patrick.net

lostand confused says

If you want to work and be an equal-why fight for things like alimony-which basically says that women are helpless critters always to be supported by a man???

Do you want examples of men getting alimony? There are lots of them -- ask Roseanne Barr.

This argument veers toward those that were put forth in different times and I would ask that you consider history in your argument. People want freedom, they ask for it, then they fight for it. People on the wrong side of history try to demonize those fighting for freedom, explaining that, hey -- wouldn't they be happier if we all just went back to simpler times when our side made all the rules?

It's not going to happen. Women are moving forward and they're not going to give up the fight.

97% of alimony is paid by men to women. Who is asking women to give up anything. We are just saying good for you-now learn to live by yourself and stop talking about it and do something.

lostand confused says

97% of alimony is paid by men to women. Who is asking women to give up anything. We are just saying good for you-now learn to live by yourself and stop talking about it and do something.

Well, it used to be 100 percent. Just think, you guys will catch up someday. And I do a lot of things. If you really want a response, you need to be more specific.

Strange off tangent response as usual.

Women are better, NO! men are better DOh!

This thread undermining women speaks only about the males who stand by it. Let's talk shrinkage? Same argument?

Thank you Helen Gurley.

Nah , the laws that led to these mess were feminist inspired. Alimony, community property, set amounts of child support-no matter what.

Way back then, a woman popped 13 kids, took care of all of them, the house, tended the livestock and did a whole bunch of other chores. Now it is 1 or two kids, everything is automated-from vacuum cleaners, heating/cooling systems, hot water, electric/gas stoves, all food available in one or two trips a week to Costco etc.

Someone who is a housewife to a nobody may get very little and yet when she performs the same labors with Tiger Woods-much less, because not only will she get nannies, cooks, drivers, massive shopping budgets, meeting with stars/celebrities etc.-she gets 100 million dollars. The same goes for the few men married to wealthy women-KFed and Brittany Spears.

The main problem is that our government has grown out of control. It now has the power to decide how long you can spend with your kids, how much money you should fork over. In some states, it does not even matter if "your" kid is not yours and you prove it by DNA-you still have to pay child support for nearly two decades and some states make you pay for college education too.

These are all feminist inspired laws-which I find to be the biggest hoax of all. If you are an equal-than you abolish all this, not force men to support you. Besides, if you look at history-women always worked-always. The only women who could afford not to work, were upper crust women-like the Romneys and the Bushes and others of their kind. The rest always worked in somehting or the other. Until recently, most work was physical and hard and men naturally excelled at those.

Witht he advent of industrialization , office jobs etc-physical strength became irrelevant and so women and men are equally effective and they have come in to the work force in large numbers. I have no problem with that-I have seen some wonderful women and even had mentors who happened to be woman. What I have a problem is the stupid laws that subject every American to this draconian meausre. For all the cries of the land of the free-we are not free. How can you be free-when somebody else gets to decide how much time you get to spend with your kid-not just yours, but every kid in America. How can you be free when the government can come in and say, you have to pay 55k a month in child support for the next 18 years-or you will be thrown in jail and spend time with rapists and murderers? How can you be free, when you work hard and toil and have to fork over millions in alimony-when another person who went through divorce almost pays nothing-because he/she was a bum?

Our govt penalizes hard work and success. Any state where they try alimony reform-forget child support reform-women's groups are the ones to fight it tooth and nail-that clearly shows their agenda-they want it both ways. They want to work and be equal and yet if they choose not to-they want to be treated like the helpless critters who can't make a choice and so should be supported for life. In fact several women are getting disgusted, because in some states, their income as second wives is included and they have to pay alimony to the first wife. Buty women't organization support this and that is why I think feminism is very hypocritical-equality means being independant and standing on your own feet-rights and responsibilities-not just the rights, but give the responsibilities over to men.

American fertility is now lower than that of France

CONSERVATIVE Americans like to contrast the vigour and virility of their own country with the decadence and decline of Europe. Demography is exhibit A in their argument. Mitt Romney, for example, talked about Europe’s “demographic disaster” as he ended his presidential bid in 2008, calling it “the inevitable product of weakened faith in the creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality”.

Americans especially like to focus on the total fertility rate, or TFR, the average number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime. For years, America was unusual among rich countries in having a relatively high TFR of around 2.1, the so-called “replacement rate”, at which a population stabilises over the long term. European countries were typically below that rate, sometimes far below it.

So it comes as something of a shock to discover that in 2011 America’s fertility rate was below replacement level and below that of some large European countries. The American rate is now 1.9 and falling. France’s is 2.0 and stable. The rate in England is 2.0 and rising slightly.

http://www.economist.com/node/21560266

I'm also a fan of enforced visitation. If a woman refuses visitation repeatedly, she gives up child support after so many violations, and/or children switch primary custodian parents. Studies show that child support payments and refusal/difficulty in visitation are closely related. Also, child support should be on a special card that can only be used for children. Recipients should be forced to document the charges and prove that it was not spent on themselves, but on the children.

Child Support is not "Ex-Spouse Income for general purposes", it should be for the children and only the children.

Also what msilenus said about divorce: It's generational. Y and X are in much better shape. Also, the divorce stats can be misleading because there are serial "Marriers", a minority of people who get married and divorced 4+ times in their lives that mess up the stats.

Honest Abe says

The highest fertility rates are in Africa, where IQs languish in the 60s and 70s. In Europe and Asia IQs reach into. Triple digits. Mass immigration from high fertility populations pose a demographic threat that. politically correct news outlets won't permit to be
publicly articulated. In addition to lower IQs, these populations tend to exhibit higher rates of violent crime.

This is bullshit. Africa is far less densely populated than Europe and many of the poorer Asian countries. Laos has less people than Norway. Immigrants tend to be smarter and more entrepreneurial than average.

Kenya and France are have roughly the same land area. France has more than twice the population of Kenya and is about twice as dense. France is 2/3 urban; Kenya is only 1/3 urban. And Kenya is one of the better sub-saharan countries.

IQ changes radically between educated and non-educated populations. Learning geometry, sentence structure, etc. changes how the mind works in the long term, and IQ tests cannot compensate for the difference.