9.  Families Pay Price for Government Spending
    by Wendy McElroy
    mac{at}zetetics.com

Special to TLE

The modern two-income family is no better off than the one-income family
from decades ago. Indeed, family finances are edging ever closer to
disaster. So say Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi present in their
controversial book
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/257/focus/Two_incomes_one_bankruptcy+.shtml
"The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going
Broke." But they omit a major reason why families are struggling: the
increased size of government and governmental spending.

(Sounds like it's about time for a re-post of "Meet Me In St.
Louis"... --RJT)

Basically, they argue that the cost of essentials -- e.g. housing,
education, insurance, medical care -- have increased more quickly than
wages. And they offer compelling evidence. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
finds that families in 2000 spent 44 percent less on household appliances
than families in 1973; 22 percent less on food; 21 percent less on
clothing. It is reasonable to conclude or, at least, strongly suspect that
discretionary income has decreased. Other evidence supports that
conclusion: over 1.6 million bankruptcies were filed last year, up 7.4
percent from the year before.

But the book gives short shrift to other impoverishing factors, such as the
soaring tax rate, the proliferation of government fees and fines, as well
as the staggering load of regulations under which businesses must struggle
to remain profitable.

The book, which draws on pre-9/11 data, does not reflect the pricetag of
war in Iraq. Rather, it points to the cost of social programs instituted in
the name of political correctness, many of which became entrenched during
the Clinton administration.

That social engineering includes
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/ifeminists/2002/1231.html the Child Abuse
Industry and the Sexual Harassment Industry. Critics refer to them as
"industries" because their enforcement policies have established
bloated and expensive bureaucracies that slurp the public trough. The cost
to taxpaying families is immense.

Consider one small example from just one bureaucracy. In 1997, the
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/laws/public_law/pl105_89.htm Adoption
and Safe Families Act (ASFA) promoted new adoption policy for the record
number of children stranded in foster care as a result of
"removal" under expanding definitions of "abuse." In a
press release, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services declared
its goal "to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who
are adopted or otherwise permanently placed."

A financial incentive was offered. The ASFA (Sec. 201) states that
"$4,000 to $6,000" will be given for each child adopted beyond
the state's "base number." It also provides "technical
assistance" to help states raise those numbers. Thus the ASFA created
its own mini-bureaucracy within the more massive Child Abuse Industry with
an incentive to remove children from their families.

Those whose salaries and prestige derive from a bureaucracy have a built-in
incentive to continue that bureaucracy. The agency may be incompetent or
inflict damage but its tendency will be to continue and grow.

The direct tax support rendered to social engineering is only the most
visible pricetag. The hidden costs are as significant.

Consider the hidden costs imposed on the workplace and, so, on the family
by the Sexual Harassment Industry (SHI). They include: red tape and
lawsuits that make business less profitable -- less likely to hire and more
likely to raise prices; marginal businesses that collapse from the strain
of fulfilling government requirements; less productive employees who are
hired or promoted because of gender thus lowering the general productivity
of society.

The iconoclastic feminist Daphne Patai chronicled the hidden cost of SHI to
academia in her book "Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future
of Feminism." Again, just one small example: the school at which she
teaches, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst paid $1,250 to $1,800
per day per trainer for a course on sexual harassment prevention. The
university paid an additional $10,000 for expenses such as travel, hotels
and meals. The course was merely one aspect of a broader SH program at
merely one university. Families bore the brunt not only in taxes but also
in increased tuition.

There is a palpable upsurge of economic fear among the middle class. Some
people blame the debt-ridden family for its own financial woes. A new term
has entered the North American dialogue. http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/
Affluenza is defined primarily as "The bloated, sluggish and
unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the
Joneses."

But most people I know are not competing with their neighbors. They are
scrambling to meet a mortgage, provide for their children's education,
juggle two jobs, and care for an elderly parent... Statistics back up this
anecdotal observation.

According to the recent survey
http://www.thewisemarketer.com/briefs/archive.asp?action=read&bid=593
"Retail Rituals: Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Shopping," 60%
of women have radically altered how they shop over the last two years.
Researchers at St. Louis University and Louisiana State University
canvassed 753 women and found: 30% now view shopping as a chore rather than
a pleasure; 33% demand at least half-off before they will seek out a
specific store; and, 18% say that their more conservative approach is due
to economic fear.

It is wrong to blame families for their own victimization. It is time to
eliminate social engineering from the stack of "overdue bills"
that families must pay. Even if families could afford the bureaucracies
that arose during the drunken spending spree of decades, today's children
cannot.

--
Visit my home page and blog at http://www.zetetics.com/mac
drop by ifeminists.com http://www.ifeminists.com
For photo (05/02/02) http://www.zetetics.com/mac/vesuvio.jpg

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