More.

This is outrageous. It is especially telling that daycare is provided for the child while the grandmother (who is young enough to be the child's mother) does nothing.

I am a big proponent of workfare. It gets people up and working. Perhaps they will even develop a skill. If nothing else, employment might seem more attractive.

I work with a lot of students who are third generation welfare recipients. Families often do not have the basic structures for success such as maintaining a schedule, standard dress, and social rules such as respect for their parents ( which translates into respect for other authority such as teachers, the police, and future employers.) Of course, many parents have not embraced the parental role because of youth, drug addiction, illegal activities, or mental health issues or disabilities. If we can break the welfare cycle, we help generations of kids.

Exciting new (ancient!) truth:

Women who truly love children give them loving fathers.

There are no exceptions worth quibbling over.

The welfare cycle will not be broken without massive social unrest.

Even more.

Women who willfully do this alone aren't demonstrating a capacity for love, they're demonstrating a huge ego.

> The welfare cycle will not be broken
> without massive social unrest.

I think it's like the explosion of government debt, of which this is obviously a part.

We're approaching the point at which we don't need to worry about our representatives spending too much money, because the lenders have seen that they're out of their minds and not to be trusted with loans.

And we're approaching the point in the social deportment of the (fatherless) man on the street that "social unrest" won't be distinguishable from typical civic incompetence.


Flying around Papua New Guinea for a scuba trip around Y2K. I asked the nice (face-tattoo'd) lady behind the counter at the airport whether she was worried about a worldwide collapse of communications and data processing. She said "Nah, our computers never work right anyway."

(Even so, I got on the plane.)

A woman who thinks a father is unnecessary in raising a child is unfit to be a mother.

"A woman who thinks a father is unnecessary in raising a child is unfit to be a mother."
Yeah, but that's not gonna stop 'em, especially when they get paid for it.

Ya know, I used to think that British folks were all sophisticated and educated and wore pretty hats or ascots to tea, and knew how to curtsy really well. This totally destroys my image.

> This totally destroys my image.

Yeah! It's like 'These people built an empire upon which the sun never set?'

It's hard to watch this all the way through, I could feel my blood starting to boil.

Adults are responsible for their actions and the consequences of their actions. Any system that violates that goes against the most basic laws of nature. Ya don't work, ya don't eat!

When you reward something, you get more of it. GENERATIONS MORE. If you look at the inner city communities in the US, where there are generations of people on the dole, you see that the Govt. is now the father/provider... and it seems like that was somehow planned.

The catch is, that as the generations go on, it is painfully apparent that kids actually NEED parents to raise them, not an impersonal government. That way obviously lies anarchy, more or less, because eventually you have children raised essentially feral by a selfish person who doesn't feel the need to work.

They in turn will have more children and not work.

This will go on as long as regular people are willing to pay.

Mention any of this to a welfare queen, and she'll scoff and bitch that it doesn't pay that well. Entitled as always..

See, that's the thing. When you talk to women about babymaking –not fucking, not policy, but the squat-plop-squeal of bringing another soul onboard our magnificent blue marble here– you realize that they almost all think reproduction is an indisputable virtue anyway.

(This is the part where someone with a high school diploma stands up to say, "Well of course, babymaking is essential... Or civilization comes to a stop!")

(In this instance, I'd prefer that the individual shut hisself the fuck up before speaking. No sane student of human nature can argue that our problem is that we don't have enough staff. There will always be more people around than we need, and far too few good ones.)

So women have this crazy-assed, characterologic need to reproduce. No matter how much the dress it up with wordings that sound like deduction or compassion, their motives are almost transparently carnal. And they won't stand to hear you speak against it... Not in a vague way about the lives of others, not in a personal way about yourself, and certainly not about they themselves. They will pimp the market pressures towards reproduction at all times, even if they're arguing for abortion rights.

Insidious liberal policies, most especially in the insanity of modern Britain but only slightly less in the States, are very receptive to this kind of robotic reproduction.

We'll speak more of this in the years to come here, on the internet.

Well Crid, I made a few people mad in the most recent advice column for speaking against it.

Myself and a few others agreed that far too many people go into reproduction by drifting into it, but it isn't just them. My neighbor is all sad because she can't get pregnant, at least not for long, and she's a nice gal with a husband. But they are BROKE! They can't even seem to pay the condo association dues on time, which I only know because I'm on the board, but we're talking $135 a month here. I'm thinking, haven't you noticed that you don't have the money for kids?

SwissArmyD makes a good point about children needing parents to raise them as opposed to an impersonal government. The same is true for caring for the elderly. Number one, you take care of yourself. That means you save your own money and work as long as you are able to, if needed. If that fails, you turn to family and friends, and only as a last resort do you go to public charity for help. At least that's what makes sense to me, but the biggest function of the American government now is transferring money from young, working people to old, non-working people.

It seems many of the things people have been taking for granted are going to come to a grinding halt. You must first take care of yourself, then you take care of others. There are too many people struggling just to be self-reliant right now, let alone have money left over to shovel out to the unmotivated.

Oh, and speaking of the situation in the U.K.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8702838/England-riots-13-year-old-rioters-mother-blames-government.html

See, you can pop out ten kids on the government dole, and when your kids turns into assholes, it's the government's fault!

Whenever I tell people I don't want children they look at me like I said I eat puppies for dinner. I'm still young (28) and they cannot fathom why I would make this decision. The worst offenders are my cousins who have multiple children with multiple fathers. They tell me I'll change my mind because having babies is just what you do-ugh.
I don't understand how people can make life changing decisions that affect more than just their own lives with absolutely no thought other than 'I want a baby". So you want a baby; what about the baby? What do you have to offer a child?

Right, LL, you have the temerity to ask "What do I have to offer a child?" and that makes YOU selfish. Then they start asking, "But who will take care of you when you're old?"

(facepalm)

Something tells me you won't always be very closely associated with these cousins of yours.

I'd be happier about this if these mothers were brilliant, talrnt people with genes that should be passedmon. But that's hardly the case. And if I was buying a house on the same street as one of these spongers, I'd be pissed.

Was that really KateC?

The Frivolity of Evil
Theodore Dalrymple

Snips... see the link at the end for the whole article.

My patient already had had three children by three different men, by no means unusual among my patients, or indeed in the country as a whole. The father of her first child had been violent, and she had left him; the second died in an accident while driving a stolen car; the third, with whom she had been living, had demanded that she should leave his apartment because, a week after their child was born, he decided that he no longer wished to live with her. (The discovery of incompatibility a week after the birth of a child is now so common as to be statistically normal.) She had nowhere to go, no one to fall back on, and the hospital was a temporary sanctuary from her woes. She hoped that we would fix her up with some accommodation.

The conditions for the perpetuation of evil were now complete. She was a young woman who would not want to remain alone, without a man, for very long; but with three children already, she would attract precisely the kind of man, like the father of her first child—of whom there are now many—looking for vulnerable, exploitable women. More than likely, at least one of them (for there would undoubtedly be a succession of them) would abuse her children sexually, physically, or both.

Where does this evil come from? There is obviously something flawed in the heart of man that he should wish to behave in this depraved fashion—the legacy of original sin, to speak metaphorically. But if, not so long ago, such conduct was much less widespread than it is now (in a time of much lesser prosperity, be it remembered by those who think that poverty explains everything), then something more is needed to explain it.

A necessary, though not sufficient, condition is the welfare state, which makes it possible, and sometimes advantageous, to behave like this. Just as the IMF is the bank of last resort, encouraging commercial banks to make unwise loans to countries that they know the IMF will bail out, so the state is the parent of last resort—or, more often than not, of first resort. The state, guided by the apparently generous and humane philosophy that no child, whatever its origins, should suffer deprivation, gives assistance to any child, or rather the mother of any child, once it has come into being. In matters of public housing, it is actually advantageous for a mother to put herself at a disadvantage, to be a single mother, without support from the fathers of the children and dependent on the state for income. She is then a priority; she won't pay local taxes, rent, or utility bills.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_oh_to_be.html

Let's change the view for a second. Is the economic policy wrong because it subsidizes indolence...or because it penalizes industry ?
When playing 'carrot and stick' context is important.
US real wages fall at fastest rate in 14 years
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f269a8f4-c173-11d9-943f-00000e2511c8.html#axzz1VLFhxRLZ
Now read it again. It doesn't say that wages stopped falling during that period. I'm told they haven't stopped for what... 100 years ?
Workfare suggests government get into the business of running business. I'm not much a fan of unregulated capitalism....but bureaucracy from Hell is no good either.

> Myself and a few others agreed that far too
> many people go into reproduction by drifting
> into it

I don't believe it. Don't believe it, don't believe it, don't.

Far too many women, including unmarrieds in midlife, will throw up their hands and say "Well golly sakes! What a surprise! I guess my life is taking a completely unexpected change of direction! And I had no idea, because it was completely unexpected!"

And you sense that it was always, always in their plan. Or if not in their actual think-about-it-and-verbalize plans, then it was a bubbling notion in what they would regard as their most personal and dramatic kind of narrative destiny. (Women are like that about stuff.)

But women who really, really don't want to get pregnant don't get pregnant. (See also: Men who don't want to be fathers.)


____________________


I'm really pretty sure that's not the KateC we might presume it to be

hi ahw,

please do not remember the British from this "lady", it is like if you would watch an interview with a redneck from Charlottesville, VA, and then assume that all citizen of USA are like her (as usual, one is not a statistic, btw two neither).

At 17, I spent a week in oxford as an exchange pen-friend high-schooler and the pupils I met were all reasonable people that I remember fondly (and the "lady" in the interview wasn't one of them).

@KateC: it did happened that I lived in the same building as one professional lecher (he was so creative in stealing the state, that he could have probably had a good life with a good mindset). Well the conclusion is that i am not a leftist anymore (at least by european definition)

nico@HOU

I heard on the radio some scary stats though they were not sourced beyond a "recent study" and I cannot google it so who knows.

The stats given were something like 1 in 4 kids in the UK does not have a working parent in the house and 1 in 9 have never had a regularly working parent in the house. I am not sure I got the numbers right but they were single digits.

This is my backyard - I Live in the south west of England. I was born and raised here in a blue collar family.
This is the result of political manipulation of the economy for more than a decade by the (socialist) Labour party.
If I tell you that a two bedroom flat costs $1,070 a month to rent and that the minimum wage is $9.80 you can see how far out of whack things have got.
The welfare state penalizes couples who stay together paying them considerably less than a single (usually mother) parent.
As the state will fully meet the rent of a single mum the rents have gone artificially up to the point most of your wage goes on your housing.
It was useful to get them off the unemployment figures by emphasizing the important role they had and how difficult their situation was.
Also house price increases were seen as such a good thing that the median house price $214,000 is now more than 4 times the median salary.
If you want a further example of how expensive it is to live here - petrol (gasoline) is $2.20 a litre or $9.90 a gallon.

Things are changing as a single parent is now required to work part time to continue to qualify for benefits but understanding how out of reach even the base necessity of affording housing is to most school leavers should give you an idea of why this problem isn't disappearing anytime soon.

As an experienced IT Manager I make approx $3,750 month and pay $970 a month in income tax plus there is a 20% minimum sales tax on pretty much everything.

If you make it more difficult to get by working than making yourself a "special interest group" then your going to get a lot of people clamoring to be "special"

Good points, all, Mr. H. And here in the US it isn't much better. Our minimum wage (here in CT, anyway) is $8.25 an hour. A one-bedroom apartment rents for around $1000 a month and that does not include utilities. Gasoline here averages about $4 a gallon, so we're better off in that respect, but not much.

Our governor here is proposing a 20% increase in all mass transit, so the idea of people using mass transit as a cost-effective means of travel has just been blown out of the water.

And yet we are on our 5th generation of welfare with no end in sight. A single mother who gets Section 8 housing (paid for by the taxpayer) gets an increase in additional benefits for every child she has. Then there' also a food-subsidy program, wherein they get a certain amount of money monthly to spend on food. It used to be given out as vouchers, but the state figured out that people had been trading their vouchers for cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol, so now it's in the form of a debit card. I'm sure people have found a way around that too.

There's been talk of implementing a work-for-benefits type of plan for these people but I haven't seen it yet. And for those who are using drugs, I've often said these people need to pee in a cup before they get their checks, but those opposed say that's an invasion of their privacy. I say, if we're paying for you to live in Section 8 housing, and feeding your children, we have a right to know whether you're using drugs or not.

There is no personal responsibility or accountability with these people, and the government perpetuates it. Time for a change!

@flynne:
that's sad!
Just hypothetically, what would happen to a single father? Is this welfare implementation would give the same advantages?

Then there' also a food-subsidy program, wherein they get a certain amount of money monthly to spend on food. It used to be given out as vouchers, but the state figured out that people had been trading their vouchers for cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol, so now it's in the form of a debit card. I'm sure people have found a way around that too.

They have -- they hand over their card and PIN for it. The "dealer" is then responsible to show up each month with cash for the card. If he doesn't -- the actual recipient will call the card in as lost/stolen.

Me, all thumbs on iPad. Sorry for typos, but you took my meaning. The dumb breed because they can.

Notice how far the problem is from being solved?

The headline still treats these people as victims.

And, Mr. H, the minimum wage itself mandates a payment for the dumbest employee - one that with one action, sometimes just a few words, can put an employer out of business or even on the street.

> Notice how far the problem is from
> being solved?

Sure do! Too much entitlement through government!

It's kinda like their paying agents are being discontinuously monitored... Which I think is a sad commentary.

Meanwhile, daydreams rule my immortal soul.

Quote me all the time, Crid. You'll only be correct more often!

Your sophisticated economic principles are the light for many lives, Raddy! No one should forget them!

Continuous monitoring!

Pirate Jo said:

Right, LL, you have the temerity to ask "What do I have to offer a child?" and that makes YOU selfish. Then they start asking, "But who will take care of you when you're old?"
__________________________

Someone once said, in effect: "If parenthood is supposed to be so wonderful and fulfilling, how is it selfish NOT to have children?"

Crid said:

But women who really, really don't want to get pregnant don't get pregnant. (See also: Men who don't want to be fathers.)
___________________________

So you admit that men who don't wear condoms secretly WANT to be fathers, no matter what they say afterward?

Or maybe both men and women are just plain lazy and stupid when it comes to short-term pleasure vs. long-term future? (Another example: We are all taught, early on, how stupid smoking is, so you might assume that most smokers start smoking at a very early age. But.....60% start AFTER age 18! Moral: Adults can be just as dumb as kids.)

And, I might add, given how many adult females still have abortions (90% in the first trimester, BTW) that hardly means THEY subconsciously wanted to get pregnant. Every contraceptive has a failure rate, after all.

> So you admit that men who don't wear condoms
> secretly WANT to be fathers, no matter what
> they say afterward?

No; I admit that many men don't give a rat's ass about anything but themselves

See also, above: "No matter how much the dress it up with wordings that sound like deduction or compassion, their motives are almost transparently carnal. And they won't stand to hear you speak against it... Not in a vague way about..." etc.

This...

> Every contraceptive has a failure rate

...would be the "deduction" part, pretending it's an accidental thing, a failure of statistics or of rational forces.

Or are you saying women don't tempt fate, hoping fortuitous arithmetic will help them "make a decision"?... Or at least give cover for a change of heart?

Women like babies... Weirdly and backhandedly sometimes, but almost always. I can't understand it.

No; I admit that many men don't give a rat's ass about anything but themselves

Posted by: Crid

I think that could be applied to 99% of all life on the planet, not just a large section of male homo sapiens

Quote me all the time, Crid. You'll only be correct more often!

Because, as you can see above, what you suggest as an alternative, simply by posting as you do, simply does not work.

Wanna know how badly you've lost it? You're protesting measures I suggest which will keep the things you are now protesting from happening.

Wow, you're out there!