Racial Tension in the U.S.

[David.]

The problem isn't that the data is necessarily invalid, it's that it's cherrypicked. They looked for and found 14 studies that back their viewpoint, and didn't give any consideration to other viewpoints.

I can probably find a 20-page report like this from a far-left source that also cherrypicks studies that fit their biases and then I can sit here and ask you to pick it apart and show me why it's wrong. That's not productive.

On a basic level, my complaint with the reasoning in that report is the following. They show that employed people do better than similar people on welfare. I can believe that, no doubt. But what does cutting welfare accomplish, besides apparently forcing people to marry out of economic necessity? The ends justify the means, i guess (and screw anyone who can't find a decent person to marry)?

Forcing to marry out of necessity? That's what everyone did until the welfare state fucked everyone up? Everyone was getting married because they had to financially?

Sure let's accept that premise for a second. Forcing people to marry seems great concisdering what happens to children that grow up without a dad or a mom.

 

[David.]

One problem I have is that a vast majority of the sources are from 1995 or before. So the data is outdated when applying it to modern legislation (it doesn't take into account some of the Clinton welfare reforms that went in place in 1996).

In 2015 most on welfare didn't work. 2016 too. Just two articles I came across while finding the one I already posted.

16 hours of work per week is the average for a welfare recipient.

You guys are trying really hard to think past common sense. You are disincentivized to work when someone is paying you not to. It is the rational decision to make.

I give up.

 

[Nathan S]

Forcing to marry out of necessity? That's what everyone did until the welfare state fucked everyone up? Everyone was getting married because they had to financially?

Sure let's accept that premise for a second. Forcing people to marry seems great concisdering what happens to children that grow up without a dad or a mom.

I'm referring specifically to e.g. single unemployed mothers. Reduce welfare benefits to the point where they'll literally starve and/or go homeless, and yeah, a lot of them will marry a guy out of necessity. Are those good marriages? And what happens to the ones who can't find a guy to marry? They starve, but whatever, their fault for getting pregnant?

EDIT: An analogous thing would be to cut welfare payments to all morbidly obese people. Do that, and sure enough the number of morbidly obese people would drop rapidly and all the formerly morbidly obese people would have better lives and better employability after losing all that weight.

There are a lot of strategies that make sense from a cold, utilitarian viewpoint but aren't morally defensible at all.

 

[BooyaCS]

In 2015 most on welfare didn't work. 2016 too. Just two articles I came across while finding the one I already posted.

16 hours of work per week is the average for a welfare recipient.

You guys are trying really hard to think past common sense. You are disincentivized to work when someone is paying you not to.

I give up.

I never mentioned anything about how welfare does or doesn't work. What I said is the data is outdated and from 1995 or before.

I am not trying to think past common sense. I can actually read though.

 

[Nathan S]

In 2015 most on welfare didn't work. 2016 too. Just two articles I came across while finding the one I already posted.

16 hours of work per week is the average for a welfare recipient.

You guys are trying really hard to think past common sense. You are disincentivized to work when someone is paying you not to. It is the rational decision to make.

I give up.

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis found workers with earnings below the poverty line face “marginal tax rates” — i.e., the reduction in benefits or increase in taxes for each additional dollar earned — that are typically well below those that other workers face. The median or typical worker with earnings below half of the poverty line has a marginal tax rate of 14 percent, according to CBO’s analysis, meaning that he or she loses 14 cents in higher taxes and/or lower benefits for each additional dollar earned.

(from the Forbes article)

 

[czvo]

Dude this is silly.

You're comparing a think tank to Fox news? Or BRIETBART?

They cited 14 studies.

This is ad hominem. You're attacking the source and not addressing the argument. Feel free to look up the textbook definition, which this is. This is what happens with the fact checking sites. Completely poison the well. Common sense isn't enough,. So I find data. Now the data is somehow invalid because of who it comes from.

A biased source can be right, can't it? You have mountains of data to look at. Do you care to address the actual data and report?

These conversations can't go anywhere if one side refuses to use fallacy and the other depends on it.

I don't know if it was his intent, but David kind of brought up a good point with this post. I don't think it was, but we really need to do more research into who are funding certain think tanks, and what really constitutes an unbiased opinion.

For example, Richard Spencer has a "think tank" that is really nothing more than a white supremacist lobbying group. Any information or conclusions provided or drawn by that group should be taken with a massive grain of salt given who's in charge and their views.

American Enterprise Institute has received nearly $2 miles from the Koch Brothers, and, surprise, they're not so keen on climate change.

As for The Heritage? They have a very interesting story (that's not intended to imply anything other than I found it interesting).

 

[David.]

http://www.dailywire.com/news/4911/shapiro-debates-what-causes-black-murder-hank-berrien

Shapiro Debates: What Causes Black Murder, Institutional Racism or Single Motherhood?

Photo by Peter Duke
ByHANK BERRIEN
April 13, 2016
Speaking at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Daily Wire Editor-in Chief Ben Shapiro confronted members of the audience who insisted that “insitututional racism” was the cause of the black community’s problems. Shapiro offered the packed auditorium cogent reasons for the deeply-troubling statistics reflected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics – African Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population yet commit more than half of all murders in the country, and 93 percent of the victims being black.

The exchange went like this, according to The College Fix:

Questioner: You also say violence is a personal choice, which clearly ignores the last century of housing segregation and gentrification that’s forced blacks into the poorest, most violent communities. You then said that whites do not have an inherent better sense of self-responsibility than blacks. So, how can you explain the high levels of violence in black communities if they are in fact inherently same in decision making as whites, without considering forced racialized housing segregation?

Shapiro: First of all, I would note that the black murder rate in the United States is about ten times the white murder rate in the United States. And this has been consistently true for the last hundred years essentially. Which is unfortunate, but also suggests, unless racism has stayed exactly the same for the last hundred years, which clearly it hasn’t, something else is in play. When there’s a differential you have to look for the possible confounds. Segregation obviously, housing segregation is evil and terrible, we all agree on this. The problem is that to blame current levels of black violence on housing segregation, which went out of style 30 years before you were born, is a little bit of a stretch, particularly when people who are committing the violence now are all young black men who are teenagers, they’re younger than you, probably. So the idea that housing segregation is to blame for the disproportionate violence, I don’t buy it 50 years after the Civil Rights Act. It just doesn’t wash for me.

Questioner: So then what would you say is the cause?

Shapiro: The answer is, here is a politically incorrect curve, the answer is the culture of single-motherhood breeds violence. Without the fathers in the home it creates violence.

Shouted from audience: Who says?

Shouted from audience: Where’s the evidence?

Shapiro: Where’s the evidence? The evidence is that violence escalates in every community that has an escalated level of single-motherhood.

Shouted from audience: Cite your source!

Shapiro: Look at the Department of Justice statistics, it’s all there.

Shouted from audience: Yeah, but cite it. Which one?

Shapiro: Go to the Department of Justice website, and you will see this is true. I mean, I can’t go do it for you. Prisons are filled with people of every race who grew up in single parent households. The bottom line, and again, the reason you can’t attribute this purely to racism, and listen, again, everyone believes, or should believe, that racism is evil, and that Jim Crow was evil, and that slavery was evil. I mean, all of this should go without saying.

The question was, why it was in 1960 when Jim Crow was still in effect Black single motherhood was 20 percent in the United States, and today the Black single motherhood rate is in excess of 70 percent in the United States? Is that due to an increase in racism? To what is that due? Is that due to increased housing segregation? And we know, forget crime, we know with regard to poverty, as I say, the single best generator of poverty in the United States is single-parent families. So, let me ask you the question, and it’s an honest question, it’s not a “gotcha.” The honest question is: If you believe that housing segregation is responsible for modern black ills, why are certain modern black ills tripling or quadrupling in size since the end of housing segregation?

Shouted from audience: There’s no end!

From audience: When did it end? It’s still going on.

Shapiro: I’m sorry?

From audience: It’s still going on.

Shapiro: Housing segregation is still going on in the same way it was for your grandparents?

Shouted from audience: Yes!

Questioner: Blacks occupy largely the same communities that they were racially forced in to in the 40’s and 50’s.

Shapiro: Ok, and the argument is they are free to leave now because there are no state and federal laws against them leaving. Ok, if you want to pretend the law did not change, if you’re going to pretend nothing has changed, then we can’t really have a conversation. The fact is the law is different now than it was then. Otherwise the Civil Rights movement meant nothing.

From audience: Do you not believe in proliferation?

Questioner: But now there’s de facto, not de jure segregation.

Shapiro: Ok, now, that’s true, but de facto segregation and de jure segregation are two different things. If you’re going to talk about institutional racism, what is the institution that is racist now?

Questioner: It’s the institution that was established that perpetuates today, that creates—

Shapiro: What is the institution now, though?

Indistinct shouts from audience

Shapiro: But again you’re not naming an institution, you’re saying that happened fifty years ago and it still has impact. I agree. Things can happen fifty years ago that still have impact. That is not evidence of continuing white privilege and institutional racism. That’s proof that bad things that happen in the past have an impact on the present. Of course I agree with that.

Questioner: But we don’t see legislation to desegregate neighborhoods.

Shapiro: Because you can’t force people to desegregate.

Audience clapping, some shouting and laughter

Shapiro: I fully agree with this and I think it’s important to recognize that the power of government was used to segregate neighborhoods. Ok, it’s the power of government—

Questioner: Can’t it be used to desegregate?

Shapiro: No, the power of government is the Ring, ok? It can only be cast into Mount Doom. The government is the problem; the government forcing people to do things is the problem.

Questioner: That’s how we got here.

Shapiro: No, the government … that is how we got here in the first place, and the way we are going to solve this is by not having the government intervene, and instead getting back to the basic principles of capitalism. It turns out that capitalism doesn’t care what color you are; it just wants your money.

As the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency has reported, “the most reliable indicator of violent crime in a community is the proportion of fatherless families.”

 

[David.]

Maine governor Paul le Page, the outspoken conservative who grew up the eldest of 18 children in an abusive environment, triggering him to run away at age 11 and spend two years on the streets before going on to run a successful business, has successfully reformed welfare in his state.

Le Page has been determined to reform welfare for years, making it a chief goal he articulated when he successfully ran for governor in 2010 and his reelection in 2014. In the fall of 2014, he delivered, changing the state’s welfare rules; in order to receive food-stamp benefits, able-bodied adults without children would have to hold a part-time job, join a job-training program or volunteer.

Bingo: in the last year, a shocking plunge occurred in the number of healthy adults without dependents receiving food stamps, from 13,589 to 1,206.

Mary Mayhew, the commissioner of Maine's Department of Health and Human Services, stated that the drop could be attributed to beneficiaries obtaining jobs or voluntarily refusing to meet the new requirements for food stamps,.

President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill eased the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; which now boasts 45 million beneficiaries.

The next step in the Maine government’s attempts to reform welfare will include an asset test to determine if recipients truly deserve the benefits, according to Mayhew, thus checking to see if recipients owned luxury items that could be sold instead of relying on welfare. Other prospective changes could include barring the use of food stamps for buying candy or sugary soft drinks, and adding photo IDs on food stamp card to prevent the cards from being utilized as currency in drug trafficking.

Matthew Gagnon, head of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank, said, "Now that they're going to those simple reforms that were done 20 years ago, it's really important to note how effective they've been, and how little we had to innovate in order to have an effect on the welfare culture here.”

Le Page’s outspokenness preceded Donald Trump’s by years; in 2010, running for governor, he asserted, “We came from behind because we have a message. We have a message that says: One, we've had enough of the federal government. We've had enough. Two, we've had enough of the state government. And No. 3, government should be working for the people, not the people working for the government. And as your governor, you're gonna be seeing a lot of me on the front page saying ‘Gov. LePage tells Obama to go to hell.’”

The feisty Le Page has been fiercely fighting Democrats in the state legislators, who have rejected bills reforming welfare, according to Maine.gov, including:

LD 1375: would have required an up-front work search for able-bodied Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) applicants; would eliminate loopholes in the work requirement; ban out-of-state use of Maine TANF benefits; and prohibit the expenditure of cash welfare on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, bail, and tattoos;

LD 1407: would have given DHHS the authority to drug-test TANF applicants;

LD 1035: would have imposed a 9-month cap on General Assistance welfare

LD 1036: would have required the use of other benefits before GA

LD 1037: would have established a 180-day residency requirement for welfare benefits

LD 368: would have imposed a 5-year limit on GA to align with TANF.


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[David.]

 

[Nathan S]

I'll grant you this, Le Page is a great example of a horrible individual who came out of a broken household

(EDIT: Daily Wire and The Blaze are also far-right sources, in case you didn't know. I don't see why we'd use obviously biased resources like these when less biased options exist)

 

[David.]

The burgeoning welfare state has promoted single parenthood in two ways. First, means-tested welfare programs such as those described above financially enable single parenthood. It is difficult for single mothers with a high school degree or less to support children without the aid of another parent. Means-tested welfare programs substantially reduce this difficulty by providing extensive support to single parents. Welfare thereby reduces the financial need for marriage. Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, less-educated mothers have increasingly become married to the welfare state and to the U.S. taxpayer rather than to the fathers of their children.

As means-tested benefits expanded, welfare began to serve as a substitute for a husband in the home, and low-income marriage began to disappear. As husbands left the home, the need for more welfare to support single mothers increased. The War on Poverty created a destructive feedback loop: Welfare promoted the decline of marriage, which generated a need for more welfare.

Penalizing Marriage
A second major problem is that the means-tested welfare system actively penalizes low-income parents who do marry. All means-tested welfare programs are designed so that a family’s benefits are reduced as earnings rise. In practice, this means that, if a low-income single mother marries an employed father, her welfare benefits will generally be substantially reduced. The mother can maximize welfare by remaining unmarried and keeping the father’s income “off the books.”

For example, a single mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year would generally receive around $5,200 per year of food stamp benefits. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving benefits from Section 8 or public housing would receive a subsidy worth on average around $11,000 per year if she was not employed, but if she marries a man earning $20,000 per year, these benefits would be cut nearly in half. Both food stamps and housing programs provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separate and unmarried.

Overall, the federal government operates over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income individuals. Each program contains marriage penalties similar to those described above. Low-income families generally receive benefits from several programs at the same time. The marriage penalties from multiple programs when added together can provide substantial financial disincentives to marriage. For example, if a single mother who earns $20,000 per year marries a man who earns the same amount, the couple will typically lose about $12,000 a year in welfare benefits. In effect, the welfare system makes it economically irrational for most low-income couples to marry.

The anti-marriage aspect of the welfare state can be illustrated by comparing means-tested welfare with the federal income tax code. For example, under a progressive income tax system with only a single schedule of tax rates indiscriminately covering both single persons and married couples, nearly all individuals would experience an increase in taxes owed when they married and lower taxes if they remain separate or divorce. The current federal income tax system mitigates this anti-marriage effect by having separate tax schedules for singles and married couples.

By contrast, the means-tested welfare system, in most cases, does not have a separate schedule for married couples. When a low-income mother and father marry, they will generally experience a sharp drop in benefits, and their joint income will fall. The anti-marriage penalty is often most severe among married couples where both parents are employed.

http://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/how-welfare-undermines-marriage-and-what-do-about-it

 

[Nathan S]

This image actually suggests that it's better for a divorced single mother to stay single rather than remarry...

EDIT: bigger picture though, none of this proves that these families would be better off if they had stayed together.

Most likely, children that come out of good, stable, happy relationships probably do well, while children that come out of ugly abusive relationships probably do poorly, regardless of whether the parents in the ugly abusive relationship stay together or not.

 

[David.]

EDIT: bigger picture though, none of this proves that these families would be better off if they had stayed together.

Most likely, children that come out of good, stable, happy relationships probably do well, while children that come out of ugly abusive relationships probably do poorly, regardless of whether the parents in the ugly abusive relationship stay together or not.

It's not a claim that they should stay married. It's a claim to not have a fatherless Household. You are looking at one situation and incorrectly applying it to the claim. This is supporting the claim to not have a fatherless household, not to stay married when your relationship sucks.

There is a mountain of statistics that supports the claim that a fatherless household has awful consequences. Open and shut. Welfare creates fatherless Homes.

If you have evidence that supports the claim that fatherless homes produce better Results than two parent homes in which parents are experiencing bad relationships, please provide it. Until then, we reject that hypothesis. And big picture, that one scenario doesn't sufficiently address the claim that fatherless homes produce worse results than two parent homes. We aren't suggesting people who are married be forced to stay with each other, we're suggesting not to have children out of wedlock, and to get married. Both of which welfare discourages.

Fatherless homes:

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (US Dept. Of Health/Census) – 5 times the average.

• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.

• 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average. (Center for Disease Control)

• 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average. (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26)

• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average. (National Principals Association Report)

Father Factor in Education – Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are 40% less likely to repeat a grade in school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are 70% less likely to drop out of school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are more likely to get A’s in school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are more likely to enjoy school and engage in extracurricular activities.

• 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes – 10 times the average.

Father Factor in Drug and Alcohol Abuse –

• 70% of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average. (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Sept. 1988)

• 85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average. (Fulton Co. Georgia, Texas Dept. of Correction)

Father Factor in Incarceration – Even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds. A 2002 Department of Justice survey of 7,000 inmates revealed that 39% of jail inmates lived in mother-only households. Approximately forty-six percent of jail inmates in 2002 had a previously incarcerated family member. One-fifth experienced a father in prison or jail.

Father Factor in Crime – A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency. Adolescents, particularly boys, in single-parent families were at higher risk of status, property and person delinquencies. Moreover, students attending schools with a high proportion of children of single parents are also at risk. A study of 13,986 women in prison showed that more than half grew up without their father. Forty-two percent grew up in a single-mother household and sixteen percent lived with neither parent

Father Factor in Child Abuse – Compared to living with both parents, living in a single-parent home doubles the risk that a child will suffer physical, emotional, or educational neglect. The overall rate of child abuse and neglect in single-parent households is 27.3 children per 1,000, whereas the rate of overall maltreatment in two-parent households is 15.5 per 1,000.

Daughters of single parents without a Father involved are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 711% more likely to have children as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a pre-marital birth and 92% more likely to get divorced themselves.

Adolescent girls raised in a 2 parent home with involved Fathers are significantly less likely to be sexually active than girls raised without involved Fathers.

• 43% of US children live without their father [US Department of Census]

• 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. [US D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census]

• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. [Criminal Justice & Behaviour, Vol 14, pp. 403-26, 1978]

• 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father. [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release, Friday, March 26, 1999]

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. [US D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census]

• 85% of children who exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. [Center for Disease Control]

• 90% of adolescent repeat arsonists live with only their mother. [Wray Herbert, “Dousing the Kindlers,” Psychology Today, January, 1985, p. 28]

• 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. [National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools]

• 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes. [Rainbows f for all God’s Children]

• 70% of juveniles in state operated institutions have no father. [US Department of Justice, Special Report, Sept. 1988]

• 85% of youths in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. [Fulton County Georgia jail populations, Texas Department of Corrections, 1992]

• Fatherless boys and girls are: twice as likely to drop out of high school; twice as likely to end up in jail; four times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems. [US D.H.H.S. news release, March 26, 1999]

 

[Sebastian]

Think Tanks are little more than political agendas dressed up as science. Having worked at one I can tell you funding heavily influences outcomes.

You guys can trade Think Tank studies to little avail.

Peer reviewed shit in respected Journals are about as close as one can get to "good" science in the soft sciences. And even then...

 

[The Oi]

Think Tanks are little more than political agendas dressed up as science. Having worked at one I can tell you funding heavily influences outcomes.

You guys can trade Think Tank studies to little avail.

Peer reviewed shit in respected Journals are about as close as one can get to "good" science in the soft sciences. And even then...

As a future psychiatrist, do you feel that there's anything to the idea that on a macro level a lack of a father would leave boys more susceptible to crime, emotional problems, etc than living in a two parent household?