Everything is political, as Saul Alinsky correctly states.
The political milieu has far reaching effects....even down to family size.
Schopenhauer's famous tale of the importance of human relationships has a new dimension due to the welfare state.....
1. "On a cold winter's day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one another's quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth, at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain.
In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find and that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one another's quills". --Arthur Schopenhauer
It seems that quills have gotten longer....infinitely so.
2."Human societies, at all times and places, have organised themselves around the will to live with others, not alone. But not any more. During the past half-century, our species has embarked on a remarkable social experiment. For the first time in human history, great numbers of people at all ages, in all places, of every political persuasion have begun settling down as singletons. Until the second half of the last century, most of us married young and parted only at death. If death came early, we remarried quickly; if late, we moved in with family, or they with us. Now we marry later. We divorce, and stay single for years or decades. We survive our spouses, and do everything we can to avoid moving in with others including our children. We cycle in and out of different living arrangements: alone, together, together, alone.
a. ... the statistics are startling. According to the market research firm Euromonitor International, the number of people living alone globally is skyrocketing, rising from about 153 million in 1996 to 277 million in 2011 an increase of around 80% in 15 years. In the UK, 34% of households have one person living in them and in the US it's 27%.
b. ... solo dwellers in the US are primarily women: about 18 million, compared with 14 million men. The majority, more than 16 million, are middle-aged adults between the ages of 35 and 64. The elderly account for about 11 million of the total. Young adults between 18 and 34 number more than 5 million, compared with 500,000 in 1950, making them the fastest-growing segment of the solo-dwelling population.
3. Sweden has more solo dwellers than anywhere else in the world, with 47% of households having one resident; followed by Norway at 40%.
In Scandinavian countries their welfare states protect most citizens from the more difficult aspects of living alone.
4. So what is driving it? The wealth generated by economic development and the social security provided by modern welfare states have enabled the spike."
I want to be alone: the rise and rise of solo living | Life and style | The Guardian
5. Mary Eberstadt, scholar at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, has posited that this trend, dissolution of family, is the main reason for the decline of religion. In her view, the image and characterization of the father at the head of the family was a reflection of Judeo-Christianity. And, the growth of the solitaire lifestyle, and specifically, single-mother family, varies, inversely, with religious faith. As she says, familial illiteracy equals religious illiteracy.
6.There is proof that the welfare state, perhaps in substituting for the role of father and provider, causes family dissolution. The U.S. government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdfa.
a. Further results: dissolution of families: This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First, increased marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments. Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying absence of fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase.
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdfb.
b. When families received guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%. Robert B. Carleson, Government Is The Problem, p. 57.
Wefare state....family dissolution....loss of religion....
Doesn't appear a happy progression to me.
The political milieu has far reaching effects....even down to family size.
Schopenhauer's famous tale of the importance of human relationships has a new dimension due to the welfare state.....
1. "On a cold winter's day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one another's quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth, at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain.
In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find and that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one another's quills". --Arthur Schopenhauer
It seems that quills have gotten longer....infinitely so.
2."Human societies, at all times and places, have organised themselves around the will to live with others, not alone. But not any more. During the past half-century, our species has embarked on a remarkable social experiment. For the first time in human history, great numbers of people at all ages, in all places, of every political persuasion have begun settling down as singletons. Until the second half of the last century, most of us married young and parted only at death. If death came early, we remarried quickly; if late, we moved in with family, or they with us. Now we marry later. We divorce, and stay single for years or decades. We survive our spouses, and do everything we can to avoid moving in with others including our children. We cycle in and out of different living arrangements: alone, together, together, alone.
a. ... the statistics are startling. According to the market research firm Euromonitor International, the number of people living alone globally is skyrocketing, rising from about 153 million in 1996 to 277 million in 2011 an increase of around 80% in 15 years. In the UK, 34% of households have one person living in them and in the US it's 27%.
b. ... solo dwellers in the US are primarily women: about 18 million, compared with 14 million men. The majority, more than 16 million, are middle-aged adults between the ages of 35 and 64. The elderly account for about 11 million of the total. Young adults between 18 and 34 number more than 5 million, compared with 500,000 in 1950, making them the fastest-growing segment of the solo-dwelling population.
3. Sweden has more solo dwellers than anywhere else in the world, with 47% of households having one resident; followed by Norway at 40%.
In Scandinavian countries their welfare states protect most citizens from the more difficult aspects of living alone.
4. So what is driving it? The wealth generated by economic development and the social security provided by modern welfare states have enabled the spike."
I want to be alone: the rise and rise of solo living | Life and style | The Guardian
5. Mary Eberstadt, scholar at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, has posited that this trend, dissolution of family, is the main reason for the decline of religion. In her view, the image and characterization of the father at the head of the family was a reflection of Judeo-Christianity. And, the growth of the solitaire lifestyle, and specifically, single-mother family, varies, inversely, with religious faith. As she says, familial illiteracy equals religious illiteracy.
6.There is proof that the welfare state, perhaps in substituting for the role of father and provider, causes family dissolution. The U.S. government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdfa.
a. Further results: dissolution of families: This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First, increased marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments. Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying absence of fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase.
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdfb.
b. When families received guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%. Robert B. Carleson, Government Is The Problem, p. 57.
Wefare state....family dissolution....loss of religion....
Doesn't appear a happy progression to me.
