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Comment by Helmet | Hacker News Reader

Your conclusion isn't supported by your own data.

The "flip" doesn't occur around 1980, it occurs in the 1970's (feel free to download the excel sheet and examine it yourself, as I did) and it's a trend that follows ALL races, yet the crack era was largely an African-American epidemic.

There was, however, a major social movement in the 60's that encouraged free love, sexual liberation, women's rights, and an explosion of contraceptives. I think this is a stronger explanatory argument, one also made by the Brookings Institution:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/an-analysis-of-out-of-wed...

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In our pursuit of a fully-employed society (maximizing the size of the labor pool for optimum capital efficiency), we've neglected to factor in the time + effort + wealth it takes to maintain the traditional family structure.

When you don't have access to that wealth* and society takes an active role in eroding its explicit social safety net (welfare), the implicit communal safety net (redlining, divestment), and individual liberties (mass incarceration, the crack vs cocaine sentencing disparities), you can see what results. What you're falsely ascribing to sexual liberation I'm ascribing to the real, tangible effects of capitalism and a society that values black life less.

* http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2010/03/09...

> In our pursuit of a fully-employed society (maximizing the size of the labor pool for optimum capital efficiency), we've neglected to factor in the time + effort + wealth it takes to maintain the traditional family structure.

That reminds me of something I've heard before. Oh, right...

“The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.” — Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party

The argument your side used to take was to attack the traditional family structure, calling it a force of oppression. I’m glad you’ve come around to accept that the traditional family structure is vitally important - this is a basic truth that we old stodgy conservatives have known for a long time; it’s comforting to see a Marxist in our purview.

Now as for the nonsensical rant about capitalism, I’ve had that debate about a thousand times, so I don’t see the point in engaging again - it’s not like we’re going to change each other’s minds.

> The argument your side used to take was to attack the traditional family structure, calling it a force of oppression.

My side? Please elaborate.

"Traditional family structure" has been used to browbeat same-sex parents, transgender people and anyone that lives a life not depicted in Norman Rockwell portraiture. In that way it has been politically weaponized to oppress the marginalized.

Families remain powerful agents for wealth creation, economic as well as intellectual, social, and spiritual wealth. This does not mean we should structure society to make no resources available for a single mother; no one should be faced with the choice of staying with an abusive partner or losing her only means of providing for her children.

It's nice to have a point of agreement, but unfortunate that you choose to keep your worldview narrow regarding our economic reality.

AFDC and other Great Society programs are better candidates for a culprit if you're looking for a reason for increased out-of-wedlock births based on the timing.

When you set up incentives such that a woman loses money by marrying a guy with a small or nonexistent income, you're going to see fewer marriages in the lowest income bracket. It's rational in the short term, but the long term effects are corrosive.

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