Posted on 12/02/2012 7:12:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind
For a brief moment last month—roughly a 72-hour span beginning at 11:00 p.m. on November 6 and concluding late in the evening of November 9—everyone in America was interested in demographics. That’s because, in addition to rewarding the just, punishing the wicked, and certifying that America was (for the moment) not racist, President Barack Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney pointed to two ineluctable demographic truths.
The first was expected: that the growth of the Hispanic-American cohort is irresistible and will radically transform our country’s ethnic future. The second caught people by surprise: that the proportion of unmarried Americans was suddenly at an all-time high.
Unfortunately, by the time the window closed on the public’s demographic curiosity no one really understood either of these shifts. Or where they came from. Or whether they were even particularly true. As is often the case, people tended to fixate on a relatively small, contingent part of America’s changing demographic makeup and look past the bigger, more consequential part of the story.
So let’s begin by asking the obvious question: Hispanics are America’s demographic future—true or false? The answer is, both. Sort of.
Start with what we know. As of the 2010 census, there were 308.7 million people in America, 50.5 million of whom (16 percent) were classified as being of “Hispanic origin.” Of that 50 million, about half are foreign-born legal immigrants. Another 11 million or so are illegal immigrants. A few other facts, just to give you some texture: 63 percent of American Hispanics trace their origins to Mexico, 9.2 percent to Puerto Rico, and 3.5 percent to Cuba. And more than half of the 50 million live in just three states, California, Texas, and Florida.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
We have enough trouble with RINOS, let alone the dems who want us to sell out on this particular segment of the population.
Maybe these 20-40 year old singles aren’t so stupid and naive after all. As the last generation standing to pick up the tab for the great Ponzi scheme known as “entitlements,” I’d have a hard time blaming them for checking out of the American system both emotionally and financially.
It’s gotten very difficult to make it on a single income for the vast majority, a trend that initially began with the decline of stay-at-home wives. Wage growth slowed for men as women flowed into the workforce, then, next thing you know a decade or two later, two incomes became necessary in order to maintain the standard of living once maintained under one. Add in largely unfettered immigration, a very liberal H1B visa situation, trade agreements leading to largescale offshoring and you have more competition for dwindling opportunities.
Given this reality, singles are voting for assistance, idealogy be damned. Divorce law is grossly umfair and confiscatory toward men, so marriage is declining for practical reasons. Sex is readily available. Procreation is, too. Traditional morality and rugged American style individualism are meeting a tsunami wall of leftist detritus that has been building up for decades, and they’re grabbing anything they can grab to stay afloat.
In such an environment, the candidate who gives the most stuff wins. Future? What future? They’re scared about right now.
Too true, too true. I’ve proposed twice now and been turned down twice. My conscience is clean. :)
Eh, hectoring people to get married (even just being effusive in praise for marriage sends the message that there is "Something wrong with you" for the unmarried) and giving even more tax breaks to the married and those with children is going to annoy single/childless people even MORE, and probably just dig a bigger electoral hole for the GOP.
The party just needs a better message for the unmarried and/or childless.
There’s a lot of misery to be had for those who pick poor mates (married or unmarried). Pity the poor child for such horrific decisions.
Some of this is due to decline in morality in general, and a lot has to do with parents not expecting their children to behave responsibly. Parents’ goals should be for their children to learn to be responsible adults, learn to work, and to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes. Most parents shield their children from all of these and indulge them instead. You do no favors for your kids if they never have to work for what they have or if they don’t learn to respect and obey their parents.
The other big issue is the absurd system that keeps people in school of one kind or other until they are in their thirties. Most kids today could easily learn what they need to know and be able to provide for themselves by the time they are 18, if they are taught that their goal is to be successful, responsible adults. The entire education system is a government con and does nothing but provide jobs for union teachers and leftist professors. Oh, and subsidized day care.
Single people are taxed the highest too. They are taxed to subsidize other people’s children.
Good point. Courtship is a lost art.
Women these days have no need for men, they have been convinced by the previous generation that they are better than men, so they succeed at education and their careers, yet they are very, very lonely. I laugh at feminists, they won, there is no glass ceiling, it broke along time ago, yet they are still fighting. They won’t stop ‘till they all get sex changes and become men, yet, I bet, they would still be angry, fighting for absolutely nothing.
I have never seen so many single women with kids from more than one father, and they wonder why they remain single, sad. A lot of them are reaping the bad decisions they made while young that the subsequent generation convinced them defined them: promiscuity, I am women hear ‘em roar!
I recently started a Facebook account, I’d say more than half of the women are divorced with kids. I get a kick out of how video gamers are portrayed, too funny, how ‘bout all these former generations focus on their own daughters and why they drive men away in droves! These women are never satisfied, you could give them the world and they would still find fault, they are never satisfied, so they move on to the next guy, and the next guy, and the next.....until their looks either fade or they drop dead.
I am single and have no interest in getting married. And yet I enthusiastically voted for Mitt Romney.
Look, it doesn’t matter if I am married or not, I am a white male who believes in free market capitalism and so there is no doubt in my mind that Obama and the Democrat party see people like me as public enemy #1.
“Having known a woman who had to support her ex-husband (who simply refused to get a job, out of spite, so that she’d have to pay him a huge amount in support)...”
These types of anecdotes are still the very rare exceptions. Women are still favored in the vast majority of divorce and child custody situations. I can share my anecdotes of male friends and family who pay far more in child support than the ex-wives needs for the kids. The wives pocket the difference, in addition to the alimony. This is still by far the more typical way. And this is a big reason why many men have determined that marriage is just not worth the risks.
This attitude is tragic.
Women were created to be cared for; these parents are creating a situation where their daughters are destined for unhappiness.
I do believe that men should be trained to leave the nest, compete for a job and produce/care for a family.
Women should not be trained the same way. If they remain unmarried I really see no reason why they should leave the parents' house; IMO the father remains responsible for the unmarried woman. If the woman desires to live independently, that's fine. But not all women should be forced into this mold.
-— IMO the father remains responsible for the unmarried woman. If the woman desires to live independently, that’s fine. -—
I agree, unless they refuse to work. I tell my girls that they will always have a place at home.
I don’t even mind men living at home, as long as they are working, contributing to the household, and saving money.
What is favored is the person with the lower income, which used to be - but no longer inecessarily is - the woman. This comes from a time when one partner didn’t work or worked part time to take care of the children.
This now affects both men and men equally. The woman I knew had actually been supporting her husband through graduate school, enabling him not to work...and to claim that he was unemployed when she discovered the affair he had been carrying on with a fellow graduate student.
And then I can tell you about one of my co-workers at a company where she was a secretary and worked full time and overtime to put her husband through law school. The day of his graduation, he turned to her and told her he was leaving her because she just wasn’t the kind of wife he wanted In his new career (she had a heavy regional accent). She didn’t have to pay him support, but she got absolutely no compensation for all of the money she had put into his career and for having dropped out of college herself to support him.
So if you want to tell horror stories, they’re certainly not exclusive to men.
It’s very sad...you never mean to pick the wrong mate but if you do it can really ruin your life. That was actually one of the reasons for making divorce easier, but I think it has backfired and people seem to make even worse choices now.
“the GOP has to encourage marriage and children, which can be done both by giving these things a positive image and by creating policies favoring marriage and children”
I thought opposition to abortion and “gay marriage”, coupled with the child tax credit and Bush tax cuts, were doing that.
“Another factor to add is video games and the internet.”
These alternatives to divorce, custody battles, and being booted from the home where your children sleep (while still paying for the home) are available to women as well.
The fact is that the legal atmosphere (which enslaves fathers at the whim of the mother) and the economic atmosphere (in which it is increasingly difficult for a white man to get an education, job, or promotion) make it impractical for a man to risk so much. As long as women support these measures, they can have birthday parties for their cats while immigrants do the breeding for us.
“the girls at the school don’t view the boys as potential mates”
That’s right; that comes when they watch their reproductive organs dry up. When they finally get pushed over the brink (usually by passing a schoolyard full of children jabbering in tongues), they’ll head out to the bars and accept insemination by any guy who is drunk enough to be oblivious to the consequences of a one-night stand.
“So if you want to tell horror stories, they’re certainly not exclusive to men.”
99% of them are; that is why it is women clamoring for suitable mates while the men hide. What we are watching is the result of young men, many having grown up with divorced parents, opting out of marriage. Unlike TV (where men are portrayed as still being able to be fathers even though some other guy lives in the house sleeping with the children’s mother), the reality is much uglier than that. Young men today often have little fond recollection of growing up fatherless, and rather than acting as their urban counterparts (breeding for “cash for kids”) they simply put it away.
Maybe they watch the news, which shows five white guys being arrested as deadbeat dads in the suburbs while thousands of urban deadbeat dads live a few miles away unmolested...
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