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Why do you assume someone can HAVE savings? I live in a Texas city. Rent here for a 2 bedroom apartment is over $1K a month. If you're a single mother of 2,

Why do you assume someone can HAVE savings? I live in a Texas city. Rent here for a 2 bedroom apartment is over $1K a month. If you're a single mother of 2, you can expect $500 a month for EBT if you make $9 an hour. So after you get through paying your taxes, social security, medicare, etc... you're stuck with pocket change (that still has to go to electricity, gas for the car / maintenance) and use EBT to pay for your food. Please spare the empathy bit. When you're working odd shifts, you KNOW the kids will eat the pizza rolls, so you buy the damned pizza rolls. But let's say single mom gets a $4 raise. Guess what happens? EBT evaporates. Completely. Not only that, but she starts getting charged $160+ a month for the daycare that she sends her kids to so that she can work those odd hours. $3 more bucks? Her daycare subsidy evaporates. She's making $16 an hour, but now she can't afford to pay her bills. Yeah, please lecture us again on why they can't save money.

Simon_says 9y ago
I think, but I'm not sure, that at her income level, the Earned Income Tax Credit will let her get a net refund from the federal government? And Texas doesn't tax income. Savings have to come from the biggest choices in your life. You've already assumed a bunch of poor choices in your model of this hypothetical person. You didn't mention your city, but I found $400-500 2 bedroom apartments on a quick Craigslist search on the outskirts of Houston. Why is this person living in a (presumably expensive) city? The main reason to move to the city is better jobs, but if she's making $9-16/hour, she may as well live somewhere less expensive. A lot of people in that income bracket live with parents or other family. Why does she need 2 bedrooms? My wife grew up sharing a single bedroom apartment with 3 other people and until she moved to the USA, it never occurred to her that it was the slightest bit unusual. Kids adapt; they'll be fine in one room. Why is she a single mom? Where's dad? Is he dead? Shouldn't the life insurance payout cover this stuff? If he's alive, shouldn't he be kicking in support? Maybe don't choose to have kids when you're making $9/hour or have a chaotic domestic life?
- dizzystar 9y ago
  But also, she will have to work a second job because no one gives full time work at that pay level. That's the brutal cost of ACA.
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    I didn't even consider that. I was just looking at the decisions she made.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    That’s not the brutal cost of ACA, that’s the brutal cost of inserting businesses into healthcare via offering them tax incentives for no reason. Simple solution exists: 1) government provides taxpayer funded healthcare 2) government mandates everyone buys health insurance via healthcare.gov 3) government is not involved in at all, including Medicaid and Medicare and does not offer any kind of assistance to business to offer health insurance such as tax deductions
  - NutriSugar 9y ago
    It seems to me that a lot of government laws are created assuming people will continue to do what they have been regardless of how the rules changed. The idea that people will do something different in response to a law, like switching from few full time positions to lots of part time positions to avoid paying benefits, seems to be completely dismissed. It reminds me of therapist mandated reporting of child abuse making it so those most at risk of committing child abuse no longer seeking therapy, leading to an overall increase in harm. Or the HIV laws in California that resulted in people refusing to get tested. And it makes me think that limiting ones ability to own a gun based on mental health will result in people being less likely to seek mental help. Why is there such dismissal of secondary effects of laws even after seeing them occur?
- pjc50 9y ago
  > don't choose to have kids when you're making $9/hour or have a chaotic domestic life Often the choice to have kids is at a more stable point and then things go downhill.
  - leetcrew 9y ago
    sure, and there should definitely be help for this situation, but what fraction of low income parents is this really?
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    Of course everyone is going to focus on that sentence when I also mentioned many other poor choices this hypothetical woman is making. Tragedies will occasionally come out of left field, so I believe you can find real hard luck cases where everything was sunshine and rainbows when the couple decides to have a kid. But based on the people I've known personally the people with messed up lives are a subset of the people make consistently poor decisions. I bet that 9 single parents who are struggling financially out of 10 have some identifiable poor choice you could find if they were totally open and honest about their history. Does she have a 6 month emergency fund, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, a large enough home, home insurance, a stable marriage, stable employment, flex in the budget? I think if you restrict to looking at parents who fit those criteria prior to the decision to have kids, the sliver who become this down on their luck is staggeringly tiny. And the parents who don't fit these can't afford kids.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > Does she have a 6 month emergency fund, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, a large enough home, home insurance, a stable marriage, stable employment, flex in the budget? Are you proposing that only the top 10% most economically secure people should have children? Because if you check those critera you'll find it's a surprisingly small minority of people that meet all of them. (Something like half of all Americans have no emergency fund at all. Is anyone who lives in an "at-will" state truly in stable employment, either? And so on.)
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Maybe don't choose to have kids when you're making $9/hour or have a chaotic domestic life? Most children aren't actually planned. They occur because mother nature has spent millions of years perfecting the art of tricking people into liking sex. Or, as I sometimes say, our genes are like virii: They don't care how miserable they make you in their quest to reproduce themselves. Coincidentally, genes and viruses are both made of RNA at their root (DNA being two RNA, basically).
  - hycaria 9y ago
    As much as it's debated in the US, abortion still is something.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - moduspol 9y ago
    Is there any number of mistakes one can make for which we shouldn't be taking from others to support them?
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    Oh, I'm totally with you on the root causes. I'm just resentful that I pay more in taxes to support kids when the parents don't care enough to ensure they have a stable life prior to bringing them into the world. And while I agree with you that evolution is powerful, reliable birth control is recent enough that we haven't adapted to it. It's quite possible to control when you have kids via abstinence, birth control, and abortion. But it does require long-term thinking and contentiousness, and my point is that these sob stories are mostly missing these personality traits.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Our economic system is predicated on people having children.
brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
Thank you for saying this. Our support structures are an embarassment. The hoops they make the homeless jump through for basic Medicaid are a crime as well. So of course no savings! But we both know there are people who would have that mom rent a studio apartment instead. Obviously none of those people are moms themselves.

Simon_says 9y ago

I think, but I'm not sure, that at her income level, the Earned Income Tax Credit will let her get a net refund from the federal government? And Texas doesn't tax income. Savings have to come from the biggest choices in your life. You've already assumed a bunch of poor choices in your model of this hypothetical person. You didn't mention your city, but I found $400-500 2 bedroom apartments on a quick Craigslist search on the outskirts of Houston. Why is this person living in a (presumably expensive) city? The main reason to move to the city is better jobs, but if she's making $9-16/hour, she may as well live somewhere less expensive. A lot of people in that income bracket live with parents or other family. Why does she need 2 bedrooms? My wife grew up sharing a single bedroom apartment with 3 other people and until she moved to the USA, it never occurred to her that it was the slightest bit unusual. Kids adapt; they'll be fine in one room. Why is she a single mom? Where's dad? Is he dead? Shouldn't the life insurance payout cover this stuff? If he's alive, shouldn't he be kicking in support? Maybe don't choose to have kids when you're making $9/hour or have a chaotic domestic life?

dizzystar 9y ago
But also, she will have to work a second job because no one gives full time work at that pay level. That's the brutal cost of ACA.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  I didn't even consider that. I was just looking at the decisions she made.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  That’s not the brutal cost of ACA, that’s the brutal cost of inserting businesses into healthcare via offering them tax incentives for no reason. Simple solution exists: 1) government provides taxpayer funded healthcare 2) government mandates everyone buys health insurance via healthcare.gov 3) government is not involved in at all, including Medicaid and Medicare and does not offer any kind of assistance to business to offer health insurance such as tax deductions
- NutriSugar 9y ago
  It seems to me that a lot of government laws are created assuming people will continue to do what they have been regardless of how the rules changed. The idea that people will do something different in response to a law, like switching from few full time positions to lots of part time positions to avoid paying benefits, seems to be completely dismissed. It reminds me of therapist mandated reporting of child abuse making it so those most at risk of committing child abuse no longer seeking therapy, leading to an overall increase in harm. Or the HIV laws in California that resulted in people refusing to get tested. And it makes me think that limiting ones ability to own a gun based on mental health will result in people being less likely to seek mental help. Why is there such dismissal of secondary effects of laws even after seeing them occur?
pjc50 9y ago
> don't choose to have kids when you're making $9/hour or have a chaotic domestic life Often the choice to have kids is at a more stable point and then things go downhill.
- leetcrew 9y ago
  sure, and there should definitely be help for this situation, but what fraction of low income parents is this really?
- Simon_says 9y ago
  Of course everyone is going to focus on that sentence when I also mentioned many other poor choices this hypothetical woman is making. Tragedies will occasionally come out of left field, so I believe you can find real hard luck cases where everything was sunshine and rainbows when the couple decides to have a kid. But based on the people I've known personally the people with messed up lives are a subset of the people make consistently poor decisions. I bet that 9 single parents who are struggling financially out of 10 have some identifiable poor choice you could find if they were totally open and honest about their history. Does she have a 6 month emergency fund, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, a large enough home, home insurance, a stable marriage, stable employment, flex in the budget? I think if you restrict to looking at parents who fit those criteria prior to the decision to have kids, the sliver who become this down on their luck is staggeringly tiny. And the parents who don't fit these can't afford kids.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > Does she have a 6 month emergency fund, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, a large enough home, home insurance, a stable marriage, stable employment, flex in the budget? Are you proposing that only the top 10% most economically secure people should have children? Because if you check those critera you'll find it's a surprisingly small minority of people that meet all of them. (Something like half of all Americans have no emergency fund at all. Is anyone who lives in an "at-will" state truly in stable employment, either? And so on.)
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Maybe don't choose to have kids when you're making $9/hour or have a chaotic domestic life? Most children aren't actually planned. They occur because mother nature has spent millions of years perfecting the art of tricking people into liking sex. Or, as I sometimes say, our genes are like virii: They don't care how miserable they make you in their quest to reproduce themselves. Coincidentally, genes and viruses are both made of RNA at their root (DNA being two RNA, basically).
- hycaria 9y ago
  As much as it's debated in the US, abortion still is something.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- moduspol 9y ago
  Is there any number of mistakes one can make for which we shouldn't be taking from others to support them?
- Simon_says 9y ago
  Oh, I'm totally with you on the root causes. I'm just resentful that I pay more in taxes to support kids when the parents don't care enough to ensure they have a stable life prior to bringing them into the world. And while I agree with you that evolution is powerful, reliable birth control is recent enough that we haven't adapted to it. It's quite possible to control when you have kids via abstinence, birth control, and abortion. But it does require long-term thinking and contentiousness, and my point is that these sob stories are mostly missing these personality traits.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Our economic system is predicated on people having children.

brooklyn_ashey 9y ago

Thank you for saying this. Our support structures are an embarassment. The hoops they make the homeless jump through for basic Medicaid are a crime as well. So of course no savings! But we both know there are people who would have that mom rent a studio apartment instead. Obviously none of those people are moms themselves.