Deliox
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| Joined: 27 Mar 2012 |
| Total Posts: 193 |
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| 01 Aug 2014 06:17 PM |
In America, if you get an education, find a good job, and wait until marriage to have children, your chances of achieving economic security and professional fulfillment are incredibly high. In fact, if everyone in America lived lives that went in this order, in the order I’ve just outlined, some estimates are that the poverty rate would be cut by an estimated 70 percent.
But now, each element of this “success sequence” is eroding in our country. Many Americans lack the education needed for the better jobs of the 21st century. Many either can’t find a good job, or have quite frankly stopped looking for one, given up. Marriage rates are on a steep decline. And a higher proportion of children are raised in single parent homes in America than in the vast majority of developed nations.
The economic price of this erosion in the success sequence is staggering. The unemployment rate is almost twice as high for those with only high school diplomas as it is for those with bachelor’s degrees, and almost three times as high for high school dropouts. Over 20 percent of children raised without both parents live in poverty long-term, compared with just 2 percent of those raised in intact families. And only around 40 percent of children growing up in poor single parent homes will ever make it to the middle class or beyond.
And so I am grateful for this opportunity today to discuss how we can help restore the American Dream by restoring the values that make it possible.
We need leaders, in both parties, willing to acknowledge that one of the principal reasons why so many people are struggling is because too many aren’t getting an education, too many aren’t working, too many aren’t getting married and too many are having children outside of marriage.
But we also need leaders, in both parties, willing to acknowledge that many single parents and the children they are raising are not going to have an equal opportunity to achieve a better life, unless we do something to help them.
Having more political leaders publicly recognize the link between our social wellbeing and our economic wellbeing would be enormously useful. And government reforms that promote or remove impediments to education, to work, marriage and two parent homes would help change the direction of our country.
In the 21st century, a good education is not just an option, it is a necessity. And no group in America faces more impediments to a good education than children being raised by single parents, many of whom are doing a heroic job of raising their children by themselves.
If they were wealthy, they would not have this problem because they would simply pay to send their children to better schools. But lower income parents cannot afford that. They do not have the financial means to send their kids to private and religious schools. So the government gives them no option other than sending their children to failing schools – even if just down the street are schools with higher test scores or better graduation rates.
Low income children are the least likely to get a good education because they are the only ones forced to attend schools not of their parents’ choice. In order to give them a chance at the first element of the success sequence, we need our government to give their parents the opportunity to choose the education that is right for them.
That is one of the reasons why I’ve proposed a tax credit that encourages contributions to scholarship granting organizations, which would distribute private school scholarships to children in need. And I’ve advocated for more funding and more flexibility for our nation’s innovative charter schools.
But helping our people find good jobs will also require reinvigorating the value of work. To do so, we must reform the way we fight poverty. Our current anti-poverty programs are incomplete. Because while they help alleviate the pain of poverty, but they do not do enough to cure it.
I proposed reforms that would increase access to more affordable higher education options, such as online programs, through changes to our accreditation system – because we all know that higher education is no longer a luxury for a few, it is now a necessity for all.
After getting an education and finding a good job, the third element of the success sequence is marriage. Of course, you can achieve success without being married, but the link between marriage and economic security is undeniable. At a minimum, we should eliminate policies and programs that punish marriage.
Our current tax code penalizes marriage by hitting married couples with taxes that two otherwise identical singles would be spared from. That is why I support pro-family tax reforms that would end the marriage penalty by doubling the tax threshold for joint filers.
The final element of the success sequence is raising children in a married two parent home. Even in my own family, of course, I have examples of children raised by one parent who have gone on to successful lives. But we also know that having an active father makes children 98 percent more likely to graduate from college and complete the first step of the success sequence. The words ‘One Nation Under God,’ are not symbolic. They describe the purpose our founders saw for America. Virtually every other nation that was ever created to provide a homeland for people of a certain faith, ethnicity or language. But America was founded as the place where people could have the liberty to enjoy fully the rights given to them by God.
And we need leaders that provide us with answers that will address these problems by fixing our education system and improving our economy, by highlighting the importance of marriage and two parent homes, and by helping children raised in broken families and parents struggling with the burden of single parenting.
-Deliox |
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Deliox
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| Joined: 27 Mar 2012 |
| Total Posts: 193 |
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| 01 Aug 2014 06:26 PM |
| how does this pertain to roblox |
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Flash621
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| Joined: 24 Aug 2011 |
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SUGERDEW
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| Joined: 20 Oct 2011 |
| Total Posts: 8689 |
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