Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

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While alimony is not guaranteed, Elizabeth Warren shows in her book 'The Dual Income Trap' that you can be pretty much assured the government will get all that is possible from the husband. This is more true today than ever.

But you're not totally wrong. Part of the problem is that we disincentivize staying home. For example, you don't get to contribute to a 401k if you don't work but are at home with kids. You also don't get to qualify for social security.

In my opinion, if a woman or man stays home (but let's be honest... it's mostly women), then she should qualify for significant tax breaks on retirement accounts (if not a funded government account) and also the quarters she spends caring for kids should count for social security at the working spouse's wage or a government-mandated minimum.

> See the responses to any post about dating sites and the fury that women get more matches than men.

This is hardly a new thing. Literally the entire history of humankind is explained by men being highly desirous of basically any women and women desiring only a certain subset of men. 'Incel's have a long history.

> Elizabeth Warren shows in her book 'The Dual Income Trap' that you can be pretty much assured the government will get all that is possible from the husband.

Is there any evidence of this outside Elizabeth Warren's book? Most reports say that at most 10% of women get alimony.

> This is hardly a new thing.

Not new, but I believe that it's getting worse.

Warren's book doesn't say all women get alimony, it says that alimony is heavily enforced and that the courts extract as much as possible. If a woman is not getting alimony it's either because she worked (in which case she might still get child support, that's different) or because the husband is simply not earning enough to support two people, which would be a problem even without alimony.

Basically, if a non-working woman divorces, she is highly likely to get about as much as she would have had had she remained married, which stilly might be nothing, if the husband is not earning a whole lot.

I'll stand by my comparison. Absent every other consideration, do you think more people would want a job with retirement benefits and severance pay, or a job where you have a 10% chance of getting part of your employer's income - which may are may not be all that much.

I'm pretty sure I know what Jack Bogle would recommend.

> Is there any evidence of this outside Elizabeth Warren's book? Most reports say that at most 10% of women get alimony.

Do you have a source for this claim? (anon291 provided at least one source...)

> alimony awards have always been very rare, going from about 25 percent of cases in the 1960s to about 10 percent today

From 2015, but I don't think there's any reason to think they've gotten higher

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-divorce-alimony/how...

Maybe only 10% of women stop working when they have kids, so few of them need alimony?

And again that’s separate from child support. I’d bet the child support number is 80%+, with the remainder being women that earn huge amounts of money or who decide not to be in their kids’ lives and have zero custody.

They probably haven't stopped working when they have kids because it's a terrible social and financial decision.

Which is why they don't want kids. Which is why fertility is declining.

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