OT: Cops kill George Floyd

[thebuzzardman]

I would be glad to get in a nice discussion.

I would ask you the following question:

In the 1960's the single parent household rate was at 25% but now its around 75%

Was there a specific policy created in the 1960's that might deemphasized dual parent hoseholds?

Are you sure you aren't a closet conservative?

Because I'm familiar with the "Roe V Wade" argument.

Why not just availability of birth control?
Changing women's roles?

I've often heard this argument used to deemphasize the impact of mass incarceration.
And I'm not saying it didn't have a role
But the places where I see this argument get stood up as a prime cause? Uh, yeah. ok.

I was actually referring to Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society policy aka Welfare. While I believe the intentions of the policy to reduce Welfare around the country had good intentions in turn it over the years it was more financially beneficial for parents not to marry or be together. In the long run that has negative impacts on a childs development (regardless of race) proved by many studies and facts.

Also I'm not sure what my specific political views would have in a civil discussion if I am presenting information, I don't think an insult was necessary. If you care to know I think I have stated in this thread I am a moderate that tends to lean more conservative on economical stances.

Many studies and facts. I'm pretty sure there are many studies and facts that support multiple views on it's impact.

Which kinds of proves my point here, and my original post was more directed to the OP than you, but you engaged, so I decided to go along.

You're more of a fiscal conservative, so you'll gravitate to information that supports that bias. I do it too. And there might be actual facts in there, for both of us, but I suspect that's not even close to being the majority of the time, for most people.

[Fat Kat]

Read on Twitter

[mpharris36]

Are you sure you aren't a closet conservative?

Because I'm familiar with the "Roe V Wade" argument.

Why not just availability of birth control?
Changing women's roles?

I've often heard this argument used to deemphasize the impact of mass incarceration.
And I'm not saying it didn't have a role
But the places where I see this argument get stood up as a prime cause? Uh, yeah. ok.

I was actually referring to Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society policy aka Welfare. While I believe the intentions of the policy to reduce Welfare around the country had good intentions in turn it over the years it was more financially beneficial for parents not to marry or be together. In the long run that has negative impacts on a childs development (regardless of race) proved by many studies and facts.

Also I'm not sure what my specific political views would have in a civil discussion if I am presenting information, I don't think an insult was necessary. If you care to know I think I have stated in this thread I am a moderate that tends to lean more conservative on economical stances.

Many studies and facts. I'm pretty sure there are many studies and facts that support multiple views on it's impact.

Which kinds of proves my point here, and my original post was more directed to the OP than you, but you engaged, so I decided to go along.

You're more of a fiscal conservative, so you'll gravitate to information that supports that bias. I do it too. And there might be actual facts in there, for both of us, but I suspect that's not even close to being the majority of the time, for most people.

I guess my argument is that regardless of democrat/rebublican or black/white/latino. Married couple households is the single biggest driver in terms of staying out of poverty no matter what race you are. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to the rule because there are successful kids that come from single parent households. But it is factual that you are at a severe disadvantage growing in that family structure.

Look at the article below link with the chart. Figure 1. Percentage of children under age eighteen in families living in poverty, by child’s race/ethnicity and family structure, 2017

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/power-two-parent-home-not-myth

Now there are obviously other factors and I don't want to say its the ONLY factor. But I think most would agree that poverty statistics are pretty relevant when it comes to criminal activity as well. I think Jay10 said above...you don't really see wealthy people shooting wealthy people.

[thebuzzardman]

I was actually referring to Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society policy aka Welfare. While I believe the intentions of the policy to reduce Welfare around the country had good intentions in turn it over the years it was more financially beneficial for parents not to marry or be together. In the long run that has negative impacts on a childs development (regardless of race) proved by many studies and facts.

Also I'm not sure what my specific political views would have in a civil discussion if I am presenting information, I don't think an insult was necessary. If you care to know I think I have stated in this thread I am a moderate that tends to lean more conservative on economical stances.

Many studies and facts. I'm pretty sure there are many studies and facts that support multiple views on it's impact.

Which kinds of proves my point here, and my original post was more directed to the OP than you, but you engaged, so I decided to go along.

You're more of a fiscal conservative, so you'll gravitate to information that supports that bias. I do it too. And there might be actual facts in there, for both of us, but I suspect that's not even close to being the majority of the time, for most people.

I guess my argument is that regardless of democrat/rebublican or black/white/latino. Married couple households is the single biggest driver in terms of staying out of poverty no matter what race you are. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to the rule because there are successful kids that come from single parent households. But it is factual that you are at a severe disadvantage growing in that family structure.

Look at the article below link with the chart. Figure 1. Percentage of children under age eighteen in families living in poverty, by child’s race/ethnicity and family structure, 2017

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/power-two-parent-home-not-myth

Now there are obviously other factors and I don't want to say its the ONLY factor. But I think most would agree that poverty statistics are pretty relevant when it comes to criminal activity as well. I think Jay10 said above...you don't really see wealthy people shooting wealthy people.

I think the issue is far more complicated that "Great Society Welfare" or "Roe V Wade"

This line of reasoning is basically: Welfare makes people stay apart = single family households = poverty = crime.
As if there aren't dozens of other factors in play.

And yeah, generally rich people don't shoot each other because they are less desperate or (mostly) less likely to operate in the underground economy, where business disputes get settle violently. And they don't live around desperate people who might crime them, which even well adjusted poor people might encounter. And, of course, X percent of poor people are just kind of f*cked up.

[mpharris36]

Many studies and facts. I'm pretty sure there are many studies and facts that support multiple views on it's impact.

Which kinds of proves my point here, and my original post was more directed to the OP than you, but you engaged, so I decided to go along.

You're more of a fiscal conservative, so you'll gravitate to information that supports that bias. I do it too. And there might be actual facts in there, for both of us, but I suspect that's not even close to being the majority of the time, for most people.

I guess my argument is that regardless of democrat/rebublican or black/white/latino. Married couple households is the single biggest driver in terms of staying out of poverty no matter what race you are. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to the rule because there are successful kids that come from single parent households. But it is factual that you are at a severe disadvantage growing in that family structure.

Look at the article below link with the chart. Figure 1. Percentage of children under age eighteen in families living in poverty, by child’s race/ethnicity and family structure, 2017

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/power-two-parent-home-not-myth

Now there are obviously other factors and I don't want to say its the ONLY factor. But I think most would agree that poverty statistics are pretty relevant when it comes to criminal activity as well. I think Jay10 said above...you don't really see wealthy people shooting wealthy people.

I think the issue is far more complicated that "Great Society Welfare" or "Roe V Wade"

This line of reasoning is basically: Welfare makes people stay apart = single family households = poverty = crime.
As if there aren't dozens of other factors in play.

And yeah, generally rich people don't shoot each other because they are less desperate or (mostly) less likely to operate in the underground economy, where business disputes get settle violently. And they don't live around desperate people who might crime them, which even well adjusted poor people might encounter. And, of course, X percent of poor people are just kind of f*cked up.

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

[robillionaire]

I guess my argument is that regardless of democrat/rebublican or black/white/latino. Married couple households is the single biggest driver in terms of staying out of poverty no matter what race you are. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to the rule because there are successful kids that come from single parent households. But it is factual that you are at a severe disadvantage growing in that family structure.

Look at the article below link with the chart. Figure 1. Percentage of children under age eighteen in families living in poverty, by child’s race/ethnicity and family structure, 2017

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/power-two-parent-home-not-myth

Now there are obviously other factors and I don't want to say its the ONLY factor. But I think most would agree that poverty statistics are pretty relevant when it comes to criminal activity as well. I think Jay10 said above...you don't really see wealthy people shooting wealthy people.

I think the issue is far more complicated that "Great Society Welfare" or "Roe V Wade"

This line of reasoning is basically: Welfare makes people stay apart = single family households = poverty = crime.
As if there aren't dozens of other factors in play.

And yeah, generally rich people don't shoot each other because they are less desperate or (mostly) less likely to operate in the underground economy, where business disputes get settle violently. And they don't live around desperate people who might crime them, which even well adjusted poor people might encounter. And, of course, X percent of poor people are just kind of f*cked up.

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

[HarthorneWingo]

I think the issue is far more complicated that "Great Society Welfare" or "Roe V Wade"

This line of reasoning is basically: Welfare makes people stay apart = single family households = poverty = crime.
As if there aren't dozens of other factors in play.

And yeah, generally rich people don't shoot each other because they are less desperate or (mostly) less likely to operate in the underground economy, where business disputes get settle violently. And they don't live around desperate people who might crime them, which even well adjusted poor people might encounter. And, of course, X percent of poor people are just kind of f*cked up.

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

And give them healthcare! Legalize weed, M4A, a solid nationwide infrastructure bill to put people back to work and rebuild our crumbling railroads, tunnels, bridges, etc. These, as well other meaningful programs, will make a huge difference in the lives of blue collar and working class people across the country. This isn’t that difficult.

[Fat Kat]

I think the issue is far more complicated that "Great Society Welfare" or "Roe V Wade"

This line of reasoning is basically: Welfare makes people stay apart = single family households = poverty = crime.
As if there aren't dozens of other factors in play.

And yeah, generally rich people don't shoot each other because they are less desperate or (mostly) less likely to operate in the underground economy, where business disputes get settle violently. And they don't live around desperate people who might crime them, which even well adjusted poor people might encounter. And, of course, X percent of poor people are just kind of f*cked up.

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

Glad you mentioned the war on drugs. The Rockefeller drug laws, over policing, and sentencing disparities are specifically damaging to black communities. We also have to consider that felons aren’t allowed to live in public housing with their families. That creates the perfect recipe for a single parent home. Almost as if it were planned that way to create a for-profit prison pipeline.

[thebuzzardman]

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

Glad you mentioned the war on drugs. The Rockefeller drug laws, over policing, and sentencing disparities are specifically damaging to black communities. We also have to consider that felons aren’t allowed to live in public housing with their families. That creates the perfect recipe for a single parent home. Almost as if it were planned that way to create a for-profit prison pipeline.

I think MPHarris has some points, but all along that was my point - there are a LOT of complicating factors.
Also, a general point about we'll all find facts where our ideology leads us, but that was kind of me going off on a tangent.

Welfare policy seems like an odd choice as the prime mover of poverty, or the prime mover of family breakdown, therefore poverty.

Again, I think a LOT of things are went on during that time frame and any time frame, regarding poverty.

I don't know. Someone here alluded to the fact that an underclass is part and parcel of the capitalist system. One of my earliest memories of someone teaching about social programs, probably from way back in high school, was that the New Deal was largely about recognizing that there were boom and bust cycles in capitalism, that there are always some people who don't do as well in it, and it was about the social responsibility to take the edge off those things.
Obviously, there is also the interpretation that the New Deal etc is about helping to maintain that system and I don't disagree, but some of those interpretations are a bit cynical for me. Or they could be exactly true.

[E-Balla]

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

Glad you mentioned the war on drugs. The Rockefeller drug laws, over policing, and sentencing disparities are specifically damaging to black communities. We also have to consider that felons aren’t allowed to live in public housing with their families. That creates the perfect recipe for a single parent home. Almost as if it were planned that way to create a for-profit prison pipeline.

I think MPHarris has some points, but all along that was my point - there are a LOT of complicating factors.
Also, a general point about we'll all find facts where our ideology leads us, but that was kind of me going off on a tangent.

Welfare policy seems like an odd choice as the prime mover of poverty, or the prime mover of family breakdown, therefore poverty.

Again, I think a LOT of things are went on during that time frame and any time frame, regarding poverty.

I don't know. Someone here alluded to the fact that an underclass is part and parcel of the capitalist system. One of my earliest memories of someone teaching about social programs, probably from way back in high school, was that the New Deal was largely about recognizing that there were boom and bust cycles in capitalism, that there are always some people who don't do as well in it, and it was about the social responsibility to take the edge off those things.
Obviously, there is also the interpretation that the New Deal etc is about helping to maintain that system and I don't disagree, but some of those interpretations are a bit cynical for me. Or they could be exactly true.

Seeing how the New Deal literally didn't include black people I don't see how you can say those interpretations are cynical. It's the truth, black people had no power so under the New Deal they got nothing and it arguably created the ghetto (thanks redlining) making their lives undeniably worse.

[thebuzzardman]

Glad you mentioned the war on drugs. The Rockefeller drug laws, over policing, and sentencing disparities are specifically damaging to black communities. We also have to consider that felons aren’t allowed to live in public housing with their families. That creates the perfect recipe for a single parent home. Almost as if it were planned that way to create a for-profit prison pipeline.

I think MPHarris has some points, but all along that was my point - there are a LOT of complicating factors.
Also, a general point about we'll all find facts where our ideology leads us, but that was kind of me going off on a tangent.

Welfare policy seems like an odd choice as the prime mover of poverty, or the prime mover of family breakdown, therefore poverty.

Again, I think a LOT of things are went on during that time frame and any time frame, regarding poverty.

I don't know. Someone here alluded to the fact that an underclass is part and parcel of the capitalist system. One of my earliest memories of someone teaching about social programs, probably from way back in high school, was that the New Deal was largely about recognizing that there were boom and bust cycles in capitalism, that there are always some people who don't do as well in it, and it was about the social responsibility to take the edge off those things.
Obviously, there is also the interpretation that the New Deal etc is about helping to maintain that system and I don't disagree, but some of those interpretations are a bit cynical for me. Or they could be exactly true.

Seeing how the New Deal literally didn't include black people I don't see how you can say those interpretations are cynical. It's the truth, black people had no power so under the New Deal they got nothing and it arguably created the ghetto (thanks redlining) making their lives undeniably worse.

Besides the racial component. I was referring to actions of preserving the system as it currently was, which was already racist. But agreed.
I don't think it created the ghetto. It propagated the current system, where there were already ghettos.
Obviously, ghettos got larger, but there's got to be a function of the labor moving from rural to cities as part of that growth as well.

Again, basically agreeing. But multiple factors.

[mpharris36]

I think the issue is far more complicated that "Great Society Welfare" or "Roe V Wade"

This line of reasoning is basically: Welfare makes people stay apart = single family households = poverty = crime.
As if there aren't dozens of other factors in play.

And yeah, generally rich people don't shoot each other because they are less desperate or (mostly) less likely to operate in the underground economy, where business disputes get settle violently. And they don't live around desperate people who might crime them, which even well adjusted poor people might encounter. And, of course, X percent of poor people are just kind of f*cked up.

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

I think to clarify what I said. There are policies set up to de-incentivize the family structure. That is where life beings with your parents raising a child. Whether you want to call that the nuclear family structure. Lets just call it two loving parents with a biological child or an adopted child. Just two parents that care and love that child. I believe that ultimately gives the child the best chance at success back up by every statistic you can come up. So a policy that deters that I think ultimately negatively effects that community.

Each state has a variety of income-based benefits, like housing assistance, welfare, and food stamps, that may be impacted if you live with an unmarried partner. Although your state Department of Human Health and Services can’t restrict who you live with, it can reduce or eliminate your benefits based on the size of your household or combined income.

For example, if you’re a single mother receiving assistance and your child’s other parent moves into your home, the state will include both incomes in the reevaluation of your monthly eligibility.

If I was a single mother why would I want less money in my pocket. I would put more emphasis and benefits to being married or lessen the penalties of a father and mother wanting to at least live together to raise there son/daughter. I know you mentioned why would you want to keep unhappy people together. Well I think our generation really tends to lead to flight instead of fight. If things get tough instead of working on your relationship at the first sign of an issue people leave which is detrimental to a child.

I would start by just tackling this one issue with you before I expand on others because I think in a back and forth its better to clarify where you stand so we can either build on our discussion or it ends there because there are a lot of touching points to tackle.

Do you feel having 2 parents in the home is inherently more beneficial to a child then a single parent household. And since the odds are very skewed to one side I will even get to another level. Since mother single parent households are mother only. Do you feel there is a benefit to having a father in the home especially in raising a son to have a male figure in the home?

Now is it the only factor. Absolutely not. To touch on a few other things (but it can be difficult to touch on them all). I do want to also touch on the incarceration issue that is breaking up families as well. I am 100% for prison reform. Petty crimes especially marijuana use I have no time for that. Release anyone like that in terms of minor misdemeanor crimes and put them in programs to help them get rehabilitated and get them back to there families and make it easier for them to get back in the work place and get jobs. 100% aligned there. I am all for getting fathers back in the home to both support financially there families and help raise there children. So not only do you need to make prison reform to get them out you need to either remove those misdemeanor from there record so that they can easily find work and start having a positive impact on there families and society.

[thebuzzardman]

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

I think to clarify what I said. There are policies set up to de-incentivize the family structure. That is where life beings with your parents raising a child. Whether you want to call that the nuclear family structure. Lets just call it two loving parents with a biological child or an adopted child. Just two parents that care and love that child. I believe that ultimately gives the child the best chance at success back up by every statistic you can come up. So a policy that deters that I think ultimately negatively effects that community.

Each state has a variety of income-based benefits, like housing assistance, welfare, and food stamps, that may be impacted if you live with an unmarried partner. Although your state Department of Human Health and Services can’t restrict who you live with, it can reduce or eliminate your benefits based on the size of your household or combined income.

For example, if you’re a single mother receiving assistance and your child’s other parent moves into your home, the state will include both incomes in the reevaluation of your monthly eligibility.

If I was a single mother why would I want less money in my pocket. I would put more emphasis and benefits to being married or lessen the penalties of a father and mother wanting to at least live together to raise there son/daughter. I know you mentioned why would you want to keep unhappy people together. Well I think our generation really tends to lead to flight instead of fight. If things get tough instead of working on your relationship at the first sign of an issue people leave which is detrimental to a child.

I would start by just tackling this one issue with you before I expand on others because I think in a back and forth its better to clarify where you stand so we can either build on our discussion or it ends there because there are a lot of touching points to tackle.

Do you feel having 2 parents in the home is inherently more beneficial to a child then a single parent household. And since the odds are very skewed to one side I will even get to another level. Since mother single parent households are mother only. Do you feel there is a benefit to having a father in the home especially in raising a son to have a male figure in the home?

Now is it the only factor. Absolutely not. To touch on a few other things (but it can be difficult to touch on them all). I do want to also touch on the incarceration issue that is breaking up families as well. I am 100% for prison reform. Petty crimes especially marijuana use I have no time for that. Release anyone like that in terms of minor misdemeanor crimes and put them in programs to help them get rehabilitated and get them back to there families and make it easier for them to get back in the work place and get jobs. 100% aligned there. I am all for getting fathers back in the home to both support financially there families and help raise there children. So not only do you need to make prison reform to get them out you need to either remove those misdemeanor from there record so that they can easily find work and start having a positive impact on there families and society.

With 50+ years to understand this knock on effect (I'll assume you don't mean the destruction of lower income families was the GOAL) or welfare, why didn't the government simply tweak the formula of welfare receipt to ENCOURAGE family unity.

All I see is them raising the bar to make whatever money can be received harder and harder.
Surely that's not the only way to encourage "family unity" via governmental policy.

[mpharris36]

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

I think to clarify what I said. There are policies set up to de-incentivize the family structure. That is where life beings with your parents raising a child. Whether you want to call that the nuclear family structure. Lets just call it two loving parents with a biological child or an adopted child. Just two parents that care and love that child. I believe that ultimately gives the child the best chance at success back up by every statistic you can come up. So a policy that deters that I think ultimately negatively effects that community.

Each state has a variety of income-based benefits, like housing assistance, welfare, and food stamps, that may be impacted if you live with an unmarried partner. Although your state Department of Human Health and Services can’t restrict who you live with, it can reduce or eliminate your benefits based on the size of your household or combined income.

For example, if you’re a single mother receiving assistance and your child’s other parent moves into your home, the state will include both incomes in the reevaluation of your monthly eligibility.

If I was a single mother why would I want less money in my pocket. I would put more emphasis and benefits to being married or lessen the penalties of a father and mother wanting to at least live together to raise there son/daughter. I know you mentioned why would you want to keep unhappy people together. Well I think our generation really tends to lead to flight instead of fight. If things get tough instead of working on your relationship at the first sign of an issue people leave which is detrimental to a child.

I would start by just tackling this one issue with you before I expand on others because I think in a back and forth its better to clarify where you stand so we can either build on our discussion or it ends there because there are a lot of touching points to tackle.

Do you feel having 2 parents in the home is inherently more beneficial to a child then a single parent household. And since the odds are very skewed to one side I will even get to another level. Since mother single parent households are mother only. Do you feel there is a benefit to having a father in the home especially in raising a son to have a male figure in the home?

Now is it the only factor. Absolutely not. To touch on a few other things (but it can be difficult to touch on them all). I do want to also touch on the incarceration issue that is breaking up families as well. I am 100% for prison reform. Petty crimes especially marijuana use I have no time for that. Release anyone like that in terms of minor misdemeanor crimes and put them in programs to help them get rehabilitated and get them back to there families and make it easier for them to get back in the work place and get jobs. 100% aligned there. I am all for getting fathers back in the home to both support financially there families and help raise there children. So not only do you need to make prison reform to get them out you need to either remove those misdemeanor from there record so that they can easily find work and start having a positive impact on there families and society.

With 50+ years to understand this knock on effect (I'll assume you don't mean the destruction of lower income families was the GOAL) or welfare, why didn't the government simply tweak the formula of welfare receipt to ENCOURAGE family unity.

All I see is them raising the bar to make whatever money can be received harder and harder.
Surely that's not the only way to encourage "family unity" via governmental policy.

Like I said I think in my first post I believe the policy had right intentions and I believe there are people that desperately need government aid....and I am not talking about eradicating the entire policy because I do understand there are specific circumstances where government aid is needed.

I am talking about not making the policy where it completely minimizes or shuts off government aid if you want to have the father of your child in your home because it either puts you over the minimal income threshold to receive benefits. An option to emphasize family structure might be to have tax benefits at the end of the year for lower dual family incomes. So for example if you checked off married or living with a head of the household (like our stimulas checks that came in if you had kids you got more of a benefit). Now before you say that even wealthy people would benefit from this because they are mostly married. I would literally cap the benefit to where this would only benefit lower dual income families.

While this will be government spending they will also save from having less people on welfare and the people that are actually on it need it. Which means we have more people in the workforce being productive. More families together which we need to help raise our kids. That should in theory lead to less poverty which could trickle down to more structured families and less crime. Nothing is perfect but that would be my theory then what is currently going on now.

[robillionaire]

I think there are many layers, that I 100% agree with you. I think you layed out a few other factors as well and I agree with a lot of them. But we can't change everything at once that just isn't realistic or reasonable. If we were looking for a major impact on poverty which tends to lead to more violence understanding and improving the family structure is #1 on my list. When you incentivize parents not to be together to raise there child because its not finacially beneficial to them to have the father of there child in there home I see a major issue with that.

I would like to understand maybe one or two things you think might be a major factor and maybe we can come to some more common ground.

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

I think to clarify what I said. There are policies set up to de-incentivize the family structure. That is where life beings with your parents raising a child. Whether you want to call that the nuclear family structure. Lets just call it two loving parents with a biological child or an adopted child. Just two parents that care and love that child. I believe that ultimately gives the child the best chance at success back up by every statistic you can come up. So a policy that deters that I think ultimately negatively effects that community.

Each state has a variety of income-based benefits, like housing assistance, welfare, and food stamps, that may be impacted if you live with an unmarried partner. Although your state Department of Human Health and Services can’t restrict who you live with, it can reduce or eliminate your benefits based on the size of your household or combined income.

For example, if you’re a single mother receiving assistance and your child’s other parent moves into your home, the state will include both incomes in the reevaluation of your monthly eligibility.

If I was a single mother why would I want less money in my pocket. I would put more emphasis and benefits to being married or lessen the penalties of a father and mother wanting to at least live together to raise there son/daughter. I know you mentioned why would you want to keep unhappy people together. Well I think our generation really tends to lead to flight instead of fight. If things get tough instead of working on your relationship at the first sign of an issue people leave which is detrimental to a child.

I would start by just tackling this one issue with you before I expand on others because I think in a back and forth its better to clarify where you stand so we can either build on our discussion or it ends there because there are a lot of touching points to tackle.

Do you feel having 2 parents in the home is inherently more beneficial to a child then a single parent household. And since the odds are very skewed to one side I will even get to another level. Since mother single parent households are mother only. Do you feel there is a benefit to having a father in the home especially in raising a son to have a male figure in the home?

Now is it the only factor. Absolutely not. To touch on a few other things (but it can be difficult to touch on them all). I do want to also touch on the incarceration issue that is breaking up families as well. I am 100% for prison reform. Petty crimes especially marijuana use I have no time for that. Release anyone like that in terms of minor misdemeanor crimes and put them in programs to help them get rehabilitated and get them back to there families and make it easier for them to get back in the work place and get jobs. 100% aligned there. I am all for getting fathers back in the home to both support financially there families and help raise there children. So not only do you need to make prison reform to get them out you need to either remove those misdemeanor from there record so that they can easily find work and start having a positive impact on there families and society.

you mention our generation, not sure about you but I'm a 36 y/o millennial, I would point out that divorce rates are actually way down across the board for our gen, census figures show 18 percent drop in divorce rate for millennials compared prior generations at the same age, one reason is gen x and millennials are waiting until later in life to get married than prior generations. So I would say that so far we are actually doing better when it comes to staying together if the statistics are to be believed

with that said I do know many examples of people who would like to be married but can't because they would lose their benefits. or who actually did get divorced for that reason, so I agree with you that it's an issue. as suggested above seems like you could just tweak the system to not strip benefits from an individual who decides to get married maybe just treat them all on an individual basis regardless of marital status so there's no benefit one way or the other and this should be an easy solution to that issue. So I'd probably take a more middle of the road approach and wouldn't incentivize it one way or the other and let people make their own choices without marital status being a factor

I do think there can be a benefit to having 2 parents in addition to the economic benefit of pooling resources. my parents are divorced, they did not have a good relationship. they tried for years to "stay together for the kids" and it was very unpleasant atmosphere. things were better off for everybody after the divorce, just my anecdotal experience. I'd have preferred to have parents who got along so I could have had them both around, and it definitely had a harmful impact, but I think there's also something to consider about the negative aspects of growing up in a 2 parent household when there's hostility between them. I just don't think it's quite as cut and dry as far as it being inherently more beneficial and more a case by case basis. I could suggest that it might be more beneficial for some kids to grow up with a single parent as opposed to in a hostile environment with parents who are fighting all the time

[mpharris36]

this just seems like a really strange conclusion to reach. let's agree that poverty is the primary cause of crime. not the only cause, but primary. reduce poverty and you reduce crime. let's also agree that society was and still is set up to financially benefit those who pool together their resources. Now, your suggestion seems to be that the #1 way to reduce crime, is to take away welfare from people who are already poor, making them even more poor, so that couples will forced to stay together out of necessity for survival, which will in turn help them financially because they are still able to pool together their (now virtually nonexistent) resources, and in turn this will reduce poverty and by extension, crime. For most people it would just plunge them into an even more dire and desperate situation which would cause crime to rise. And probably domestic violence as well.

Now you pointed out a correlation between welfare in the 1960s and single parent households increasing although I wouldn't say it proves causation. but I would also note that other things happened in the 1960s. One is that is the women's rights movements really took off at this time. This resulted in women's equal access to education and an increased participation in politics and the workplace. Statistics show that divorce rates are higher when couples make nearly equal incomes and lower when one makes most or all of the money. In other words when people are able to survive independently without being dependent on their partner, they may be less likely to stay in an unhappy relationship. In addition to this, you may be overlooking that in 1969 in that same time frame, Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce bill in California, other states quickly followed suit. This marked the time where people were free to have a divorce without the process of proving wrongdoing in your partner. Trapping people in unhappy marriages out of financial necessity through welfare cuts and perhaps other means to force people to stay together does not seem to be a realistic solution for poverty or crime. What are you suggesting you could do to "improve the family structure" that wouldn't amount to some sort of coercion?

If I've completely misrepresented your position here feel free to clarify what I've got wrong

Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the major policies that was enacted that created single parent household especially in the black community was the introduction of the "war on drugs" which was designed to target their communities and pretty much caused black men to disappear from their family and reappear in cages in grotesque numbers, the US still leads the world in incarceration today, and the war on drugs is still a driving force of it and this contributes to both poverty and crime. So if you want to look at improving the family structure there's my solution for a great first step. end the war on drugs, end mass incarceration

I think to clarify what I said. There are policies set up to de-incentivize the family structure. That is where life beings with your parents raising a child. Whether you want to call that the nuclear family structure. Lets just call it two loving parents with a biological child or an adopted child. Just two parents that care and love that child. I believe that ultimately gives the child the best chance at success back up by every statistic you can come up. So a policy that deters that I think ultimately negatively effects that community.

Each state has a variety of income-based benefits, like housing assistance, welfare, and food stamps, that may be impacted if you live with an unmarried partner. Although your state Department of Human Health and Services can’t restrict who you live with, it can reduce or eliminate your benefits based on the size of your household or combined income.

For example, if you’re a single mother receiving assistance and your child’s other parent moves into your home, the state will include both incomes in the reevaluation of your monthly eligibility.

If I was a single mother why would I want less money in my pocket. I would put more emphasis and benefits to being married or lessen the penalties of a father and mother wanting to at least live together to raise there son/daughter. I know you mentioned why would you want to keep unhappy people together. Well I think our generation really tends to lead to flight instead of fight. If things get tough instead of working on your relationship at the first sign of an issue people leave which is detrimental to a child.

I would start by just tackling this one issue with you before I expand on others because I think in a back and forth its better to clarify where you stand so we can either build on our discussion or it ends there because there are a lot of touching points to tackle.

Do you feel having 2 parents in the home is inherently more beneficial to a child then a single parent household. And since the odds are very skewed to one side I will even get to another level. Since mother single parent households are mother only. Do you feel there is a benefit to having a father in the home especially in raising a son to have a male figure in the home?

Now is it the only factor. Absolutely not. To touch on a few other things (but it can be difficult to touch on them all). I do want to also touch on the incarceration issue that is breaking up families as well. I am 100% for prison reform. Petty crimes especially marijuana use I have no time for that. Release anyone like that in terms of minor misdemeanor crimes and put them in programs to help them get rehabilitated and get them back to there families and make it easier for them to get back in the work place and get jobs. 100% aligned there. I am all for getting fathers back in the home to both support financially there families and help raise there children. So not only do you need to make prison reform to get them out you need to either remove those misdemeanor from there record so that they can easily find work and start having a positive impact on there families and society.

you mention our generation, not sure about you but I'm a 36 y/o millennial, I would point out that divorce rates are actually way down across the board for our gen, census figures show 18 percent drop in divorce rate for millennials compared prior generations at the same age, one reason is gen x and millennials are waiting until later in life to get married than prior generations. So I would say that so far we are actually doing better when it comes to staying together if the statistics are to be believed

with that said I do know many examples of people who would like to be married but can't because they would lose their benefits. or who actually did get divorced for that reason, so I agree with you that it's an issue. as suggested above seems like you could just tweak the system to not strip benefits from an individual who decides to get married maybe just treat them all on an individual basis regardless of marital status so there's no benefit one way or the other and this should be an easy solution to that issue. So I'd probably take a more middle of the road approach and wouldn't incentivize it one way or the other and let people make their own choices without marital status being a factor

I do think there can be a benefit to having 2 parents in addition to the economic benefit of pooling resources. my parents are divorced, they did not have a good relationship. they tried for years to "stay together for the kids" and it was very unpleasant atmosphere. things were better off for everybody after the divorce, just my anecdotal experience. I'd have preferred to have parents who got along so I could have had them both around, and it definitely had a harmful impact, but I think there's also something to consider about the negative aspects of growing up in a 2 parent household when there's hostility between them. I just don't think it's quite as cut and dry as far as it being inherently more beneficial and more a case by case basis. I could suggest that it might be more beneficial for some kids to grow up with a single parent as opposed to in a hostile environment with parents who are fighting all the time

Appreciate the pleasant back and forth and very much understand a lot of your points and concerns.

I am also around your age 32 year old millennial. And to your point divorce is going down at a % base but we are also having record low people getting married. So yes less divorces on a % basis but overall less married couples in general per person.

I also appreciate your anecdotal evidence about your family. That gives me additional information on your position and where you are coming from. I grew up with two parents and got lucky they are happily married. My wife seems to be in a similar situation to you. She grew up with both parents that kinda stayed together through her siblings developmental years then split up when the kids got to college. She has both positive and negative experiences she talks about where she might not have always saw her parents be loving and caring towards each other. But she also had very fond memories as a kid (which I think are the biggest developmental years) with her whole family going on vacation or being together for many of the major parts of her life. So I don't want to say hey you decided to have a family stick it out regardless. There are always exceptions to the rule right? Like I would never tell people to stay in a toxic relationship where there is abuse or infidelity where it actually has a negative effect on the child/children. I do however think a few to many relationships end because of social media where people are living these lavish lives where they see this couple madly in love with a ton of money and no problems and think everyone deserves that. Earth to people this is real life and sh*t is tough. And if you make the decision to have a child they become the most important. Your life is now not the most important and a lot of people forget that. Your child becomes #1 over everything. You brought him/her into this world you need to make sure they are the main priority.

So it seems we do have some alignments in terms of the benefits of a two parent household under the premise both parents don't want to rip each others heads off every second of the day (which I wouldn't call the vast majority).

[E-Balla]

I think MPHarris has some points, but all along that was my point - there are a LOT of complicating factors.
Also, a general point about we'll all find facts where our ideology leads us, but that was kind of me going off on a tangent.

Welfare policy seems like an odd choice as the prime mover of poverty, or the prime mover of family breakdown, therefore poverty.

Again, I think a LOT of things are went on during that time frame and any time frame, regarding poverty.

I don't know. Someone here alluded to the fact that an underclass is part and parcel of the capitalist system. One of my earliest memories of someone teaching about social programs, probably from way back in high school, was that the New Deal was largely about recognizing that there were boom and bust cycles in capitalism, that there are always some people who don't do as well in it, and it was about the social responsibility to take the edge off those things.
Obviously, there is also the interpretation that the New Deal etc is about helping to maintain that system and I don't disagree, but some of those interpretations are a bit cynical for me. Or they could be exactly true.

Seeing how the New Deal literally didn't include black people I don't see how you can say those interpretations are cynical. It's the truth, black people had no power so under the New Deal they got nothing and it arguably created the ghetto (thanks redlining) making their lives undeniably worse.

Besides the racial component. I was referring to actions of preserving the system as it currently was, which was already racist. But agreed.
I don't think it created the ghetto. It propagated the current system, where there were already ghettos.
Obviously, ghettos got larger, but there's got to be a function of the labor moving from rural to cities as part of that growth as well.

Again, basically agreeing. But multiple factors.

I mean is it not clearly perpetuating the system to give white people enough economic benefits to shut up with their labor movements at the cost of creating a bigger hole for the bottom caste of society? I get that you agree, what I'm trying to get across is that it's not cynical. It's what government officials openly declared they were doing at the time.

[HarthorneWingo]

I think MPHarris has some points, but all along that was my point - there are a LOT of complicating factors.
Also, a general point about we'll all find facts where our ideology leads us, but that was kind of me going off on a tangent.

Welfare policy seems like an odd choice as the prime mover of poverty, or the prime mover of family breakdown, therefore poverty.

Again, I think a LOT of things are went on during that time frame and any time frame, regarding poverty.

I don't know. Someone here alluded to the fact that an underclass is part and parcel of the capitalist system. One of my earliest memories of someone teaching about social programs, probably from way back in high school, was that the New Deal was largely about recognizing that there were boom and bust cycles in capitalism, that there are always some people who don't do as well in it, and it was about the social responsibility to take the edge off those things.
Obviously, there is also the interpretation that the New Deal etc is about helping to maintain that system and I don't disagree, but some of those interpretations are a bit cynical for me. Or they could be exactly true.

Seeing how the New Deal literally didn't include black people I don't see how you can say those interpretations are cynical. It's the truth, black people had no power so under the New Deal they got nothing and it arguably created the ghetto (thanks redlining) making their lives undeniably worse.

Besides the racial component. I was referring to actions of preserving the system as it currently was, which was already racist. But agreed.
I don't think it created the ghetto. It propagated the current system, where there were already ghettos.
Obviously, ghettos got larger, but there's got to be a function of the labor moving from rural to cities as part of that growth as well.

Again, basically agreeing. But multiple factors.

I’m no expert on FDR’s New Deal and it’s discriminatory effect on Black people and minorities. But I do have a sense that Capitalism is antithetical to a fair and just society. The underlying theories of capitalism just aren’t true. Especially when the antitrust laws are not being enforced. Thank you Ronald Reagan.

[Fat Kat]

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Woody Johnson says it without the wordy obfuscation. Hopefully he’s forced to sell.

[robillionaire]

Read on Twitter

Woody Johnson says it without the wordy obfuscation. Hopefully he’s forced to sell.

hoo boy