that. The arrangement is simply not fair or humane for parents or children; we cannot buy or state-proxy our way out of it; therefore, it will stop happening eventually, if only by the most brutal Darwinian selection.