Posted on 05/05/2006 1:18:32 PM PDT by Johnny_T
Many people don't realize it, but before the Great Society, marriage and legitimacy rates among blacks were comparable with those among whites. However, once the modern welfare system took root, we had a social program that penalized mothers that were married and gave short-term financial incentives to have more children. And sure enough, we saw a rise in illegitimacy rates as poor women began to realize that marriage would end the entitlement gravy train.
Now according to USA Today, DC is doing something that's revolutionary yet incredibly common sense: offering cash incentives for poor people to actually marry!
Picture that. From the USA Today article:
Winston Graham and Saundra Corley finally tied the knot after almost 20 years and four children together.Now they're planning to make their new marriage reap some additional benefits. They've signed up for a new pilot program for low-income couples in the District of Columbia that could give them as much as $9,000 in federal funds and other cash just because they make their relationship legal.
"You don't see a lot of families in our community who are married," says Corley-Graham, 37, who on Nov. 26 added "Graham" to her name.
When they set the wedding date, the couple hadn't heard about the idea pushed by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and approved by Congress to give couples earning under $50,000 a year a "marriage bonus" to buy a home, pay for job training or education for themselves or their children, or to start or expand a business. If couples save $3,000 in three years, they will receive a 3-to-1 match of up to $9,000.
Brownback believes such efforts will eliminate some of the financial reasons couples don't marry; he says he hopes it will be expanded across the country.
Sometimes government gets it right.
All this will do is increase the divorce rate in the end.
They need to make it mandatory that the marriage remain intact for a minimum time in order to qualify for the match.
Legalize polygamy and I'll think about it....
Maybe it'll increase divorce. But it'll definitely rduce illegitimacy.
And even if couples eventually get divorced, the program will make sure they were in a better place than before thanks to the job training and the matching funds.
When the extended family was the only [or almost so] social safety net, families were both more stable and more of a norm. Thus the solution is to look at the root and to pull it out by abolishing the welfare state in all its forms.
Well, here's another reason for sodomites to demand equal opportunity.
Actually, I have never known of any poor gay people. For one thing, in rougher (poorer) neighborhoods, being percieved as gay would be dangerous to your health. If one looks at most gays, they come from the affluent sects of societies, many of them ironically recieved parochial education, etc.
Of course, for that to really work, it has to be possible for people to adopt domestic babies with no strings attached. Unfortunately, some horrible judges and bureaucrats have made this just about impossible.
Whether there are any to qualify is irrelevant. Just the fact that there's government cash available to marrieds is more reason for the pro-sodomite "marriage" crowd to whine about inequality.
They must remain married for 3 years to reap the full benifit. 20% of marriages don't last more then 3 1/2 years anyway now.
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