The Obama 2012 campaign has put up a "Life of Julia" website that explains how the Obama Administration would provide cradle to grave welfare state benefits for an apparently never-married single mother named Julia, who would be financially crazy to vote Republican.
It's hard to disagree with Obama's logic, and indeed, being a single woman appears to be an extremely strong causal driver of voting Democratic in Presidential elections. In contrast, little changes a woman's mind about how to vote more than marriage.
Hence, it would make sense for the GOP to research the reasons for voters not getting married and propose reforms to make family formation more affordable. In other words, logically, it's in the Republican Party's self-interest to think about how to make American citizens happy and how to encourage them to grow more happy American citizens of their own.
Obviously, when phrased that way, you can understand why the GOP Brain Trust has paid no attention whatsoever to this question since I first brought it up seven years ago. It's just crazy talk!
Obviously, when phrased that way, you can understand why the GOP Brain Trust has paid no attention whatsoever to this question since I first brought it up seven years ago. It's just crazy talk!
... whom to vote for for President than marriage.
ReplyDeleteMake that, "... whom to vote for for President other than marriage."
Or, "Not much except marriage changes a woman's mind about whom to vote for for President."
David Frum gets it.
ReplyDelete"But for the two-thirds of your fellow-Americans who do not graduate from college, marriage has become a vanishing aspiration. And as sure as we know anything, we know that children who grow up in a single-parent home will face narrowed opportunities and diminished chances in life...
The best pro-family policy is a rising wage for the typical worker."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/14/romney-liberty-university.html
The GOP needs to secure border, zero out trade deficit and then hijack Bob Reich's policy agenda to close wage-productivity gap. It's what Nixon would want us to do.
http://robertreich.org/post/22542609387
There were some great columns about this new composite by Ross Douthat and Jessica Gavora (Jonah's better half) driving home a similar point. Conservatism Inc. can mock Obama's new campaign of whispering sweet nothings, they can laugh it up all day--but to that micro-targeted voting bloc, the "Julia" logic is pretty much unassailable.
ReplyDeleteJulia's life would be made easy at whose expense?
ReplyDeleteAnd why Julia? Why not Shandalukeema?
I liked how Julia wound up in a "community garden" at the end; so reminiscent of community efforts in post-war Saigon
ReplyDeleteIs it me, or did Julia dress a little bit slutty for her college-era "operation"?
ReplyDeleteAnon 6:23. At whose expense? Why the name Julia?
ReplyDeleteOh come now. You know the answer to both questions. But as you are asking purely to drive home a point, I will help out and answer.
#1 Julia doesn't care about the answer to that.
#2 Julia doesn't want to think she is like whatever-that-name-was, and the Obama campaign has an interest in hiding that information from her. She is quite possibly far more prejudiced about such matters than you or I.
The LoJ site was a spectacular moment in the long history of "owning the insult."
ReplyDeleteEverything conservatives were decrying about Great Society progressivism since decades back, the White House took it all in and decided, "Hmm, yeah, we'll go with that"
Steve, what do you think about this?
ReplyDeleteSource: Roger Clemens, host of athletes pop Viagra to help onfield performance
Comments (58)
BY TERI THOMPSON, CHRISTIAN RED, MICHAEL O'KEEFFE AND NATHANIEL VINTON / DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 11:27 AM
Play on, playa! According to a source, Roger Clemens kept a stash of Viagra in his locker at Yankee Stadium. Many athletes use the male enhancement product to give them a boost - on the playing field.
He told little white lies ... and he took little blue pills.
Roger Clemens, whose claims he never took steroids are under federal investigation, has apparently discovered the benefits of another performance-enhancing drug sweeping the sports world - Viagra.
Clemens stashed the clearly marked, diamond-shaped pills in a GNC vitamin bottle in his locker at Yankee Stadium, according to a source familiar with the clubhouse, perhaps keeping the drug undercover to avoid the inevitable wisecracks about all the girlfriends he needed to please.
Clemens wasn't alone. The pitcher, who is believed to have scored the drug from a teammate, joined the burgeoning number of athletes who have turned Vitamin V and its over-the-counter substitutes into one of the hottest drugs in locker rooms....
Read more:
NY Daily News
Hmm, maybe develop an embarrassing bulge in one's pants during a game?
Steve, please, there is no GOP brain trust. Nobody in the GOP is thinking seriously about getting real power and keeping it.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Republican Party, "affordable family formation" is crazy talk. But what's sensible, supposedly, is to figure out how to turn the small percentage of Hispanics who actually vote into Republicans.
ReplyDeleteHere's the Republican idea of practical, non-loco ideas. Let's take that relatively small percentage of Hispanic voters and put as many of them as possible into houses, by having the administration encourage lenders to drop the requirement of putting money down on a home loan. Further, let's require that all Republican candidates - heck, all Americans while we're at it - be bilingual (Spanish and English). And finally, let's give the head of La Raza a cabinet-level position.
Hoo boy, I'm a Republican genius!
Karl Rove had better watch out or I'm going to have his old job!
"Under President Obama: Julia decides to have a child."
ReplyDeleteUhhh, yeah.
women don't get married because liberals have made it easier and easier to not get married. conservatives can never outpander liberals, so there's nothing to research here, steve.
ReplyDeletelook at how much damage liberals have done to africans in the US since 1960. they used to get married and stay married. now we are approaching a situation in which 80% of african mothers are single mothers.
the same trend is occurring to all groups, as liberals ramp up the welfare state on their long march toward having the central government provide everything to single women which, for the previous 20,000 years, husbands would provide.
Julia moves into Section 8 housing... Julia has three kids by three males, gets a tax credit per kid... Julia doesn't work but parties often and has a diversity of boyfriends... We have many white Julias in small-town East Tennessee.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, anyone notice the LoJ site assumes Obama will be POTUS for the next 64 years?
Agreed Steve, but the reason the GOP does not want to think about that is that it requires double-unplus-good thoughts about sex, marriage, and money. All things the "respectable" GOP folks would rather not think about. Because thinking about it might lead one into thought-crime.
ReplyDeleteFor example, lots and lots of young White women will have at most a single kid. In Japan their analog will have approximately: zero. In places like Denmark, Norway, the UK, and France, maybe one, and nearly always as a single mother.
Why? At the same time Black, Hispanic, and Muslim women in the same societies facing the same monetary constraints have a LOT of kids, not by magic wombs but by having kids at 16 on the White taxpayer's dime. And keeping on through their fertility window.
Obviously the men are a better reproductive option for these women than their analogs among Whites in Europe/the US; and Japanese men in Japan. I.E. the men are sexier than their White/Japanese counterparts.
It is not JUST the money (yes its important). At least as much is the demand for sexiness among White women and their resistance to reproduction when that sexiness floor is not met. Yes cultural / economic differences among racial/ethnic groups do play a part in the willingness to have kids out of wedlock at 16, and keep having them. But that's the basic story. Whites/Japanese don't, and other groups do. Thinking about that sexiness would cause apoplexy among the "respectable" Republicans.
"why Julia? Why not Shandalukeema?"
ReplyDeleteBecause Shandalukeema is already in the tank.
Gilbert Pinfold.
It's hard to disagree with Obama's logic ..
ReplyDeleteFrom the short-term viewpoint of the Democratic Party.
From the longer term viewpoint of society and even the human race, the logic of the Democratic party is suicide.
Well, Republicans need to start off with the thousands of blacks and in the case of Texas Hispanics that have kids out of wedlock. Even Calif Mexicans are having less kids out of wedlock than Texas.
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, the cradle to grave welfare is worrisome and bespeaks one hell of a dystopia waiting for us.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I don't think we're going to see dystopia because the Left never addresses who exactly is going to pay for this.
I think this would have been a lot more honest if ten years down the line it says Julia attaches herself to a local urban warlord as a second wife.
" make sense for the GOP to research the reasons for voters not getting married "
ReplyDeleteNo research needed. We have heard from the wise all knowing Charles Murray it is because the lower classes have bad morals and it has nothing to do with having the income to purchase a house. To talk about "affordable family foundation" is coming close to Class Warfare.
You need to get with the program Steve. To even hint that the economic condition of the poor is a proper subject of politics is heresy. Good conservatives should be devoted to the agenda of the Job Creators and the security of settlers in Judea and Samaria.
Hahaha. NY Daily News only needed four sports writers to write that Clemens story.
ReplyDeleteWhy not eight sports writers? Or fourteen? Wouldn't the story be more thorough if fourteen sportswriters threw themselves into the project?
Btw, how many sportswriters does it take to change a lightbulb?
Experience in virtually all the advanced nations tells us that the tend towards low fertility is more or less set in stone and once started seems impossible to reverse.
ReplyDeleteBasically it's a rational economic choice made by rational people, so therefore it's pretty unmoveable, just think of Ceaucescu's madness and failures in Romania.
Since being positive is a fool's game in politics, the Republicans should rephrase it as the "Democrat War on Families" - defining family as married man + woman with children.
ReplyDeleteWhiskey:
ReplyDelete" In places like Denmark, Norway, the UK, and France, maybe one, and nearly always as a single mother."
No, they typically have 1 child while *cohabiting* but unmarried. This - unmarried cohabitation - is now the standard family form among working whites in the UK. Single motherhood is only standard among those on benefits (non-working or secretly working), and even there the father is very often secretly cohabiting with the welfare-claiming 'single' mother. They would cohabit openly, except that the government punishes two-parent families harshly with loss of benefits.
In Britain marriage is dying, but people still want to form families, the State works hard to break up two-parent families but is not entirely successful. But you can go to jail if found to be secretly cohabiting while claiming single-mother benefits.
It's hard to disagree with Obama's logic,...
ReplyDeleteMr Sailer, it's not 'logical' at all. I'll explain why: Because there are a lot more people who'd have to pay for this vs those who would benefit. So just publicize it and ask: Do you want to pay tax (i.e. take on more debt -- the US is broke) to pay for this? If not, then don't vote for Obama.
And if it's 'logical' for Obama to give "Julia" (sounds vaguely white, doesn't it? -- what fraction of black women are named "Julia" vs white women? -- is Obama trying to skirt the 'Welfare Queen' image problem here? -- why not call her Lakeesha?), then why isn't it 'logical' to give everyone money? Then wouldn't everyone vote for Obama?
Perhaps this reductio ad absurdum argument is just that -- absurd. Which again I hope goes to show the Obama campaign isn't 'logical' at all.
QED
I don't know if Sailer has ever commented on it, but it seems to me that Charles Murray's idea of banning all welfare and then giving $10,0000 to all those who I think make less than $50,000 a year might be one to consider as far as family formation us concerned
ReplyDelete(although it might provide a bad incentive for single mothers).
Hey Steve, I think your prediction of the Democrat party becoming in the future a European Social democratic party is right.
ReplyDeleteWhiskey said:
ReplyDelete"For example, lots and lots of young White women will have at most a single kid. In Japan their analog will have approximately: zero. In places like Denmark, Norway, the UK, and France, maybe one, and nearly always as a single mother."
Whiskey, I lived in France for 2 years where I interacted with a great number of people of various classes due to the nature of my work, and I have only ever met one white single mother. Marriage stats among whites are falling in France, because most young people prefer to get PACS (basically, a civil union). I'm not exactly sure what is the legal difference between marriage and PACS, but they all lived together, bought property together and raised kids together. I quickly learned the drill when i first arrived and went on a million weekend babysitting/tutoring interviews for extra income throughout the city, the suburbs and the surrounding villages. All the parents lived together since before the kids were born. But some of them referred to each other as "my wife" and "my husband" (married), while others referred to the other parent as "my companion" (PACSed). I think that actual, real single motherhood is extremely rare among the white French.
I looked at the Life of Julia website. It appears that Obama aims to stay in power for the next sixty years.
ReplyDeleteWe are looking at this as a problem that women don't want to get married, but from what I can see, they do. Heartiste has had many discussions on why men would not want to get married. That is where the efforts have to go, making marriage attractive to men.
ReplyDeleteWhy not abolish secret ballot and make it possible to make legally binding contracts to pay people if they vote for you (with taxes, if you win).
ReplyDeleteI'll found the "$5,000 party"
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteJulia's life would be made easy at whose expense? And why Julia? Why not Shandalukeema?"
- Because at their core, white liberals are hypocrites; while on the surface they pretend to support poor blacks and hate whites, at the end of the day, it sells better to them to have a white face, like their niece, Julia, on the receiving end of their hard earned money.
It can't be that I'm the only person who sees the name choice of Julia as some kind of meta in-joke, can it? Orwell, Winston Smith, "Do it to Julia!" Maybe so?
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhy not abolish secret ballot and make it possible to make legally binding contracts to pay people if they vote for you (with taxes, if you win). I'll found the "$5,000 party"
- I think the Dems have one-up'd you on that. They pay their voters with everyone else's money, and its alot more than $5000/voter.
http://youtu.be/Y1qd_UpnCFo
ReplyDelete"Heartiste has had many discussions on why men would not want to get married. That is where the efforts have to go, making marriage attractive to men."
ReplyDeleteErrr, google Steve Sailer and affordable family creation.
Women want to get married but only to the men above them and out of their league but not the men who are actually available to them and want to marry them. We don't need to encourage the men to get married. We need to withdraw government wealth redistribution to women so if they continue to be unrealistic then they have to face the consequences of that in a lower standard of living by staying single.
ReplyDeleteExperience in virtually all the advanced nations tells us that the tend towards low fertility is more or less set in stone and once started seems impossible to reverse.
ReplyDeleteBasically it's a rational economic choice made by rational people, so therefore it's pretty unmoveable, just think of Ceaucescu's madness and failures in Romania.
I think you're basically right, but how "advanced" was Romania under Ceaucescu?
Steve,
ReplyDeleteyou have proven that affordable family formation is the key to the fertility of higher IQ secular populations.
Affordable family formation is not so important to very religious and not so important to those with below average IQ.
For example, if you stick a very religious couple or a low IQ (heterosexual) couple in an expensive small apartment in the Pearl District of Portland, or in Soho or in Manhattan Beach, they will still produce a lot of children. The small size of the dwelling and lack of a back yard won't be a barrier.
However, at least in America, you Steve have proven that if you put a high IQ secular couple in an expensive urban area, they will refuse to reproduce at nearly the level that they would if they were put in a big house on a quarter acre lot in the exurbs.
Steve, does this observation hold in the rest of the world?
Famously, Italy has a super low fertility rate among those born with a high IQ. But if you break this down, do you see a notably higher fertility rate among those living in the distant exurbs of Milan, where single family houses are affordable, compared to those living in the Center of Milan where tiny apartments are the norm?
Let me ask some other questions. If you look all over the world at high IQ, highly secular females, the Ashkenazi secular females living in Israel may have the highest fertility. There is something special in Israel that persuades high IQ secular females to reproduce. Has anyone analyzed the impact of living in a single family home in an "exurb" of Tel Aviv vs the impact of living in an apartment in the expensive crowded center of Tel Aviv? I would guess that the high fertility high IQ females are much more likely to live in the exurbs not in central tel aviv. But is there evidence?
Can any of the Israelis on this board please enlighten me?
Now how does this relate to Julia?
Basically Obama is putting out the message that under his administration, tax payers will make it possible for upscale college educated women to have children without getting married.
In effect, he is saying that he will make child bearing affordable for sophisticated educated single women.
One way to look at Obama's program is to tax married men and to transfer those tax dollars to single mothers.
In effect, Obama's plan is to collectivize the earnings of men and distribute them to mothers. This means that the lifestyle difference between single mothers and married mothers is to be made smaller.
Broadly, Obama believes in affordable family formation. he just wants to make it more affordable for single women to have children and less affordable for married women to have children
Who Whom indeed
In other words, logically, it's in the Republican Party's self-interest to think about how to make American citizens happy and how to encourage them to grow more happy American citizens of their own.
ReplyDeleteWell, they ain't the Stupid Party for nothing.
LoJ is really designed for women with bastards to pretend they're married to Obama.
We are looking at this as a problem that women don't want to get married, but from what I can see, they do. Heartiste has had many discussions on why men would not want to get married. That is where the efforts have to go, making marriage attractive to men."
ReplyDeleteMen want to marry young, thin, women, like 18 year old virgins with a BMI ≤20. Used to be that was pretty much the average woman of marrying age.
Now the average woman who is "ready" to get married is a grouchy, entitled 30 year old with a ton of debt who spent age 18-30 riding the carousel. There was never (and will never be) a strong market for the latter. The market is still strong for the former.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRMJPCVUZGg
Experience in virtually all the advanced nations tells us that the tend towards low fertility is more or less set in stone and once started seems impossible to reverse.
ReplyDeleteBasically it's a rational economic choice made by rational people,
It is only rational when you are among a small fraction doing it. It isn't rational if everyone does it.
We have a system of transferring present costs to future taxpayers and importing tax eaters. This doesn't work long term. It is not rational. The social engineers f-ed up.
Someone should do a "Life of Johnny" based on true events of my caucasion friends and family.
ReplyDeleteJohnny needs speech therapy at school but is denied because the kids of illegal Mexican immigrants need it more.
Johnny's kindergarten class has 14 English speakers and one who speaks only Spanish. Teacher splits her time between the two "groups".
In junior high, Johnny is tested for entrance into academically gifted classes. He just misses the cut, but if he had been female, black, or any other minority, he would have gotten in.
Johnny is rejected from some colleges, but minorities he knows (with lower GPAs & SATs) get in.
In college, Johnny is shocked to see faculty promoted gurrrl power! (pushing them into STEM), minority empowerment & Title IX everywhere but no groups for men's success, nothing about men in traditionally female occupations (nursing, teaching, etc).
After college, Johnny gets rejected from employers because they want a diverse and vibrant workforce. When Johnny finally lands a job, he is the first category to be down-sized.
Johnny tries to start his own business but cannot get an SBA loan, although they loan money to non-citizens. Google SBA 8a.
Yes, fellow iSteve readers, these are all true.
"No, they typically have 1 child while *cohabiting* but unmarried."
ReplyDeleteYes, they have the kid while cohabiting, but ten years later the mother is on her own. That is the pattern in Scandinavia, anyway, the region where cohabitation seems replaced marriage without obvious pathologies. An unobvious pathology is how the lower stability of these marriage-like cohabitations affects children.
Cennbeorc
What the Evangelicals Give the Jews by
ReplyDeleteMichael Medved
Interesting.
it would make sense for the GOP to research the reasons for voters not getting married and propose reforms to make family formation more affordable.
ReplyDeleteThe GOP brain-trust (if that's not a contradiction in terms) genuinely believes that people are fungible, that there is no significant difference between a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, or an atheist. That there is no significant difference between a Sunni in Iraq and a Methodist in Connecticut. That there is no significant difference between men and women, or between married men and women on the one hand and single men and women on the other.
You can't reason people out of beliefs which they hold axiomatically.
"Obviously, when phrased that way, you can understand why the GOP Brain Trust has paid no attention whatsoever to this question since I first brought it up seven years ago. It's just crazy talk!"
ReplyDeleteThe republicans are determined to be "good" losers.
This is off topic but look at the biographies page for each former president at whitehouse.gov, starting at Calvin Coolidge. scroll down to the did you know section. Stuff about Obama is being added to all the other bios.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents
Well, I think planned ciites like Irivne and Misison Viejo don't have the poverty problems of older ciites. Both Santa Ana and Anaheim were not planned and end up as the hisapnic immirgant towns, Repubs and Dems need to go back more to planned iites like those mention above.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I've wondered for some time if prolonged use of "The Pill" turns a statistically significant number of women's brains into what might be called 'mush'!
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty well known that at times during a woman's menstrual cycle a statistically significant number of women become what might be called 'flighty' -- or, in other words, irrational. And I wonder if prolonged use of the "The Pill" creates that state in women for so long that it eventually permanently changes their brain.
I can't get around the observation that almost all of the LOGICAL AND RATIONAL women I have ever known were SIGNIFICANTLY older than "The Pill"!!
And look at what it did to the divorce rate in modern America!
What got me thinking seriously about this is that my mother, who was THE most logical and rational woman I ever have known in my entire life, eventually developed Alzheimer's disease in her late 80s. And the doctor recommended putting her on "The Pill" because he had the notion (maybe promoted by "The Pill" manufacturers) that it would help her condition. It DIDN'T! It very quickly made her behavior significantly more 'flighty' (disconnected from reality and illogical) than she was immediately before giving "The Pill" to her. I kept cutting the dose down, and in a few weeks stopped it completely, because NO dose of it did any good at all and ANY dose of it produced this 'flighty' characteristic even worse than the Alzheimer's disease did.
"At least as much is the demand for sexiness among White women and their resistance to reproduction when that sexiness floor is not met."
ReplyDeleteWhiskey, enough whining.
Get a pair of running shoes and start pounding the pavement. Lift some weights, eat some protein. Save some money.
Lower your standards. (No, you can't have a 10. But if you'll just do thsese things, a 5 or 6 will find you sexy enough.)
Okay, smidg'ms?
Keep hammering away at this, Steve. It's one of your most powerful points. It's linked to and commented here:
ReplyDeletehttp://ex-army.blogspot.com/2012/05/population-and-affordable-family.html
Steve, my understanding is that Israel used to have a broad range of social programs and payments to the poor, similar to what Obama has on his julia web site. But then it was revealed that the main beneficiaries of the transfer payments were the ultra religious and the arabs. As such, the taxpayers in Israel (overwhelmingly secular and Jewish) decided they didn't want to social programs to continue and as such the social programs were cut. Today Israel has one of the highest income inequality rates in the world, due to the very high IQ dispersion. Yemeni Jews have average IQ of 85 and Ashkenazi jews have average IQ of 107.
ReplyDeleteAnd you have the same mean reversion that you see in the USA - For example, it is well known that white Christian people in the USA have a mean IQ of 100 and Hmong people in the USA have a mean IQ of about 85.
So if two Hmong pediatricians each with an IQ of 120 marry and have children - and two white christian pediatricians each with an IQ of 120 marry and have children, what you observe is that the children of the high IQ Hmong will have much lower IQs than the children of the high IQ white chrisitans.
In the USA, IQ of the parents does not accurately predict IQ of the children, rather the IQ of the children is a function of the ethnic background of the parents as well as the IQ of the parents.
If you look all over the world at high IQ, highly secular females, the Ashkenazi secular females living in Israel may have the highest fertility. There is something special in Israel that persuades high IQ secular females to reproduce. Has anyone analyzed the impact of living in a single family home in an "exurb" vs the impact of living in an apartment in an exciting city like Tel Aviv? I would guess that the high fertility high IQ females are much more likely to live in the exurbs not in central tel aviv.
Can any of the many Israelis on this board please enlighten me?
I don't really want to take sides in any of the political battles now going on in Israel. The fights between the religious jews and the secular jews, the fights between light skinned jews and dark skinned jews, the fights between the rich jews and the poor jews, the fights between the jews that want to give all the territories back to the palestinians and the jews that don't, the fights between the jews that want massive numbers of african refugees to move to Tel Aviv and the jews that don't ... the list of arguments and conflicts in Israel is overwhelming
No, all I care about is the birth rate of secular high IQ people. I'd like our esteemed Israeli peers on this blog to comment
The Julia web page gets to the heart of the matter as it concerns the future of the USA. Do we have a dysgenic future or a eugenic future?
.
ReplyDelete.
Julia is a popular hispanic name.
The idea that low brth rates in developed countries = extinction of those people is A BIG LIE, pushed by Marxist multiculturalists!
ReplyDeleteLow birth rates are (or should be) just a temporary phenomenon, because under "natural" conditions, population will fall for a while, until economic, social, and environmental conditions once again favor high birth rates. For example, when land and housing become insanely inexpensive and a good income can once again be had (perhaps by harvesting renewed natural resources such as fish, timber, & game), then it will make sense to have large families.
However, such a cycle will not work, if, during the low-birth phase, the nation is flooded by a different people. That simply leads to replacement.
Grossly overpopulated Japan is doing it correctly, by banning immigration. For several decades, birth rates will fall in Japan, as the "genes" against reproduction are eliminated from the population. After a couple of generations, only genes for reproduction will remain, and Japan will repopulate. Meanwhile, the ecosystem will have mended, and fish, timber, clean water, soil fertility etc., will have returned. A beautiful, bountiful land, in which future Japanese can now breed.
Skewed sex ratio in China is also temporary. Already, the shortage of young brides has increased their "value." Soon Chinese parents will be wishing for girl babies.
Maya:
ReplyDeleteThe white French also have a higher birthrate than white Americans do-- inching from 1.8 ever closer to the magic 2.1 number. Whiskey as usual has no idea what he's talking about.
Pro-natalism works, even in educated, mostly secular countries like France, Sweden and Norway.
I just finished some parody Life of Julias here. Thought y'all might get a laugh.
ReplyDelete"The white French also have a higher birthrate than white Americans do-- inching from 1.8 ever closer to the magic 2.1 number. Whiskey as usual has no idea what he's talking about.
ReplyDeletePro-natalism works, even in educated, mostly secular countries like France, Sweden and Norway."
That's interesting. I did notice that single child families were basically non-existent in France, not counting those who just started having kids and weren't done. Everyone had 2 or 3 (and never more) children. In fact, it was almost creepy because you'd expect at least a few families with only one child due to infertility or something. I assumed the government paid for comprehensive fertility treatments because I've encountered 3 sets of triplets within one small school district. Another weird thing that jumped out at me was that nobody was an only child. No matter what the person's age was, he or she had a sibling or siblings. I've met some single, childless white French people too, of course, but I feel as though they weren't the norm. Divorced and reformed families appeared to be much more common, however.
" I've met some single, childless white French people too, of course, but I feel as though they weren't the norm. Divorced and reformed families appeared to be much more common, however."
ReplyDeleteDivorced and 'reformed' families like where each spouse had one kid, voilà 'siblings' a la français.
"Divorced and 'reformed' families like where each spouse had one kid, voilà 'siblings' a la français."
ReplyDeleteYou could be right, of course. I didn't conduct a survey with well stated definitions or anything. However, I Just visualized the family I lived with, the teachers I was close to, the grad students i got to know and all of their extended families that were known to me. (The above might sound weird, but I was invited to so many family dinners, as a regular, tagged along on so many family vacations that included extended family, ect., ect. And each time the hosts would ask me all about my life, and then, they'd launch into a lengthy explanation of who everyone was. It was pretty interesting too, most of the time, all these family networks crisscrossing France and dipping into Italy and Britain. After listening to family gossip at the dinner table for a few weeks, I became pretty familiar with the going ons of many of my friends' families.)
Anyway, I can't think of a French person without siblings.
This is in stark contrast with my own country of origin where single child families were/are so common that many people my age have neither siblings nor first cousins.
Daniel! -- superb!
ReplyDeleteZillow.com lists the estimated resale value of Loury's Brookline, Massachusetts, home at 1.48 Million.
ReplyDeleteOut of respect for his privacy, I won't post a link, but the information is easily attainable.
When you read his criticisms of Wilson, imagine him writing it in his no doubt beautifully-appointed study. The house doesn't look especially imposing, but I'm sure it's in a nice neighborhood...
I just finished some parody Life of Julias here. Thought y'all might get a laugh.
ReplyDeleteOkay....
Under Mitt Romney: this happens to Julia's grandchildren
LOL!!!
But then it was revealed that the main beneficiaries of the transfer payments were the ultra religious and the arabs. As such, the taxpayers in Israel (overwhelmingly secular and Jewish) decided they didn't want to social programs to continue and as such the social programs were cut.
ReplyDeletePlease forgive the grammar lesson. "Such" is a pronoun, and in this instance its antecedent is "ultra-religious and the Arabs". When you say, "As such, the taxpayers in Israel", you are saying that the tazpayers are the ultra-religious and the Arabs.
Single woman: tax that man over there (for whom I do nothing) so I can get his money.
ReplyDeleteMarried woman: don't tax that man over their because he's my husband and he's already giving me his money.
Not all that complicated, really. Single women see themselves as having an often antagonistic relationship with men, while married women are in a partnership with them.
"The GOP needs to secure border, zero out trade deficit and then hijack Bob Reich's policy agenda..."
Not gunna happen. John Boehner just today promised mor tax cuts for rich individuals and businesses, coming your way. Last time they had a debt ceiling increase, part of the bargain included cuts in border security. Neither party gives a shit about the middle class.
It seems to me that the subsidy of housing costs, which led to the housing bubble, etc., was an attempt to enact your favored AFF policies. They may have been misguided in their tactics, but surely part of the point was to make it cheaper to buy a house, and thus easier to form a family?
ReplyDeleteanon:
ReplyDelete"If you look all over the world at high IQ, highly secular females, the Ashkenazi secular females living in Israel may have the highest fertility. There is something special in Israel that persuades high IQ secular females to reproduce."
IME the experience of being on a frontier, of being in competition with another group, encourages people to breed more. This was the case in Northern Ireland and Israel. It only happens when there is sufficient social cohesion, though. Israelis see themselves in competition with Arabs, but high-IQ whites in New York don't see themselves as part of a group in competition with NAMs.
Ann & Mitt fell in love, married, and had some kids. Tragic.
ReplyDeleteIdeal: "Julia" getting knocked up by some random dude and then spending the rest of her life raising that kid on her own, sucking at the government teet, like a more demented version of that already demented Time cover.
"It seems to me that the subsidy of housing costs, which led to the housing bubble..."
ReplyDeleteHousing costs weren't being subsidized - they were being artificially inflated by the expansion of lending to sub-prime borrowers. The government's goal was never to make housing cheaper - it was to make sure more money wound up in the pockets of Wall Street, the lenders, and the builders.
Thanks to government-inspired lending policies, responsible married families buying homes were forced to compete with speculators and unqualified borrowers.
Anonmymous 5/13/12 7:06 wrote:
ReplyDelete"the Ashkenazi secular females living in Israel may have the highest fertility."
Among Ashkenazi Israelis, the high fertility is disproportionately concentrated among the ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox rather than their secular counterparts.
I have written a blog post exploring this and many other ideas, including an examination of the "affordable family formation" theory.
ReplyDeleteI've incorporated the ideas of "Anonymous 5/15/12 3:23 PM", which echoed something I suspected myself.
See it here: Liberalism, HBD, Population, and Solutions for the Future | JayMan's Blog