“Marriage promotion” is a destructive cargo cult
interfluidity.com
interfluidity.com
As far as I can divine, it is some sort of idea about giving extra welfare benefits to married people, or withholding them from single people?
Is this currently happening? Is anybody that is advocating it anybody that I should care about? Am I missing something that makes this a HN-worthy topic (if it's just general intellectual interest stuff, that's fine, but I can't tell if that is the angle here or not)?
It means I pay at least £304/yr more in tax than I would if I was married.
Whether you should care about UK tax policy, I don't know.
If the German policy just lets you use the mean it sounds like it would be free of the effect of creating a penalty for marriage for equal incomes that the US has.
Lots of socioeconomic stats are better for married people than single people, therefore some cargo cult believers swap cause and effect and have been pushing marriage as a path out of poverty, also social/economic mobility in the modern USA is a downward-only random function, and social class is stratifying, which makes marriage significantly more risky in the future than in the past, and more so for poor people than (whats left of the) middle or upper classes.
Classic hacker themes of confusing cause and effect. Also any time you mention "cargo cult science" all the Feynmanites ears perk up. Also classic hacker theme of extrapolation of past performance into inappropriate future conditions is a disaster. Someone with a lot more time on their hands could take classic hacker themes like the abov and turn them into traditional fairy tales / fables / morality tales, which is unintentionally (probably) what the linked article is doing.
I think a smart lawyer with a smart marketing guy could create something like a marriage with all the good parts and none of the bad parts. A little far fetched for a HN startup idea. Something like a small business combined with power of attorney for each co-founder. The marketing guy has the fun task of convincing women that decades of princess fairytale weddings was all a bunch of bull and they really want this newfangled contract.
This seems to have produced some revived discussion of a more general initiative by some conservatives (especially social conservatives) to shed the "conservatives don't care about the poor" perception by arguing that certain conservative social policies are in fact poverty-reduction mechanisms, and should be renewed with vigor. Promoting two-parent families is one of the main ones that's seen as a "win-win" strategy: conservatives can put forth a poverty-reduction strategy that also aligns with their other views, allowing them to back away from the more hardline (and favored by the libertarian wing) view that poverty-reduction is just not the government's business at all, while also avoiding a "liberal" approach to it.
Here's a recent column from someone favorable towards the position: http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/is-marriage-prom..., who also wrote a book proposing a kind of "new conservative" politics that aims to reposition conservatism as addressing the concerns of the working class: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307277801/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
Recently, a number of economists have discovered that if you run the exact same analysis but substitute single motherhood for inequality, you get much stronger correlations. For example:
http://www.economics21.org/commentary/great-gastby-curve-rev...
Now the argument which economist sorts are actually making is a more complicated one - an argument by contradiction. Specifically, if (a) inequality mongers believe their analysis is valid and (b) single motherhood is a bigger factor than inequality according to the analysis, then it logically follows that those inequality mongers should focus their efforts on the bigger problem (single motherhood).
But obviously an argument by contradiction is too complex for the political process.
Not necessarily. They should run a cost benefit analysis - a bigger problem that costs much more to fix (or isn't obviously soluble) might not be the right target.
Anyway, if Marco Rubio explicitly applies his analysis to support gay marriage, I will applaud him, but I don't see that happening - not if he hopes to win the GOP nomination for anything.
Intellectually honest Obama: "Getting women to marry reliable men before having children is the defining challenge of our time, but solving that problem is difficult and not worth the effort, so I'll talk about inequality instead."
True, marrying the government means that Dad will spend all his time at work, but he'll always provide for the family, never leave you for another woman, never get laid off, never come home drunk and beat you for fooling around with another man.... He'll be fine with you fooling around with other men--in fact, he'll raise any children that might result without complaint. He'll be an utterly patient, undemanding, loyal and dependable husband and father, if a bit distant.
Those losers hanging around talking trash with their buddies just can't compete with government for women's long-term attention. The better suitor government becomes, the more women choose to marry up by marrying government.
And men don't need to marry to get sex. Women married to government all have open marriages, and if he's not married, nobody will limit his range of options by demanding loyalty. He can get more of what he wants while giving less. And it's not as if a man's neighbors will shame him for abandoning his girlfriend with his children, plunging them into poverty. No, government will take better care of them than he ever would have, so everyone knows she'd be worse off if he DID marry her.
I'm not suggesting taking vast segments of society who have been assured since birth that they would never have the responsibility to support themselves (much less others), and cutting off their life support. It would be a nightmare, and it brings up all sorts of other questions about people competing with automation and other economic changes that can't be blamed on government.
But it's amazing how much the author writes about the economic calculus of marrying without ever mentioning the still-growing 800lb government participant in the marriage market.
We pay people to have babies, so people have babies. We create a financial reward for people not to marry, so they don't marry. Film at 11. This entire discussion is just regurgitated political arguments from the 60s, and not much has changed, frankly, except the destruction of the family unit and social fabric in poor families.
This author wants to make the case that society is to blame (Gee, never saw that one coming) and that we should all strive to be more compassionate and understanding. He does so by some weird idea that marriage is a contract and that by looking at statistics the other side is confusing correlation with causality. Then he rambles into the idea that promoting marriage for stability is getting things ass-backwards. You can draw your own conclusions here looking at 2 thousand years of history.
So there's not much here except for a long apologia for programs that never worked, but it's definitely damned long-winded.
All part of a larger narrative in the states regarding income inequality and the poor, which is how the left plans to split the country, continue the divisiveness, and get their guys elected for the next few years or so.
So really just more of the same stuff you can find on any politics site. I have no idea why it's reached such prominence on HN.
People marry or don't marry for reasons which are also independent of governmental policy.
Are those things not big deals?
Income inequality is what splits the country. It's what causes the divisiveness. Policies which promote income equality lead to a more harmonious and healthier society.
Wealth redistribution is the easy and correct solution to the poverty problem. It's been shown to get results where conservative and libertarian dogma have failed.
Given that poverty is defined as income before transfers, it can't possibly be a solution. Even if you completely eliminated consumption poverty with wealth redistribution (hint: we nearly have), the official poverty rate would be unaffected. If wealth redistribution induced people to reduce their earned income, it would increase the official poverty level.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=24126
Incidentally, you should read your Scott Winship (I linked to him elsewhere in the thread). He runs similar analysis to Wilkinson and Picket, but finds much stronger correlations between single motherhood than income inequality.
I have never heard of anyone who defines it this way or cares about this definition. What most people who care about poverty care about is that the poor do not get to consume "enough" goods and services, for some level of enough. The amount they earn is of secondary interest.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measur...
People on the left generally consider this definition to be the important one and dismiss conservatives when they point out that consumption poverty is nearly a solved problem. See also the obsessive focus on income inequality rather than the much lower consumption inequality.
Don't get me wrong - I agree with you that we should define poverty this way - construct a fixed basket of goods and declare that anyone who acquires it or has the ability to do so is not poor. But I'm very much in the minority on this.
The effect of these policies is pretty clear, especially among African Americans. Statistically, they were the most married population pre-LBJ. Today, not so much.
Also, I've begun to resent people who say single parenthood is just as good. Single parents shouldn't bear the social stigma they have in the past, but going as far to say that having one parent is just as good as two both ignores the empirical evidence and common sense. If I left my wife tomorrow, my daughter would have the same outcomes? Really?
I just asked him what percentage of marriages in our local area are primarily for visa exchange purposes. He said "a majority".
I think this article makes an assumption that it's normal/preferable to get married. It misses the fact that there are now very few reasons for a happy, two-earner household with children to actually get married. Marriage papers are in no way a required part of a stable and loving relationship.
People don't often get married today unless there's some real political benefit to them: inheritance is becoming less important and free movement of labour is now one of the major motivators.
This is also the reason why those uppity gays are not content with the crumbs of "social unions." Non-married couples do not have the same rights as married couples.
of course this is US-centric
Here's a big one: if you work for any church-based organization (and they are huge employers, e.g. operating large schools, hospitals and universities), they might fire you because they suddenly decide you are violating some arcane religious doctrine.
Now you might say "I didn't want to work there anyway," but that's not how life works for most people who are not well-paid twenty-something software engineers.
Sure, it depends on the law in your local area. As non-married couples gain rights, it removes reasons for people to get married.
Whatever additional rights you get for being married are your primary motivator: that's what I was trying to say. Here, it seems primarily to be EU work visas.
As a sibling commenter noted, the trick is then getting the hospital, partner's family, etc. to recognize the PoA document; while the law surrounding powers of attorney is generally quite clear, there are certainly plenty of horror stories of hospitals, families, etc. ignoring such documents. I imagine that the likelihood of this happening varies from state to state, hospital to hospital, possibly even doctor to doctor, and so on.
That said, in the US, basically all of the time, you'll be _far_ better off for having drawn up a durable power of attorney than you would be if you hadn't. Definitely money well-spent if you're in an unmarried partnership. I suggest finding a lawyer who specializes in LGBTQ family law; they generally will be happy to take any couple on as clients, regardless of whether they are same/opposite sex, cis/trans, etc., and they have literally "seen it all," which means that they know about all kinds of legal edge cases that can cause trouble for people in a non-married partnership.
As an aside, I'm continually amazed by how many _married_ couples don't have wills, PoA documents, advance directives, etc. etc. filled out. Even if it's not strictly necessary from a legal perspective, having one's wishes and instructions written down explicitly is a relatively small-seeming thing that can make a very bad situation noticeably less awful (or so I've heard from people who've been there).
I'm going to take the wild guess you're male. As an old married guy with a daughter I can assure you there is enormous investment in advertising money to specifically get females interested in spending around the cost of a cheap new car to get married.
I'm not even claiming this is a large part of the reason for marriage propaganda, however, thousands of advertising dollars are spent to convince females that spending tens of thousands on a wedding would be a great idea. Probably fairly heteronormative and once civilization arrives and gay marriage is more widely "permitted" then we'll start to see a lot more advertising dollars spent convincing guys that spending $10K on a wedding is fabulous.
And if you think marriage is expensive, try divorce.
My wife and I paid about $10K for our wedding, and felt we cheap skated out on a few things. This kind of social pressure is fine when its only about one months income, but for poor people, its kind of a dumb social policy. Giving the same $10K to the educational-industrial complex or real estate/banking industries isn't going to improve their lot in life either, so its puzzling.
One interesting thing to think about is our marriage was basically a little ceremony followed by two co-located family reunions, and it cost about $10K. In comparison a couple years ago my wife hosted and organized a family reunion at a city park for her family, about as many people attended, and our out of pocket was $82 for a park pavilion rental. So we're looking at almost two orders of magnitude of cost inefficiency.
There is a large market full of money to solve the difficult problem of providing a storybook princess wedding to women for something between $10K and $100. This is not exactly a stereotypical YC startup idea, but SOMEONE is eventually going to do it and rake in the cash.
Having been a starving student and starting out on a low salary in a medium cost of living area, I assure you there are very few investments available. If I have $10M there are plenty of interesting ways to invest it to improve my life, but if I have $100 laying around there's almost nothing to do with it that is not brainless consumerism or basically throwing it away. You can't bootstrap yourself if you can't invest in any way. Maybe microlending will help, although seems like lots of scams in the field. You'd think advanced computerization and networking would force microinvestment and microtransactions into the financial markets, but you'd be totally wrong. Check the price of NYSE:BRK.A and get back to me. We keep people poor by preventing them from having a profitable use for small amounts of excess money. There's probably a startup idea in there somewhere... a bitcoin powered stock exchange where you can trade any rational fraction of a stock or something like that.
Then again it's hard to separate the mindsets of people that get married at a justice of the piece vs inviting 100+ people to the big event. I suspect cost is less of a factor than the amount of effort spent planning the event as thinking about a wedding probably promotes it's importance more than it's cost or the day it's self. aka deciding which table cloth to use is not important, but thinking the wedding is important enough that the table cloth choice is an important decision is probably meaningful.
Consider:
Parent of the Bride or Groom: "I really like [whoever] and think they are great for you; let me pay for your fancy wedding."
Parent of the Bride or Groom: "I really think that [whoever] is sketchy and is wrong for you; this marriage will not last, pay for it yourself."
Or potentially even:
"We are two young successful people in love, lets get married."
"We are two young impoverished people in love. Let's get married, but since money is a source of constant stress and anxiety for us, let's keep it cheap."
Either way you slice it, divorce rates are high so if a divorce is an idea that concerns you, you should probably not get married.
As to not getting married, married men live significantly longer. Again that may speak more to the type of people who get married than the actual value of marriage. However, anecdotally having someone else push you to go to the doctor and follow there advice probably has significant value. Still there is a lot of evidence that not getting divorced has significant value now many people think that relates to who your spouse is but the number of strong / successful arranged marriages suggests having the right mindset is vary important.
(The size of a wedding is also closely related to expense. Large venues are more expensive, and catering/booze is more expensive when you have more people.)
Nope, in our case, being a bit older, stable higher income careers, somewhat older lifestyle meant two unrelated things 1) we could spend money that lovesick teenagers could never hope to afford 2) Being older / stable / whatever you want to call it, means the marriage can't suffer growing pains when we become older / stable / whatever so divorce is much less likely. I think it a fair assumption that people change a lot more from 18-28 than from 28-38 or 38-48. From looking at my parents I don't think they changed a lot from 38-68, although I don't wanna know whatever they did as hippies before they got to 38.
I think these two conditions internally correlate much better than they correlate with each other, although anecdotally I suppose it randomly happens to be more than a minor coincidence.
To use an analogy, just because the rich like to take long holidays in distant countries doesn't mean the poor can't take short holidays less far away.
People could put that money in an emergency fund or pay off credit card debt. 39% of Americans carry credit card debt month to month [1], and I'd believe a far higher proportion of the poor would.
[1] http://www.nfcc.org/newsroom/FinancialLiteracy/files2012/FLS...
The "disruption" we're talking about at HN has currently mostly served capital interests and concentration of power/wealth. Even the example you cite of fractional stock ownership plays into that concentrating trend (most poor to middle class families simply do not have the financial stability and acumen to weather what are to them volatile equities or even indexes, which plays into the pockets of better-capitalized participants). I suspect we'll see some unexpected socioeconomic reactions from families in response to these pressures, and disruptions if any will organically arise from these demographics' reactions. One possible unintended consequence for example, might be the rise of line/group marriage, poly and extended families simply from the economic pressure of shouldering the massive debt burdens being placed upon families, with simultaneous wage depression and and inflationary pressures on goods and services this demographic primarily uses (current inflation measures only serve the interests of the capital class; good for me, but steadily disastrous over the long haul for poor and middle class families).
The heteronormative nuclear family with the original two biological parents is already a minority within the US, less than 25% as of 2000. But consider the vast waste that the household formation of a nuclear family entails: expensive capital is tied up into "white goods" that are used a fraction of the time throughout the week, just for starters. When due to combined wage and debt pressure people start organically forming non-traditional households (the nucleus of which has already started: the vast majority of households are non-traditional though as yet very small-scale) out of necessity and self-preservation, major industries would be impacted (both positively and negatively).
Now imagine just the political repercussions if this came to pass: if the "Moral Majority" is blowing a gasket over gay marriage now, what invective would we see when gays are included into group marriages and helping raise children in that context? Into this cauldron of change is where we will find the next disruptive moves.
I don't know what form the change is going to come from (I have some guesses), but I suspect something interesting will arise from the pressures our civilization is exerting upon these demographics.
There were a bit over 2 million marriages in the US in 2012. There were some 27k K-1 visas issued in 2012 (there were more IR-1 and CR-1 visas, but those are generally issued to people who married abroad). I don't know the numbers on change of status applications, but I doubt they'd be an order of magnitude higher, especially given that if you're not on an immigrant visa already, you may be in for additional scrutiny.
Here is a politician admitting that 3% of Irish marriages are 'sham': http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/
Edited to clarify: Not a majority, but 'sham' is a far stronger condition than what I'm talking about. This represents evidence that people are motivated to get married for residency: but the type of marriage I am talking about is not counted in these stats (those where marriage papers are motivated by a genuine goal to live in the same country as your partner).
He's not a politician, he's a civil servant, and he's not admitting it, he's claiming it.
And 3% is, erm, a very, very long way from a majority.
More info in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage
Of course if you have kids, you still have to worry about child support, which can be very problematic in several states, but that is a whole other can of worms.
In the country I now reside in, there is little difference between common law marriage, "official" marriage, and civil union - if you have no kids, and divorce/separate within 7-8 years, then each partner gets what they brought in (and any substantially "joint" income during the same time, e.g. appreciation of an apartment, unless otherwise agreed upon in advance, is split 50/50) . If you are married and/or crossed to the 15-20 year area unmarried, then any income generated during the "united" period (including retirement accounts, pension funds, etc) is assumed 50/50, but anything before (and inheritances) go back to whoever brought them in.
Prenups, of course, take precedence although some have been nullified by courts as being unreasonable (mostly in cases where the prenups says in the event of a divorce wife gets little/nothing, but then separation comes e.g. after 20 years of marriage/union and giving up a career to raise 4 kids with husband's approval and support).
I want to punch any public figure in the face who thinks "promoting marriage" is a good idea because "promoting marriage" is already a cultural institution signed into law.
I've already worked out the math: If I could manage a cheap enough birth or adoption, I would save a significant amount of money by having a crotchfruit. Of course the former requires a willing co-conspirator.
I used to work with a guy who made $14/hr and his wife didn't work and they had 7 kids. For years I couldn't understand how he could possibly make ends meet until I looked at the tax credits he was getting and understood that "economies of scale" kind of works for feeding and clothing children.
Edit: Rayiner, since it won't let me reply to you on a dead topic. Married people can and do cheat on their taxes all the time. I know at least a dozen married couples where both file as single and only one claims the dependents. As for social security, the future there is looking pretty grim and the intergenerational continuity concept breaks down (and already has) when an unusually large older generations' votes and financial means allow them to skew the balance in their favor. This idea that I'm selfish because I haven't had kids yet is one that makes me angry and the linked article actually touches on many of the reasons...to the effect of: "because you were born poor and haven't been able to become successful enough to be desirable to mate with, you deserve to continue to be poor."
Married people are allowed to file separately, and the law is that only one can claim each dependent. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement, but I'm not sure how that's cheating on taxes.
the intergenerational continuity concept breaks down (and already has) when an unusually large older generations' votes and financial means allow them to skew the balance in their favor.
How does that break down intergenerational continuity?
This idea that I'm selfish because I haven't had kids yet
You seem to be making this very personal. I'm not sure where you get that from the official sources. Simply put, having a younger generation is beneficial to society. It's also a strain on those families that decide to have children. As a society we subsidize them because they provide a long-term benefit.
I've already worked out the math: If I could manage a cheap enough birth or adoption, I would save a significant amount of money by having a crotchfruit. Of course the former requires a willing co-conspirator.
I suspect you are vastly underestimating the actual costs of children. For example, the cost of daycare (unless you want to forego one of your incomes) is ~$1000/month where I live. Additionally, the requirements for certain jobs are not longer acceptable, which limits opportunities to some degree. If you are needed to help raise children at home, working for a startup that requires long hours or a job that has you away from home for significant time most likely won't work out well for either your personal or professional life, take your pick.
Yes, in many ways it's personal but likely not for the ones you think.
As for "vastly underestimating costs of children", not at all. My brother is quite poor and has a teenaged child and I've been managing his family & business finances for well over the past decade. Yes they file separately for a significant tax savings. I know exactly what it costs and I will tell you that the costs for a middle class family and a poor family are quite different. If you are living in California, working for startups and can even _consider_ daycare then you are in a vastly different situation from where I live, where teen moms and being poor are the norm. Full-time, year-round employment is rare here. But of course, the tax penalties & benefits are the same for your filing status no matter what the actual situation is.
Over here, often it's grandma taking care of the kids and the $3000 refund check the typically-single mother gets go to drugs and tattoos.
So here I am, working my butt off, not having kids I can't take care of...and even in the years where I have 0 withholding exemptions, the government decides that they need more money from me than they've taken and there's no wiggle room or options for me to do anything about it.
I'm working class and marriage and raising kids aren't even a reasonable thing to consider. I'd love more than anything to have a family. My only solution is to find a way to earn more money.
I wish it could be properly explained to white middle-class folks that in most cases "born poor stays poor"
In which, depending on the state, they probably qualify for subsidized daycare.
Over here, often it's grandma taking care of the kids and the $3000 refund check the typically-single mother gets go to drugs and tattoos.
If you are going to say stuff like that, make a real assertion and back it up, or leave it out. I have no idea what "often" means to you, and I have no clue the veracity of your claim.
I'm working class and marriage and raising kids aren't even a reasonable thing to consider. I'd love more than anything to have a family. My only solution is to find a way to earn more money.
Didn't you earlier say it saved money?
I wish it could be properly explained to white middle-class folks that in most cases "born poor stays poor"
I agree with you wholeheartedly here. But what does that have to do with what we are talking about?
MFS has much much much lower deductions and credits than Single does - so married people filing Single instead of MFS are committing tax fraud.
For single folks, getting a house and deducting mortgage interest is a great way to reduce your tax burden. Of course, that means taking on a mortgage, which may or may not be possible (especially in the bay area).
For example, let's assume you both have 40k taxable income:
Single, taxable income 40k: tax is $5,935
Married, taxable (combined) income 80k: tax is $11,864
Double the tax on "single", because you would file two returns, and you get $11,870. So you actually saved $6!
Taken directly from the tax table: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf
1) Its damn near impossible to guess at what a person will be like 10-50 years from now. On some level its a crap shoot, and marriage is about learning to love whom they become. Hopefully that plays out on both sides of the coin (each spouse continues to love whom the other becomes). 2) "Good" and "Bad" marriage mostly has to do with how people fight/interact (see stuff by John Gottman). People will always fight over money, kids, laundry duties etc, but their satisfaction in the relationship will have more to do with how they fight, than what they fight over. 3) Individuals have total control over whom they fall in love with. IIRC the cascading brain chemicals involved with love that override logic from occurring properly: http://www.mikelee.org/the-science-of-love-chemicals-and-rom... .
So it is not clear then, if the incentives to be married have changed (I think they have, based on my observation); if some part of the "math" is different, then, that would explain why the marriage rates are different.
I read the "marriage promotion" agenda more charitably: Marriage is hard. Financial pressures make it harder. Reduce those pressures and more marriages are likely to be successful. And while I can't cite research here, the author himself acknowledges that a successful marriage is a desirable state for many people. He emphasizes the additional risks involved — What if your inlaws get sick? — but the addition of an earner/caretaker/constant companion also provides a hedge against a variety of existing economic, health and social risks.
However, I hope that people will apply this logic to ideas that come from both the left and right, e.g. the NYC ad campaign against teen pregnancy.
The same applies to the general principal that the government should not promote particular lifestyle. If girls want to get pregnant at 18, how is that any more the government's business than if they want to not get married?
I don't see how it's befitting Hacker News.
Hey - time for my Soma!