Is the United States against marriage & family?

[sweetjasmine]

This is, imho, the problem. Americans demand a lifestyle above their means. "Enough" is never enough in the US. A family of four can live just fine on $40k a year, but they WANT to live on $80k, so both parents work and strangers raise the kids in daycare. So Mommy can have a big SUV and Daddy can have a boat and so they can afford to pay someone to do the things they should be doing themselves. Americans work themselves to death so they can be lazy, lol.

 

This is a common misconception, though. When you crunch the numbers and compare 2007 to the 70s, you see that people aren't really spending that much more on food, clothes, and cars. The things that people are spending a lot more money on are: health insurance, taxes, mortgage, 2 cars (because 2 adults have to get to work). I highly recommend listening to this lecture where it's all broken down:

 

Where I live, it'd be nearly impossible for a family of 4 to live comfortably on $40k. Before I got a job, my SO and I were living on $40k, and we were living paycheck to paycheck, with me uninsured, and I still had to chip in from my savings to help cover expenses. Every major expense, including housing, is way above the national average in this entire state.

 

Just to give you an idea of what housing costs are like, when my SO and I were searching for an apartment, we found a 2 bedroom for $1075/month. That was the special discounted price. It was literally on the side of a major highway and had a cemetery on the other side. It was far from the town center and inaccessible unless you have a car. The complex itself was run-down, with numbers missing on doors, paint chipped, a torn up lawn. The inside of the place wasn't that much better, either. It was basically a sh-thole, and it still would've cost $1075/month.

 

The apartment we're in now is a small 2 bedroom, but if we had 2 kids, they wouldn't be able to fit in the other bedroom. There's barely enough space for a bed and no storage space. As for the cost, my SO started off making around $40k. After taxes each month one paycheck would go to rent, and the rest would quickly be eaten up by utilities, student loans, a car loan, gas, and groceries. He doesn't drive a fancy SUV. He drives an old used car. We weren't spending money on electronics and fun things. No luxury items, unless you count having dinner at the diner for $30 once a month a luxury item. We didn't have a couch or anything beyond the basic furniture. We had an old TV that was slowly dying that I had gotten from my parents. We had to plan expenses for the house well ahead of time because we couldn't buy everything we needed when we needed it.

 

So please explain to me how adding two children into the mix, with their own health insurance expenses (based on what my parents were paying a few years ago, that's at least another $1000/month), would somehow result in a comfortable lifestyle. Explain how we were living beyond our means, since we wouldn't have been able to take care of two children with just his $40k income. I don't even have a car. And before you say it, we were looking for 1 bedroom places, too, and they were on average $100 cheaper, and some were more expensive than the place we're in now. Not much of a difference.

 

Health insurance can be the one factor that makes 40k livable or unlivable with kids. When we had our first years ago, our "employee contribution" for medical insurance jumped way, way up. It isn't uncommon for a company to expect a ft employee to contribute $500-1000/month toward health insurance for a family. 40k doesn't go nearly as far when the family is spending upwards of 10k a year on health insurance and expenses.

 

Yup. In a lot of places, $40k/year is peanuts.

[portableversion]

It's kind of hard to justify major, additional government benefits at a time when U.S. unemployment is close to 10% and we are already running yearly deficits in the trillions of $$$.

 

The largesse you are suggesting is very nice in theory--who wouldn't want a nice, long maternity/paternity leave, and even better, to get paid an income while on leave--but, the bottom line is these things have to be paid for.

 

It's all too possible to get very carried away with the notion that government benefits are infinite and don't have a net cost. Then you look at what's happening in Spain, Portugal, and some other places, and you realize that reality is different. The government money tree doesn't grow to the sky. Maybe you should check out what Angela Merkel has been saying for the past year or so?

 

I think generous maternity/paternity leave is a "good thing" but I also understand that it's essentially a transfer of wealth from people without children, or who have already had them, to people who are having them.

 

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know--you tell me--why should someone else pay for me to make it easier for me to have kids? There's absolutely no intrinsic reason that they should.

 

Most likely when you had this particular discussion with your relatives, it was people who were desirous of the availability of maternity/paternity leave and complaining about not having it. So that would be their perspective.

 

If you were talking with a senior citizen with a fixed income, you might get a different perspective.

 

More public benefits means more taxes.

 

yeah in the anti-human crimianal syndicate known as the usa, it seems the most valued forms of socialism are complicated weapons systems and more wars. Oh and big bailouts to crooked bankers who destroy peoples lives. This country is owned and operated by financial terrorists. This country is more intune with killing and destroying other nations rather than adqaute day care, maternity leave and what not. Yeah and merkel and the irish and the greeks are victims of crooked bankers making fraudulent loans. They refuse to take losses on the bad bets and use political connections to get the govt's to take it out on the people in the form of austerity measures. We pay for muder and death and bailing out crooks who need to be in jail. help families no way hose

[portableversion]

While I rarely frequent these forums (because I am not married), a recent conversation I had with family from out of town got me thinking about the state of affairs in this country. While I would never assume a marriage to be an easy proposition, it seems as if western Europe and the lifestyle there is much more understanding of personal needs. England gives nine months of maternity leave, France gives three years of maternity leave, Germany allows extended paternity leave as well. These countries also encourage a 35-40 hour work week, which is quickly going by the wayside in the Unites States. While individuals in these countries might not amass the personal wealth many in the United States see, it seems as if the United States encourages career goals and work at the expense of healthy personal relationships. I feel as if a lot of anger, cheating, and simple unhappiness may be due to the fact that these heightened career expectations are put on Americans, especially in this troubled economy. I was wondering what other LSers thought about this.

 

this reminds me of when i worked with a girl who moved here from moscow. She was shocked we had to pay for health insurance with our pathetic $7/hr jobs, and we alll had degrees. She informed me(cause management was trying to triangulate me and my kids) that they had 3 yrs of maternity leave 1.5 yrs paid, dads got 6 months paid, and this was because the russians thought it cruel and inhumane to have strangers raise kids in the 1st three yrs of life. She then informed us she had no student loans, and they had free access to a clinic. Her family was more well off so they had purchased private insurance( i never thought the motherland had private enterprise such as this) . this is the real sick part , their insurance brought the doctor to your house!!!! he'd show up in a van and could do a lot, stitches, x-rays, and the doctor had all the meds in the van and would leave a prescription with you!!! She could not beleive that since we were paying for insurance, we did not have access to a home visiting doctor. We told her "girl our grand parents have memories of the home doctor and we hear of it today from watching little house on the prairie. Doc Baker did house visits. I forgot to mention that if you did not have good grades, or hated poor people you had access to private universities in russia. She said thats why they had private insurance cause they didn't want to have to wait with all the peasants from the country!But on a few occaisons she used the free hospital and she said it was just fine. She was contemplating moving back to russia, but said the end of communism was making it very rough over there and many jobs were lost. We said so now you can be oppresed here eh! hahahaha

i forgot what sick leave she had access to but it was much better than what we had here in the states

[tnttim]

We have freedom here and with that freedom comes choices, and with those choices we have self accountability. You make the choice and you live with the consequences. Some of you make me sick talking about the greatest country on Earth right now. Do some reading, or ask someone that has free healthcare. The doctors suck, you have to be on a waiting list for life saving procedures, and it's severly goverment regulated. Plus it's not free when your tax dollar pays for it.

 

If your living beyond your means, quit buying sh*t. You don't like 2 spouses working, then quit. You can't afford your house, move. Job doesn't pay well, educate yourself and get a better one.

 

The other thing is when people say politicians put us in debt. Wow really, aren't you yourself swimming in debt right now. Aren't you the one that over spent on your house and car. Aren't you the one that continues to charge things on you credit card.

 

For all those that are b*tching about America, go look in the mirror,

 

WE THE PEOPLE...................