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Being a single mother - a single parent, is difficult. Raising a child on only 1 salary, and especially at wages that are stagnating is not easy at all. .
Well at least you started out married. The out of wedlock birth rate is now around 41%. To me this is economic suicide for both mom and kid. I wish your statement was drummed into all these young women who think having a babies as single moms is no big deal.
The link below is a piece written by a liberal leaning scholar who basically admits conservatives are right about the importance of marriage for the well being of children.
Oh, good grief!
Yes, those are examples of things going wrong.
I don't think so. The bottom line is people who plan will plan for a pretty large "margin of error" and consider that normal. People who don't plan say "things go wrong" as if divorce, birth control failing, etc. are completely rare and unexpected events, which they are not.
And even when it comes to sickness...even scientists will tell you that about 2/3 of health problems are lifestyle related...so we have more control over that than we're willing to admit as well.
It must be nice to live in your utopia, where everyone has a million dollars in the bank, a guaranteed job for life, where nothing bad ever happens and you ride a unicorn to work every day.
Nice way to vilify people who plan for stuff. Oh, that couldn't be right...only conservatives vilify people, right?
Nice way to vilify people who plan for stuff. Oh, that couldn't be right...only conservatives vilify people, right?
The point is that poster that they were responding to fails to realize that you cap'n possibly prepare for each and every scenario. Life does not work that way. Anyone that thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy.
The point is that poster that they were responding to fails to realize that you cap'n possibly prepare for each and every scenario. Life does not work that way. Anyone that thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy.
But ALL of those scenarios can at least be partially planned for. And the people who don't plan act as if things such as: unemployment, divorce, sickness, etc. are just never going to happen to them. Heck, even financial guru Suze Orman says this is the biggest mistake people make in their financial lives, and she's no right wing conservative.
It seems to me the conservative leaning crowd accepts the harshness of life up front and accepts it as the norm. The liberal crowd tends to act shocked when the harshness of life rears its ugly head and acts as if it is never supposed to happen. Then the latter group gets mad at the former and throw out the "million dollars in the bank", hyperbole (insinuating all or most grew up with silver spoons) at those who may have planned very diligently to have what they have. And that planning would include: being very careful about who you marry, using birth control religiously, saving diligently, studying in school, etc.
What many of us are trying to do here is take a swipe at the instant gratification value system that creates so much poverty in the first place. A generation or two ago, sleeping around was a big deal. People knew they were crossing a line when they did it. The social stigmas on divorce & out of wedlock parenting prevented a fair amount of poverty and the problems that go with it. Nowadays sleeping around, divorce, & having kids out of wedlock is commonplace. But what people don't want to accept is the whole culture of sleeping around, having kids out of wedlock, being able to get divorced easily....comes at a high cost.And that cost often gets shifted onto the people who are NOT doing those things....and the folks who know how to defer gratification resent paying for those who don't, especially when they are vilified for advocating a value system that would prevent many of the hardships people create for themselves.
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 01-25-2014 at 10:27 PM..
But ALL of those scenarios can at least be partially planned for. And the people who don't plan act as if things such as: unemployment, divorce, sickness, etc. are just never going to happen to them. Heck, even financial guru Suze Orman says this is the biggest mistake people make in their financial lives, and she's no right wing conservative.
It seems to me the conservative leaning crowd accepts the harshness of life up front and accepts it as the norm. The liberal crowd tends to act shocked when the harshness of life rears its ugly head and acts as if it is never supposed to happen. Then the latter group gets mad at the former and throw out the "million dollars in the bank", hyperbole (insinuating all or most grew up with silver spoons) at those who may have planned very diligently to have what they have. And that planning would include: being very careful about who you marry, using birth control religiously, saving diligently, studying in school, etc.
What many of us are trying to do here is take a swipe at the instant gratification value system that creates so much poverty in the first place. A generation or two ago, sleeping around was a big deal. People knew they were crossing a line when they did it. The social stigmas on divorce & out of wedlock parenting prevented a fair amount of poverty and the problems that go with it. Nowadays sleeping around, divorce, & having kids out of wedlock is commonplace. But what people don't want to accept is the whole culture of sleeping around, having kids out of wedlock, being able to get divorced easily....comes at a high cost.And that cost often gets shifted onto the people who are NOT doing those things....and the folks who know how to defer gratification resent paying for those who don't, especially when they are vilified for advocating a value system that would prevent many of the hardships people create for themselves.
and how do you suggest that you know what all liberals think on the subject. You couldnt' BE more wrong. We understand that hardships need to be planned for, even partially.
INdeed, you are supposed to have savings for at least 3 months right? Well great.. but have you seen how long the unemployment has stretched out during this last recession - the biggest recession since the Great Depression? That is far longer than any "emergency" plan.
Here's another laugh riot.. illness. During a course I had to take on personal financial planning, a big topic was how much of your budget should be spent on things like groceries and healthcare, rent etc. We all know that 30% of your income shuold go to rent; in otherwords, if rent or your mortgage takes more than 30% of your income than you are living beyond your means. Well, in that same scenario healthcare was supposed to be approx 20% of your income. I about died laughing when I read that. Let's consider for a moment that premiums for health insurance have risen at doube digit percentage rates and something like 3x's the rate of inflation. Calculate in that at the same time, given inflation, wages have actually gone DOWN.. not up in the last decades. THEN figure in that we are more productive and work longer hours, but make less money.... Something is wrong with that picture.
But.. getting back to my example. Health insurance costs as much , if not more, than rent or a mortgage payment - bringing the cost of health insurance to the same costs as RENT! How many families do you know can pay a mortgage or rent on two houses? Can't afford insurance - don't buy it.. but then how the hell do you afford treatment/medication in and when you fall ill. We won't even go into what percentage of your income major , hell even minor, surgeries can cost (like an appendacitis, or a child's broken arm).
Then there are those that DO work, but yet make a wage that is BELOW the poverty level. When they cant' even make enough money to cover the rent, food, utilities - how the hell are they supposed to "save" and "plan" for any diasaster. And this type of scenario is happening to more and more people every single day..
No.. liberals understand that life is hard and that things get thrown at you and that you have to do your best to try and plan for such scenarios - whatever they may be. It's all nice and good to say all that - to say that you should "plan" and "save". It's harder to put it into practice when there is more month than there is money in ever month. We understand this..
However, it seems to me that the consevative mind set is.. well too bad. So far I've had one poster on here suggest that people shouldn't take jobs that don't pay a living wage and only take the jobs that don't. As they put it , it's not the companies fault your willing to take a job that doesn't pay.. pfft.. LOL.. Considering those are the only jobs that our country seems to be creating..what the hell else are they supposed todo .. not work at all??
And what do you say to the hard working older generations , my parents generation, that played by all teh rules.. they worked, they planned for retirements and put them into 401K's so that they had a nest egg only to have that nest egg gambled away by wreckless wall Street greedy types who walked away richer than ever before - but squandered and lost retirement money for many American's with their wreckless behavior?
Nothing is so black and white. Indeed, we all make choices and we all have to have consequences for those choices, but so many things are far out of any of our control and you just can't anticipate those things... Life has a way of making its own plans, regardless of the ones you made for yourself. Liberals recognize this and have empathy/sympathy for those that fall to circumstance.. and yes, even fall to their own mistakes. We recognize that, as a society, we need to be compassionate toward one another and when we can , we need to help one another. Becuase I, for one, don't want to see homeless people living on every corner and children starving in the streets. That doesn't say much for our country or our compassion.
Why should ANYONE other than the 2 people having sex should have to pick up the tab for birth control OR parental care??? I just do not get the mind set were you all think it's other's responsibility to do this for you and those like you... You should have to pay to play...
It's called a safety net.
The net is one of those pesky things that differentiate first and third world nations.
I suppose then you have some magic crystal ball that lets you see the future and plan for EVERY possible scenario.. LOL...
Have you ever head of condoms breaking or birth control failing.. I have.
Planend Parenthood does far more than abortions and they count for about 3% ofwhat they provided in Year 2013 of what Planned Parenthood actually does. AND those abortions are NOT provided for free with taxpayer money....
When used as directed the failure rate is rather insignificant. When used together as directed, it's fool-proof.
Life happens. Medical bills, death, divorce and so on can and do devastate families.
That was and remains the primary purpose of a safety net.
Yeah but something they need to put up an effort for not just sitting there for a few hours. Picking up garbage on the highway would do too.
The Cato Institute determined that 80% of the jobs held by woman required to work to remain on TANF were subsidized by some form of government.
This goes back to the inception of TANF in the 90's.
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