Wedded to the State by Stephen Baskerville
LewRockwell.com
Excerpts:
Writing recently in National Review Online, Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), describes the huge social costs of family breakdown and the benefits to children and society of marriage. He also points out that his agency spends $46 billion each year on programs "the need for [which] is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages." He rightly argues that we need to address this costly "family breakdown" problem.
Indeed, his argument demonstrates more than that the runaway growth in domestic government spending is attributable to family breakdown. It is also an acknowledgement that the federal government and its hangers-on have a clear self-interest in broken families. ACF and the half-trillion dollar HHS generally constitute a massive in-house lobby of social workers, psychotherapists, lawyers and others who are not so candid as Dr. Horn about how they depend upon a steady supply of fatherless and troubled children to justify their huge consumption of tax dollars – dollars that in turn subsidize and increase the number of such children.
The smorgasbord of programs Dr. Horn lists is more than a response to broken families; it is a major cause of broken families. Before we initiate new federal programs, we ought to remember the first rule of public policy intervention, which is to first examine the effect of existing programs to see if adjusting them may correct the problem. Could our current public programs and policies be contributing to the family breakdown problem, and, if so, how can we alter them to yield better results?
Similar political courage will be needed to address the other known public programs and policies that are undermining marriage. These include:
(1) The states have failed, since the 1960's, to treat marriage as a real contract.
(2) Paternalistic "family" courts and new laws have seriously undermined fatherhood.
(3) Federally funded state child support systems set excessive awards and penalize non-payment harshly, even when the circumstances for non-payment are clearly outside the control of the payer.
Exhorting people to marry is pointless so long as marriage is a bate-and-switch carrying financial rewards for those who break it. People will simply not invest in a worthless investment, no matter how much you preach at them. If marriage was a worthwhile investment, we would see more of it.
Excerpts:
Writing recently in National Review Online, Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), describes the huge social costs of family breakdown and the benefits to children and society of marriage. He also points out that his agency spends $46 billion each year on programs "the need for [which] is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages." He rightly argues that we need to address this costly "family breakdown" problem.
Indeed, his argument demonstrates more than that the runaway growth in domestic government spending is attributable to family breakdown. It is also an acknowledgement that the federal government and its hangers-on have a clear self-interest in broken families. ACF and the half-trillion dollar HHS generally constitute a massive in-house lobby of social workers, psychotherapists, lawyers and others who are not so candid as Dr. Horn about how they depend upon a steady supply of fatherless and troubled children to justify their huge consumption of tax dollars – dollars that in turn subsidize and increase the number of such children.
The smorgasbord of programs Dr. Horn lists is more than a response to broken families; it is a major cause of broken families. Before we initiate new federal programs, we ought to remember the first rule of public policy intervention, which is to first examine the effect of existing programs to see if adjusting them may correct the problem. Could our current public programs and policies be contributing to the family breakdown problem, and, if so, how can we alter them to yield better results?
Similar political courage will be needed to address the other known public programs and policies that are undermining marriage. These include:
(1) The states have failed, since the 1960's, to treat marriage as a real contract.
(2) Paternalistic "family" courts and new laws have seriously undermined fatherhood.
(3) Federally funded state child support systems set excessive awards and penalize non-payment harshly, even when the circumstances for non-payment are clearly outside the control of the payer.
Exhorting people to marry is pointless so long as marriage is a bate-and-switch carrying financial rewards for those who break it. People will simply not invest in a worthless investment, no matter how much you preach at them. If marriage was a worthwhile investment, we would see more of it.
Labels: Child Support, Stephen Baskerville
posted by Meg at 11:19 AM
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