States that enacted more generous laws [from 1910-1920] did not experience greater increases in single motherhood and female household headship than states that enacted less generous laws.

Yale study, p. 15

--
Between 1940 and 1970, the prevalence of single motherhood among black women increased from 10 to 26 percent. But states with the highest welfare benefits remained the states with the lowest rates of black single motherhood.

p. 21

--
The rise in single motherhood that took place in the 1960s was driven primarily by other factors such as the worsening of the male labor market and hence the decline in the return to marriage

p. 24



Tooth, have you actually read this study?

I'm glad Wil brings up the issue of the father-figure. I think it's common for African Americans to be distrustful and anti-authoritarian due to being abandoned by their fathers. It's understandable.

In a cruel world, it's hard to accept that people with higher socioeconomic status than you actually have love for you and want to see you succeed. They just want to see you pull yourself up, the way many had to do themselves.

If you look at African American art and culture, you really see so much energy and potential. If that energy was was directed in the right ways, there is no doubt they could advance further.

You're an exceptional individual. I do fine with doing nothing (traveling permanently/living on holiday) as well. But I'm naturally hard working and intellectually curious. It's just who I am. And the habit came from striving to succeed, with the understanding that I'd need to earn money. How many people, for example, would struggle through 18 years of schooling if there was no necessity? How structured would it remain? How much effort would be put in?

I worked my ass off at understanding math because I was dirt poor and I knew it was my ticket to developing a salelable brain and getting good money. My work ethic arose out of that, and its kept me functional and grounded my whole life.

Nothing has been lost in that process though. Whether you do 70 hours of study or 35, you're still going to school, for example. It structure, its benefits, its striving, the goad and promise of money (and risk of failure), the will-to-power of psychology are still all in place whether it's 70 or 35. And those are what matter.

There are various views of work, but for many people I think it's an essential part of meaning. This study says it well:

Work as a basic human need and wealth promoting factor
Huge confounding variables, but I think there's something going on here besides just the loss of money or social standing. Wil's experience while unemployed is far from unique.

Yes, have you? The abstract puts it into perspective. Lots of data and cohorts and time periods, from which they're picking out interesting anomalies in the general trend as they discuss it. This is the nature of correlated rather than 1:1 data. The data tables at the end make it clear, as does the abstract. You have to read this with a broad view rather than cherry picking the anomalies they mention, which are interesting precisely because they're anomalies in a general trend.

I fully recognize I'm a flawed human being. I need structure and discipline in my life or I'll go off the rails. I've always had a purpose, though, and that helped me.

I play the lottery. I don't know why. I often say after I check my numbers "thank God I didn't win" because for people like me winning the lottery would be a death sentence, and I'm fully aware of that.

I'm def not

School would have to be rethought for sure, but I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing.


Your point of 70 hrs vs 35 being the same is a good one, but
(1) why do you assume people won't work on a UBI
and (2) that people wouldn't do non-paid stuff that teaches those values

Most of the suggestions for a UBI I've seen only cover the basics (if that), if people want their gadgets or their travels or their kid's fancy toys, they'll still have to work. Which they will do, since we already have this giant natural experiment going on: people can settle for the lifestyle of their grandparents and work what? 15 hours a week?, but they don't. they work more hours than that because they want to buy the nice stuff & experience the 21th century offers them. We're basicly all working mainly to buy luxury goods (be it travelling or a nice house or top-level education for your kids), black and white, poor and rich. Why wouldn't this be the case in a UBI-world? It's not like we "need" most of the crap we buy today. There's a giant data point there that you guys seem to be ignoring.

I think, in a society with UBI, there will be a lot more focus on learning how to deal with that (need for structure & meaning). Now we're basicly training kids to be good employees for 12 years and then wonder why wil can't give his life meaning without work. Well duh. Imagine if he'd spent 12 years learning how to give his life meaning and structure without work!

Clearly adult him would have the motivation, since not doing anything makes him miserable.

I do worry (from personal experience) of living on a UBI in a world where the best minds in the world try to capture your attention by engineering addictive experiences (eg facebook, netflix.. and just wait until VR). Now there's an interesting question ;-)

Yeah. I was going to post that. Education would become socialization and developing a higher mind. And learning how to have fun in life and maximize happiness.

Of course, it'll all be moot since we'll be living (and learning) as gods and role playing characters in sims. Which is also why I'm not that worried about UBI.

Still. Without the tether of needing to work in order to survive, people tend to drift from reality. Look at our current world. Two generations out of the worst war in history, in which humans became hardened realists, one generation out of the memory of cold war, and we already have cucks saying that we can't mark with red pen lest we hurt feelings, and that we have to bend reality such that the mentally ill (the gender dysmorphic) become not mentally ill. Young men can't even deal with pussy hair. People cry and get committed to psych wards and go into full hysterical meltdown when a slightly rude old man wins an election.

Two generations from the realism of war and we're turning into Eloi already. Work plugs you into reality in a very basic way. I can see a lot of bad side effects from that disappearing.

Those red marks are triggering though.

This is an interesting thing to say given the historical references in your post. 50 years ago (and much more recently), not mentally ill people (gays) were viewed as mentally ill (and were occasionally being driven to suicide). 50 years ago, about 20% of people approved of an interracial marriage. 50 years ago, the roles available to females in society were stifling.

I'm also worried about some of the SJW excesses and what looks like an increase in crybabyness. But let's not forget that society 50 years ago was extremely oppressive. Since then there's been a giant leap forward. You may think the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and I might agree with that at least partially, but big picture here please. The over-attention to people's feelings (trigger warnings, red pen markers bull****) is trivial compared to the world of 50 years ago it is a (late and overblown) reaction too

(I'm just going to ignore the being gender dysmorphic = mentally ill thing)

Related, TS and Wil, you're both going to love reading Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita

Forgot something here. If you look at the charts of single motherhood and the charts of incarceration rates over time, do you notice something? Single motherhood started rising dramatically around 1965 when the welfare programs started kicking in. Yet, the incarceration rate stayed stable until around 1980. Those boys started becoming teenagers, and crime is most frequent between 15-25 years old. In 1980, 15 years after the single motherhood started rising, the incarceration rate started rising dramatically, stabilizing in 2005, just as the single motherhood rate stabilized in 1990, again, 15 years after the fact.

Single motherhood rose for 25 years and stabilized. Exactly as incarceration rates did, except 15 years afterwards.

Amazing coincidence, eh?

Wil, is that because children/teenagers were being arrested or adult fathers?

* (not sure if you edited or I misread, but I see what you are saying now)


You are saying that welfare causes single motherhood and single motherhood causes incarceration. Liberals caused welfare. Therefor liberals caused incarceration.


But welfare did not cause single-motherhood. Both according to that Yale paper and according to the logic I posted earlier.


Meanwhile, what made the D's and R's flip? Who was Barry Goldwater?

good lord...

The abstract asks if there is a correlation between assistance and single-motherhood.

The conclusion states that there is not.


I didn't "cherry pick anomalies". I cited two relevant statements and the conclusion reflecting them.

Feel free to offer corrective quotations.



It looks like divorce rates go up with welfare benefits - but again, that makes perfect sense when women can't get jobs and would otherwise be dependent on men for income.

Still not sure why you think people won't work if they don't need to get paid. Especially considering how essential it is to have something to do, per this link.

Volunteerism is a thing, eg. Non-profit corporations are a thing. I posted an example of people putting together a game.

Why does something like OpenOffice exist? How did Wikipedia come into being?

The children were being born in 1965 to single mothers en masse. 15 years later those children started showing up in the criminal Justice system. I'm looking at an article saying in 1994 federal estimates were that 70% of all juvenile offenders were from single parent households.

Check out the image I superimposed. I'm proud I did this on my phone, lol. I resized the background imagine and made it transparent to make them overlap. Notice I moved the starting point of the charts so that 1980 lines up with 1965 when the single motherhood rate started rising.

It's almost identical. This is not a coincidence.

Give everyone free and easy birth control and access to abortions IMO

Would you consider a so-called culture of responsibility qualifies as a resource?

the prison graph escalates at a faster rate than the single-parentage graph

10 years at the beginning, 20 at the end



but again, the graph is pointless now that the intended benefits correlation is debunked

nobody is arguing that single-parentage is good or even not bad

Uh oh, I can see one little Honorary Aryan who's gonna be in big trouble!

Kinda contradicts TS' point about certain people abandoning their children.

It's good too see people finally listening to me

I'm going to claim first on pointing out that the automation era quite likely means the end of the capitalist one (and that its imminent)

usher in the dictatorship of the robotariat

I can already feel the nation state withering away

He never mentions 'black'.

And not only do you open with it, you double down at the end. The only concept of a black person 'making it' in your mind is becoming an entertainer or athlete.

5ive,
You're trying too hard on that one.
Your claims of the imminent death of capitalism are silly. Is the government going to confiscate private property? To take over trade and production? No. Not a damn thing is going to change. At worst UBI will mean citizens and welfare companies owning shares in the big producers and collecting the dividends.

That's exactly what Norway does with its oil wealth, which has enabled it build a near $1 trillion wealth fund, owning private companies, enough to provide for its citizens. Nothing else is going to change. Ownership of production and land doesn't suddenly stop because we get better at doing it. There will always be harder things to make, more human wants, competition for scarce resources, allocation toward one want or another. Space travel, life extension, virtual reality, they'll compete like car travel, pharmaceuticals, and computer games do now.

Put it back in your pants chez. Your wet dream about your communist utopia finally happening is just that.

Tooth,

How many black Americans are you friends with?

samsonh,
The fact that I'm the least racist person in this thread means the answer is zero. I had the benefit of growing up without your silly racial stereotypes and prejudices and sacred cows. Merely a bemused observer.

Anyway, it has nothing to do with race. That's just how the data is collated and stored by your racist government and colleges. It seems to be of interest to them?.

Given that it exists, it's a useful and rather stark example of the intersection of policy, subcultures, and outcomes.