Sunday, November 19, 2017

Marriage, and Economic Prosperity

By Douglas V. Gibbs
In 1973, Science Fiction Writer Robert Heinlein wrote in his book, Time Enough For Love, "Every so often some idiot tries to abolish marriage.  Such attempts work as well as repealing the law of gravity."

From Heinlein's point of view, while he respected the values of religious faith, he did not see marriage as only a religious function "thought up by priests and inflicted on mankind."  He saw marriage as a natural occurrence, an evolutionary step in the right direction no different than "his eyes, and as useful to the race as eyes are to an individual."

"Marriage is an economic contract to provide for children and to take care of mothers while they bear kids and bring them up - but it is much more than that.  It is the means this animal, Homo sapiens, has evolved - quite unconsciously - for performing this indispensable function and be happy while doing so."

Heinlein then goes into natural examples of family.  "Why do bees split into queens, drones, and workers, then live as one big family?  Because, for them, it works."

"Why is it that 'marriage' - by whatever name - is a universal institution among human beings everywhere?  Don't ask a theologian, don't ask a lawyer; this institution existed long before it was codified by church or state.  It works, that's all; for all its faults it works far better by the only universal test - survival - than any of the endless inventions that shallow-pates over the millennia have tried to substitute for it."

He continues, "For human beings, the only acceptable compensation for the drawbacks of marriage lies in what men and women can give each other ... sex baits the trap, but sex is not marriage, nor is it reason enough to stay married ... Companionship, partnership, mutual reassurance, someone to laugh with and grieve with, loyalty that accepts foibles, someone to touch, someone to hold your hand - these things are 'marriage' ... sex is but the icing  on the cake.  Oh, that icing can be wonderfully tasty - but it is not the cake.  A marriage can lose that tasty 'icing' - say, through accident - and still go on and on, giving deep happiness to those who share it ... marriage [is] not easy, not to be entered into lightly, because there would be troubles they must face together."

Heinlein's politics carried both conservative and liberal left viewpoints, during his lifetime, but he was definitely not a religious man.  He respected the values of Christianity and Judaism, but he also made oft mention of the Eastern Religions, as well.  He did not really have any kind of faith in any of them, but appreciated the parts he agreed with when it came to values and principles.

Personally, I believe marriage was created by God, and then was later carried out by religions when they began to emerge throughout history.  That said, the reason I quoted the passages from Heinlein's book is because there is a lot of wisdom in his words.  He recognized the importance that traditional marriage carries in society, and the positive influence marriage has on the cohesiveness of a culture.

Heinlein wrote the above passages in the early seventies, at a time when cultural Marxism was working through the hippie generation to marginalize the institution of marriage, and ultimately end it.  As a result of the sexual revolution, divorce rates skyrocketed, marriages decreased, and the tendency of couples to live with each other outside of marriage increased dramatically.

Marriage was injured, and limping, but made a comeback during the following generation.

During that time period the gay community mocked marriage.  Homosexuality is not exactly a monogamous sexual lifestyle.  However, since the cultural Marxism warriors were unable to eliminate marriage, it was then decided to alter it, and completely neutralize the part of marriage that provides for a strong traditional family unit.

In 1963, an excerpt from Cleon Skousen's book, The Naked Communist, was introduced to Congress.  The list of 45 Communist Goals for the Takeover of America was entered into the Congressional Record -- Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963.  The Communist Goals were entered into the record under unanimous consent.

On that list of communist goals were the following:
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.  
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."  
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."  
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."  
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.  
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. 
The importance of the influence upon a society and culture by traditional marriage reveals startling numbers in the black community.
► In 1960 only 22% of families in the black community were single-parent households.
Now, that number is about 72%. Daily Signal 
► According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, in 1938 about 11% of black children were born to unwed mothers. Today about 75% of black children are born to unwed mothers. Walter E. Williams 
► Two-parent black families are rarely poor. Only 8% of black married-couple families live in poverty. Among black families in which both the husband and wife work full time, the poverty rate is under 5%. Poverty in black families headed by single women is 37%. As early as 1900, when racism was rampant, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites. Today, in a time were we just finished two terms of the first black President, and experienced the candidacy of a black neurosurgeon named Ben Carson in the last election for the White House, it’s about 30 percent longer. Daily Signal

For the last 20 years, marital status has increasingly become the central factor in whether our neighbors rise above, remain, or descend into poverty. The research is astounding.
Calling marriage a "foundational value", The Federalist explains that all other things revolve around traditional marriage.  With both mom and dad married and in the home together, it provides for the family, and their children, the ability to compete for a fair and meaningful shot at the American dream - citizenship, educational opportunity, and securing meaningful work that leads to greater life opportunities via commitment, diligence, and self-sacrifice.
Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute explains in his important book “Coming Apart: The State of White America” that in 1960, the poorly and moderately educated were only 10 percent less likely to be married than the college educated, with both numbers quite high: 84 and 94 respectively. That parity largely held until the late 1970s.
The gap is now at a 35 percent margin, and it continues to expand.  As marriage sinks dramatically among lower- and middle-class Americans, down to a minority of 48 percent today, the poverty level has been increasing.

“Marriage has become the fault line dividing America’s classes.”
Jonathan Rauch writing in the National Journal, certainly no conservative, notes that “marriage is displacing both income and race as the great class divide of the new century.” Isabel Sawhill, a senior scholar at the center-left Brookings Institute, boldly and correctly proclaimed some years ago that “the proliferation of single-parent households accounts for virtually all of the increase in child poverty since the early 1970s.” Virtually all of the increase!
Professor Bill Galston, President Clinton’s domestic policy advisor and now a senior fellow at Brookings, explained in the early 1990s that an American need only do three things to avoid living in poverty: graduate from high school, marry before having a child, and have that child after age twenty. Only 8 percent of people who do so, he reported, will be poor, while 79 percent who fail to do all three will.
According to a research investigation from the Brookings and the American Enterprise institutes, the increase of baby carriages coming before marriage is terribly alarming among the working poor. Working-class women are nearly three times more likely to have babies out of wedlock than upper-class women. Poor women are about five times more likely. These two groups are far less likely to be married overall and twice as likely to be cohabiting, suffering further from inherent instability of living together without marriage.
A recent report on this topic focusing on millennials reports that 97 percent of those who follow the success sequence—earn at least a high-school diploma, work, and marry before having children—will not be poor as they enter their 30s.
Marriage boosts every important measure of well-being for children, women, and men; overall physical and mental health, income, savings, employment, educational success, general life contentment and happiness, sexual satisfaction, even recovery from serious disease, healthy diet and exercise.  Married people rate markedly and consistently better in each of these, and so many more, compared to their single, divorced, and cohabiting peers. Thus, marriage is an essential active ingredient in improving one’s overall life prospects, regardless of class, race, or educational status.

The U.S. Census Bureau finds the poverty rate for children living with two unmarried cohabiting parents is similar to that of single-mother homes than to those living with their married mother and father. Married people, regardless of how much they have, tend to manage their money differently than divorced, single, and cohabiting people.

▻ Only 4 percent of homes with a married mother and father are on food stamps at any given time. 
▻ 21 percent of cohabiting and 28 percent of single-mother homes require such public assistance.
▻ 78 percent of married people own their own home - while only 41 percent of cohabiting adults and 44 percent of singles do. Data indicates that marital status boosts home ownership more than home ownership increases marital opportunities.
Robert Lerman, an economist at the Urban Institute, reports the marriage benefit holds for even the most poor, and to a lesser degree but still consequentially for those who marry between conception and the birth of their first child.  Despite “academic ability, school completion, family background, race, and age at pregnancy, women who are married between pregnancy and the birth of their first child averaged a 30 percent higher income-to-needs ratio and a 15 percent lower degree of [financial volatility].”
“Even among the mothers with the least qualifications and highest risk of poverty, marriage effects are consistently large and statistically significant.”

Even women entering marriage between the conception and birth of their first child, regardless of class, education, and race, benefit from a greater standard of living by the following percentages.
▻ 65 percent over a single mother with no other live-in adult
▻ 50 percent over a single mother living with a non-romantic adult
▻ 20 percent over a single mother living with a man
A major 2014 report from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies at the University of Virginia reports that:
▻ Adjusting for family size, family income is 73 percent higher for married women compared to that of their unmarried peers.
▻ Married men benefit from an average annual economic “marriage premium” of at least $15,900 per year compared to their unmarried peers.
Marriage generates wealth largely because marriage molds men into producers, providers, and savers. Singleness and cohabiting don’t. Nobel-winning economist George Akerlof, in a prominent lecture more than a decade ago, explained the pro-social and market influence of marriage upon men and fathers: “Married men are more attached to the labor force, they have less substance abuse, they commit less crime, are less likely to become the victims of crime, have better health, and are less accident prone.”

Akerlof explains this is because “men settle down when they get married and if they fail to get married, they fail to settle down.” 

Harvard studies proclaim that marriage is especially good for men's health.
A major survey of 127,545 American adults found that married men are healthier than men who were never married or whose marriages ended in divorce or widowhood. Men who have marital partners also live longer than men without spouses; men who marry after age 25 get more protection than those who tie the knot at a younger age, and the longer a man stays married, the greater his survival advantage over his unmarried peers.
Studies and common-sense-observation have concluded over the past 150 years that marriage is good for health.

Japanese scientists reported that never-married men were three times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than married men. And a report from the Framingham Offspring Study also suggests that marriage is truly heartwarming. Scientists evaluated 3,682 adults over a 10-year period. Even after taking major cardiovascular risk factors such as age, body fat, smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol into account, married men had a 46% lower rate of death than unmarried men.

And when men are healthy and happy, they are productive members of the economy.

Which is why cultural Marxism desires to destroy traditional marriage and the traditional family unit.  A happy family with a productive father are not interested in revolution, or collectivism.  The American System cannot be destroyed through a Cloward/Piven Strategy if a productive family-oriented population continues to act in a responsible manner because they want what is best for their family.  The individual family, in a system of liberty, possesses a very important role that surpasses any role the government may attempt to play.  With economic prosperity rising in a system where both parents are married and in the home, why would dependency upon government even be a concern?

Cultural Marxism hates marriage also because it produces healthy children.

According to the Heritage Foundation, "The effect of married fathers on child outcomes can be quite pronounced. For example, examination of families with the same race and same parental education shows that, compared with intact married families, children from single-parent homes are: 

⬝More than twice as likely to be arrested for a juvenile crime,[3]
⬝Twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems,[4]
⬝Roughly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school,[5]
⬝A third more likely to drop out before completing high school.[6]
The effects of being raised in a single-parent home continue into adulthood. Comparing families of the same race and similar incomes, children from broken and single-parent homes are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact married families.[7] Compared with girls raised in similar married families, girls from single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to have a child without being married, thereby repeating the negative cycle for another generation.[8]

The decline of marriage contributes to declining self-sufficiency and increased official poverty in future generations. Children living in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to experience official poverty as adults when compared with children from intact married homes. This intergenerational poverty effect persists even after adjusting for the original differences in family income and poverty during childhood.

Throughout U.S. history, marriage has been the norm. Prior to the mid-1960s, nearly all children were born to married couples. When the War on Poverty began in 1964, only 7 percent of children were born to unmarried women. However, over the next four-and-a-half decades the share of non-marital births exploded. The effect has been higher poverty, especially in minority communities.

With all of the claims of racism and oppression being screamed by the liberal leftists, the truth is, the claim is false. The problems that exist in the black community are not the result of racism or police brutality, but instead is directly related to the breakdown of the family unit. The breakdown of the family unit began to occur at about the same time as President Johnson kicked the welfare system into high gear. The Democrat Party remains to be the party of government dependency. Under the presidency of Barack Obama, by 2012 (only halfway through his presidency, mind you) federal spending on welfare programs increased by 32%. The number of able-bodied adults on food stamps doubled from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010. Washington Times, Daily Caller.

The reason black lives did not improve during the Obama presidency is because President Obama was doubling down on the anti-family policies that have been destroying the black community, and keeping some blacks from realizing the American Dream. It takes strong family units, and working to do so without government dependency, in order to activate one's pursuit of happiness.

The traditional family unit is a sign of morality, and without morality, a country becomes bankrupt, both morally, and economically.

As Benjamin Franklin so wisely said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." With an unwillingness to keep the family together, and a refusal to break away from the gifts of government that do nothing more than kill incentive, how can people who remain in poverty ever expect to change their own conditions?

Democrats, with leftist progressive policies in place, have been seeking to destroy the traditional family unit.  By doing so, they are discouraging self-reliance, personal responsibility, and individual incentive through a free market system that, if left alone by the government, creates wealth and prosperity.

Marriage encourages an independent individualistic family unit that is productive and personally responsible.  What the liberal left is pushing is death to the traditional family, because they believe it takes a collective utopian socialist village.  Married couples do too well, economically, and the Democrats hate wealth inequality, no matter why that inequality exists.

Karl Marx said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

The statists of the Democrat Party (and unfortunately, also of the Republican Party) explain that there should be no unfair advantages. Based on that assumption, the eventual conclusions are clear. A child who has a nurturing family has an advantage over a child in a dysfunctional family, so the family needs to be eliminated to level the playing field. If a child that attends a private school has a better chance to achieve academically over a child in a public school, then we must eliminate all private schools. If one family can afford to buy two cars, but their neighbor can only afford one, eliminate the allowance to own more than one car. All must be equal from the viewpoint of the liberal leftists.

If all must be equal, then the task of policing such policies will fall to a government where the leadership considers itself superior to the non-political class. The definitions of what are needs, and what are wants, will then also be determined by the government. In short, the only way to pursue a society where the outcome is always equal is in a totalitarian state. Then, with no chance of being better, the desire to achieve will be removed, and any hope of innovation or a better society is lost. Equity, when achieved by government force, becomes equity in misery.

The traditional family ceases to exist, because the only family a subject is allowed to acknowledge is that of the ruling elite who determine and provide everything through government programs.

The failures of socialism worldwide and historically, versus the reality of the power of the family unit, reveals that socialism is an enemy of the family, and the traditional family is among the primary keys to maintaining a system of liberty.

Traditional Marriage is what our American community needs, if we are to remain on the right track to restoring our republic.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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