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Comment by potato3732842 | Hacker News Reader

Tread carefully. Your comment has the aroma of exactly the sort of first order thinking that over the past 50yr resulted in welfare programs exacerbating that exact list of problems (among others) that you're saying we can solve with more welfare.

I don't know what the solution is but using government to replace or supplement the kind of support that people traditionally got from their family, friends and network has only reduced the strength of those support streams over the decades.

To call out one well studied example, you can't just do first order stuff like extend bennies to single moms because then people won't get married in the first place and it's easier to split up if you're not married then you've got a legit single mom on your hands with all the poorer outcomes that entails. You can play whack a mole refining the rules forever but that has its own problems.

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One simple and cheap thing that we do is have condoms (cheap) right next to the pregnancy tests (expensive) in vending machines.

It's logically possible this doesn't reduce single and early parenthood (although I bet someone had measured), but even in that unlikely event I don't see how it would adversely affect family, friends, or networks either.

> Tread carefully. Your comment has the aroma of exactly the sort of first order thinking that over the past 50yr resulted in welfare programs exacerbating that exact list of problems (among others) that you're saying we can solve with more welfare.

Who says that the welfare programs exacerbate the problems?

Perhaps it is the lack of welfare programs (particularly in the US, the richest country in the world) that causes so much social problems (compared to less rich European countries).

At one point, U.S. welfare programs directed at single mothers appeared to cause an increase in single mothers. Fathers either actually left or had to hide their participation in the family lest the mother become ineligible for assistance. The dominant culture is that the poor are morally unfit and undeserving, and the welfare programs reflect that. Politicians emphasize their benefits to the middle class, almost never the poor.

> you can't just do first order stuff like extend bennies to single moms because then people won't get married and it's easier to split up if you're not married, then you've got a legit single mom on your hands with all the poorer outcomes that entails.

Refusing to provide support to an person who wants to leave a relationship leads to several other factors, some on this very list. Indeed, staying in a dysfunctional, unwanted, potentially abusive relationship, just because finances force you to, is worse than the alternative.

The results of 50yr of various flavors of this policy kind of speak for themselves (which is why I specifically chose to mention it as my example).

It's better for society if people get married, (or perform some other socially agreed upon ritual that both requires investment and signals future investment) BEFORE they start cranking out the crotchfruit. Extending more aid to people who skip this step than those who go through it leads to predictable outcomes.

I get that it's really easy to play this off as some sort of pro-woman thing and try and send the discussion careening off into left field by bringing up domestic violence but we both know that's a red herring.

Edit: It was a mistake to reply to this comment at all. This is all a side discussion (ironic considering the subject of TFA). My point wasn't that you can't have government do things. The point was that you can't just pick a metric and turn government loose trying to address it. The goal of historical welfare was to subsidize basic necessities with certain groups getting priority that was generally accomplished (the programs exist, they doll out bennies pursuant to the rules) but it didn't yield the expected improvement on other fronts as intended and in the process we minted a class of people who are all but trapped in a multi-generational cycle of dependance upon the welfare system.

> It's better for society if people get married, (or perform some other socially agreed upon ritual that both requires investment and signals future investment) BEFORE they start cranking out the crotchfruit

The children of dysfunctional, unwanted, and potentially-abusive relationships speak for themselves: Given a couple with a kid, in a dysfunctional, unwanted, potentially-abusive relationship (marriage or otherwise), it's better for them to end the relationship. Raising a child in such an environment leads to all sorts of disorders (as described in this very article), and is worse than a single parent or separated parents properly raising the child with adequate support, financial and otherwise.

Unfortunately we cannot hand-wave away dysfunctional relationships, unwanted relationships, abusive relationships (to say nothing of domestic violence), and all that comes with them, no matter how easy it is, how much we wish we could, or which fish you wish to change the subject to.

> The results of 50yr of various flavors of this policy kind of speak for themselves

Maybe... just maybe... the US does not have enough social policies to assist the most vulnerable?

> BEFORE they start cranking out the crotchfruit

While you are being all edgy and misanthropic and childfree or whatever, you do realize that you are included in this definition?

The “welfare queen single moms” criticism is a shallow critique of government assistance programs overall and doesn’t move the analysis forward in an evidence backed manner. This is an old Republican USA talking point.

Also arguing that government support reduces the strength of family networks really needs some serious citation to back it up.

any citations for all that?

there's a lot of assumption of causation with no backup.

in particular I'd mention that there are countries with far more extensive welfare programs with measurably better social outcomes, so maybe there's something else going on

what countries? i suspect the ones you're referring to are demographically different from the US and are homogeneous in culture/race/faith.

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