Paul Krugman points out that home ownership may not be for everyone and that maybe the government should not spend so much time trying to encourage people to buy homes. He goes on to say some people may be better off if they rent. Mr Krugman seems pretty much right on this one.
The real estate bubble has at least in part, been caused by encourageing people to buy homes that they may not even like that well, because “everyone should own a home”. I think the same can be said for the conservative obsession with encouraging people to get married, marriage may not be for everyone. Certainly people should try to find a suitable partner and not get married because “everyone should be married”. It seems like every right wing talking head asserts that marriage will magicaly lift people out of poverty; guess what, if you marry someone who is poor or has financial problems they will probably drag you into a lower income bracket. Not to mention the fact that if you marry someone in hopes of financial gain chances are you are not going to be real happy, even if the gains magicaly appear you are still stuck with someone you may not even like. Of course if you don’t have anything in common or newness has worn off of the relationship you can always have children to increase your happiness. I am not sure how sleep deprivation is going to make you like your spouse any better or how it will increase your life satisfaction but the pro-marriage and family faction seems to think that is how it works.
Home ownership and marriage while they may be symptoms of a life well lived they are probably not the cause of it. In a few years when we are looking at record high divorce rates, wait we already have record high divorce rates, maybe someone will point out that all the things we do to encourage marriage may lead to a lot divorces without producing the magical “marriage prosperity” that certain people promise.
Hear hear! I’ve been dragging my GF down for years, and we’re not even actually married (U-DINKs).
I could flop fully into anti-the MAN mode and start railing along these lines: They want you to get married because that ties you to another person’s financial health and gives you at once a greater stake in the system and a built-in reason not to stick your neck out and agitate for change and/or justice.
But I won’t…
Well said Jim…they like their plebes scared and docile.
Krugman has been speaking to me when it comes to economics, but this past year I’ve noticed something in his writing…a bias towards Hillary was very easy to see throughout 2008, but this topic is right up his alley…home run.