How Marriage Makes You Rich



Writing below, Renata Ellera Gomes has some unusually insightful observations. Her contempt for expensive weddings is a good example. I recently went to a wedding that must have cost in the many thousands. Yet the couple were economically fairly average.

I have never understood that sort of thing. My 4 weddings were all self-catered. The wedding breakfast for my most recent marriage was buckets of KFC -- eaten in my back yard. The kids present loved it! They understood KFC whereas French and Interntional cuisine would have baffled them.

I have been very successful economically so Renata has in me a perhaps extreme example of the sort of policy she favours

And my bride at the times saw things similarly. She also encouraged me to give her a cubic zirconia as an engagement ring. It looked like a large and expensive diamond but cost only $500. She felt that of you can't tell it from a diamond then it is as good as a diamond.

The bride concerned

Another important point Renata makes below below is that an economically succesful father can give the son of a marriage good advice on how to get ahead. I remember taking half an hour once to tell my son how to invest successfully and safely in the stock market. I told him in half an hour what lots of people would give an arm to know. I simply told him what I did. He has not wholly followed that advice but he has done well economically anyhow. He already owned a large and beautiful house by the time he got married


Married people, especially men, are healthier and live longer than their single counterparts. A happy marriage can even increase your chances of surviving cancer.

Besides physical health, marriage seems to provide other layers of social protection, such as better economic prospects and a wider safety net.

Married individuals can acquire up to double the wealth of those who never marry. In the US, on average, young married men aged 28–30 make $15,900, and married men aged 44–46 make $18,800 more than their unmarried counterparts.

Married men also work more strategically towards higher salaries, are less likely to quit without having another job lined up, and enjoy either the advantages of a dual-income household or the benefits of having a stay-home wife.

In other words, marriage can make you richer than the average single person.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that marriage facilitates the acquiring of assets. As an institution, marriage was created primarily to solidify wealth and to guarantee its transfer to legitimate offspring, increasing a family’s prospects over time.

Marrying for love is a relatively recent idea. For most of human history, marriage was supposed to be a pragmatic decision. Companionship and respect between spouses were expected, but love was a bonus, a by-product of years of working together towards a common goal: survival and, if possible, the betterment of your family.

Now, for most people, the main point of marriage is not financial gain but happiness.

We expect marriage to provide us with a path to self-actualization. Marriage, as with all other aspects of our lives, it’s not about acquiring assets but about self-expression.

As we associate marriage with love and self-actualization and dissociate it with building and solidifying wealth, we make it easier for people to see getting married as optional. Finding a partner who can offer the kind of love we see in the movies and who can lead us toward self-actualization, after all, is incredibly hard. There are other ways to find happiness.

But there are not a lot of other ways to join forces with another adult in order to acquire assets and build wealth, and there’s a specific demographic that understands that too well: the rich.

Why the rich still get married

Marriage is another means through which the rich get richer and the poor, partially by not marrying, remain poor.

As overall marriage rates have declined in the US (as in other countries), from 72% of adults 18 or older in 1960 to 50% in 2016, we notice a different scenario when we sort the data by education.

In 1990, 60% of US adults with a high school diploma or less were married, in 2015 that number dropped to 50%. For college grads with a bachelor’s degree or higher, 69% were married in 1990, and 65% were married in 2015.

And higher education is positively correlated with higher earning potential.

When we take a look at class, more people in the top 10% are likely to be married than in any other economic tier. The explanation might be self-selection, meaning that individuals tend to marry inside the same economic and educational bracket. But what explains the fact that the wealthier and higher-educated continue to marry at the same rates as thirty years ago while marriage rates amongst the poor have dropped so dramatically?

Do married millionaires and doctors know something the rest of us don’t?

How the poor are discouraged from marrying

The poor are fooled into believing they have to be financially stable before getting married instead of using marriage as a tool to build wealth.

Financial illiteracy is partially to blame. Tax codes are extremely complex to navigate, and it often takes a small contingent of accountants and lawyers to take full advantage of the tax benefits offered to married couples (a resource the poor often can’t afford).

Our culture, however, is the biggest culprit. We have emphasized big expensive weddings over small celebrations, creating an illusion that getting married is expensive. We now believe a couple shouldn’t get married unless they can put a down payment on a house, a pre-requisite that’s not only unrealistic but sends millennials running for the hills (or to the nearest animal shelter to adopt yet another cat instead of looking for a mate).

Getting married used to be a mark of adulthood, now you have to be an adult to get married. And we have more prerequisites than ever before to “be an adult,” making that status harder and harder to obtain.

Stable two-parent households offer advantages to children, including higher grades and a higher chance of attending college in the future. College degrees are correlated with higher earning potential and a higher chance of getting married.

Throughout history, the rich have built and secured their wealth through advantageous marriages. Now, the primary motivation for marriage amongst the rich might not be existing family assets or political influence, but the rich still have the means and the inclination to teach their children (often by example) all about acquiring and expanding wealth as a couple.

In the long run, that knowledge can make all the difference, creating an even bigger class divide than what we have today.

https://medium.com/acid-sugar/how-marriage-makes-you-rich-7509499928ea

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Christian childcare teacher who refused to read LGBT books to kids sues after being fired: 'Blatantly illegal'

A California childcare teacher sued her former employer last week after she was allegedly terminated and mistreated because of her religious objection to reading books to children featuring same-sex couples.

Nelli Parisenkova, who is being represented by lawyers with the Thomas More Society, worked four years at Bright Horizons Children's Center in Studio City and cared for children aged five and younger, according to the complaint she filed Thursday in the Superior Court of California.

The lawsuit claims Parisenkova was aware of such LGBT-themed material at the Studio City location of the largest childcare company in the U.S., but at first had not been required to read them. Founded in 1986, Bright Horizons has hundreds of locations worldwide and employs more than 26,000 people.

Parisenkova's situation changed in April when Katy Callas, who serves as director of the location, learned of Parisenkova’s religious objections to the material, refused her request for a religious accommodation and ultimately created a hostile work environment that led to her termination, according to the complaint.

The complaint explained how for Parisenkova, who is "a devout Christian," reading such books to children "would violate her religious beliefs and constitute promotion of intimate relationships and choices that are contrary to the teachings of her faith."

"Parisenkova formally requested a religious accommodation from Bright Horizons that aligned with her prior informally granted request. Bright Horizons responded by categorically denying the request," the suit said, which goes on to claim Bright Horizons "made no attempt whatsoever to determine whether a reasonable accommodation could be reached."

"Instead, Bright Horizons issued a counseling memo with false statements, terminated her life insurance benefits, required her to complete retraining in diversity issues, and encouraged her to resign her position," the suit alleged. "Ms. Parisenkova could not return to work without an accommodation; so, Bright Horizons terminated her employment."

The suit slaps Bright Horizons and its staff with several charges, including unlawful retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination and harassment, religion-based harassment, wrongful termination, failure to accommodate, unlawful constructive discharge and disparate treatment.

Bright Horizons has been outspoken in its support for LGBT community, documenting in October 2018 how its centers celebrated LGBT History Month by participating in Pride parades and reading LGBT-themed books to children. In 2019, the organization also endorsed the Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal antidiscrimination policy.

Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society and one of Parisenovka's attorneys, described her case in a statement as "an outrageous example of religious discrimination."

Jonna said Parisenovka "had been operating under the radar with an informal accommodation request for multiple years without notice," but that "as soon as upper-level management discovered her religious beliefs and received her formal accommodation request," Bright Horizons leveled against her "the full force of the company’s anti-religious and ironically ‘un-inclusive’ diversity policy."

"They tried to get her to quit through harassment and intimidation. When she couldn’t return to work because they denied her accommodation request, they fired her," Jonna added. "You can’t get much more discriminatory than that. It’s unethical, and it’s blatantly illegal."

Jonna also claimed that when his client was called into Callas' office, the director "questioned her in an irate manner, told her that if she did not want to celebrate diversity this was not the place for her to work, gave her an administrative leave memo, escorted her outside with a security guard, and left her out in the 96-degree heat with no transportation."

Parisenovka reportedly had to walk 20 minutes in the scorching weather, waiting 45 minutes for transportation and suffering from heat exhaustion for the next two days.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/christian-childcare-teacher-refused-read-lgbt-books-kids-sues-being-fired-blatantly-illegal@fox.com

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Is Biden’s Destruction of Our Economy Intentional?

Last week the Committee To Unleash Prosperity’s president, our friend Steve Moore, gave a speech to FreedomWork’s activists called the "Seven Ways Biden Is Destroying Our Economy." The speech was a social media sensation

Here's the Cliff Notes version, culled from Zero Hedge and Steve's must-read Committee to Unleash Prosperity Hotline, to whet your appetite for the entire speech.

Steve said here are the seven policies Biden has implemented that are tearing our country apart:

1. dismantle the nation’s energy supply

2. don’t enforce the border

3. Detain, arrest, and jail all your political enemies

4. Devalue the nation’s currency through inflation

5. Destroy the nation’s finances by running up the debt by multiple trillions of dollars of debt

6. Divide rather than unite the nation - rich versus poor, black versus white, gay versus straight, urban versus city

7. Dumb down and indoctrinate our children with anti-America propaganda in the schools and media And allowing teacher unions and left wing activists to take over

Moore then said that it does not matter whether or not the Biden administration is intentionally trying to destroy our country, and then he listed seven strategies that could destroy a country, which he sees the White House implementing.

‘The first thing you would do is you would destroy its finances.’ “You borrow and spend like crazy until the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. President Joe Biden has done that. In 20 months, this president has spent $4.2 trillion. Now, these numbers are incomprehensibly large.

“So he’s wrecked the nation’s finances. We’re going to be spending decades—your children, my children, your children, our grandchildren, are going to be paying for what Joe Biden has done. It’s shameful. And we need to run every single person who wrote it, voted for these policies, out of town. We have to get rid of the people who made this.”

‘The second thing you do is destroy its currency.’

“Its currency is its means of exchange. Countries that go down the drain have currencies that become valueless. They debase the currency. Inflation is just a way of devaluing the currency. And that’s exactly what’s happened. So we’ve seen in 20 or so months, while Joe Biden has been president, prices have risen by about 16 percent in just 20 months. And what’s happening is people’s wages and salaries are falling way behind inflation.

“We just got the new numbers today on what happened with wages and salaries. The good news for American workers is that people’s wages and salaries over the last year were up 4.9 percent. That’s pretty good. You know what the Consumer Price Index number was over that same period? 8.4 percent. So what’s happened every single month that Joe Biden has been president? Americans are getting poorer. We are getting poorer month after month after month.”

“My friends at the Heritage Foundation have calculated that the average family, the median-income family in America today, has lost $4,000 in purchasing power in 20 months. It’s like a pay cut of $300 a month. That is causing real hardship to middle-income families.”

‘Third, you would destroy its energy supply.’

“You take away its energy. Because energy is the master of the universe. If you don’t have energy, you can’t do anything.

“And so one of the things I remember the first time I talked to Donald Trump, when I met him in late 2015, when he was running for president, I said, ‘If you get this right with American energy, the United States can be the energy-independent country for the first time in our lifetimes.’ I’ll never forget what Trump said: ‘Steve, I don’t want energy independence, I want America to be energy dominant!’

“In four years under Trump, by the time he left office, we were the number-one producer of oil and gas in the world. So, basically, what Trump did … he was in for all of our resources. He said, ‘Let’s produce coal, let’s produce oil, let’s produce gas. Let’s build nuclear plants in this country.’

“Can somebody explain to me why the Left hates nuclear power? Why do they hate natural gas? Natural gas is a clean-burning fuel.”

‘The fourth thing you would do is you would provide money to your enemies.’

“The bad energy policy that says we’re going to go from 70 percent fossil fuels to zero over the next 13 years—who benefits from that? China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.

“Biden says we shouldn’t get our energy from Texas. We shouldn’t get our energy from Alaska. We shouldn’t get our energy and oil and gas from North Dakota. Let’s get it from Iran and Venezuela and Russia.”

‘The fifth thing you would do is you would divide the nation.’

“You would divide it: you would pit groups against each other. Isn’t that exactly what Biden has done? It’s black versus white. It’s Hispanic versus white, versus black. It’s dividing people by income classes. It’s dividing people by their gender. All of these things are divisions.”

‘Sixth, you would destroy the stock market and people’s lifetime savings.’

“If you’re living off your 401(k) plan or retirement savings, those have been depleted greatly by Biden. Not only is the stock market down 5 percent, which isn’t that much. In nominal terms, these stocks are down 5 percent since Biden came to office. But when you adjust for inflation, stocks are down by about 20 percent. That’s as huge as trillions and trillions of dollars of losses. And so we are up against a mighty foe right now. And we need to strike back now.

“We’re in some deep trouble right now. I don’t want to depress you. And we can turn this thing around. But I’m really very, very nervous about the state of our economy today. The market lost another 600 points today.”

‘Seventh, you would weaponize government agencies by going to imprison or punish your political enemies.’

“I find that is the most frightening thing, maybe the most dangerous thing of all. Absolutely. It is so scary. I have to tell you, I’m afraid. I’m personally afraid. I’m a Trump guy. They want to come after me. I’ve got a big target on my chest. I’m nervous. One of these days, the FBI is going to knock on my door with the German shepherds and the machine guns.

“One of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history is that they are using power, and what agencies of government have they weaponized? The FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department, and IRS. I’ve got to say Joe Biden and the Democrats have a lot of nerve to call for 80,000 new IRS agents.”

Mr. Moore’s seven-point analysis puts meat on the bones of our column from August of 2021 “It’s Not A Government, It’s A Wrecking Operation” wherein we conducted a thought experiment, or what Albert Einstein called a Gedankenexperiment: What would you do if you wanted to destroy the United States of America as it has existed since its inception, or even just as it has existed since the end of World War II?

In reviewing the results of our Gedankenexperiment, and Steve Moore’s seven points, it is clear to us that incompetence can’t explain what’s been happening since Joe Biden was sworn-in as President of the United States. Institutions that have existed for decades take time to crumble, even when led by incompetents.

But what we are seeing from the Joe Biden “administration” is not a government, however incompetently run, trying to do its duty to its citizens. It is a conscious wrecking operation intended to destroy the foundational institutions of the United States. And it is succeeding with such rapidity it should make every citizen wonder if the country can survive until the next presidential election offers some hope of putting an end to the destruction.

The good news is Steve Moore says, “I think people are so fired up right now. I see this all over the country. I’ve been to Delaware, I’ve been to Pennsylvania, I’ve been to Michigan, I’ve been to Arizona, I’ve been to Georgia. Same thing everywhere. People are fired up. They want change. And they disapprove strongly of what Joe Biden has done.”

At the end of his speech, Moore emphasized: “I think a red wave is coming. But this election isn’t really about electing Republicans. My mission is to find every single Democrat who did this to our country and get them the hell out of office.” That’s our mission too, and we hope you will join us.

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/is-biden-s-destruction-of-our-economy-intentional

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The Democrats’ Contempt for the Poor

Barack Obama’s economy in 2011 stank. Mitt Romney should have had an easier time running against his rather lazy opponent with little good news to his name.

But Romney was a bad candidate for the times. Members of the working and middle classes viewed him as the Boss — the rich guy running things, buying out their companies, killing their jobs, and sending the factories overseas. He was the supercilious money guy, picking filet mignon from his teeth.

They did not trust him. Obama, like Romney, was a good-looking technocrat. “At least he was black,” thought the working class. “At least he can relate to our struggles.” Alas, this wasn’t true. Obama is a trust-fund kid and has much more in common with the monied class than with the average American guy — you know, those guys who bitterly cling to their Bibles and guns.

I bring all this up because this year’s election, like in 2011, feels closer than it should be, if the polls are to be believed. The Republican Party should have been in a stronger position then, and it definitely should be in a strong position now.

What gives? To oversimplify: college-degree holders. Their unemployment rate is currently 2.2 percent. During the worst of the Obama recession years, their unemployment rate never crested 5 percent. While others experienced an unemployment rate upwards of 11 percent, the college grads were fine, and they vote. They make up a solid 30-plus percent of the country.

The most loyal Democratic constituency is the college-educated single woman. She will vote, and happily, for President Joe Biden and progressives like him. She was specifically marketed to during the Obama years with the former president’s misbegotten Julia campaign. She’s whom the Democrats are relying on again for their fortunes. She is progressive, socially liberal, relatively wealthy, and scared of everything. She’s the neurotic heart of the Democratic Party.

Vaguely socialist, fearful of the climate change bogeyman, she drives a Prius, shops at Whole Foods, drinks pumpkin spice lattes, and watches the Real Housewives shows with her gay best friend. She has a Coexist sticker; believes all women (except the ones accusing Biden and former President Bill Clinton); is vaccinated and probably suffers from long COVID now, but it’s totally worth it; and has a Ukraine flag in her bio that replaced her black square for the now passé Black Lives Matter.

The Democrats must keep the college-educated, their core constituency, content at all costs.

She was worried about her student loans, so Biden issued an edict from on high to take care of them for her. The high gas prices, which she knew were totally necessary for the planet but which bummed her out, were reduced by draining the petroleum reserve. Abortion rights are like totally being taken away, and so the Biden administration is proposing a national law.

Outside her nexus, the rest of the college-educated hold her views, but to a less intense degree. If they’re faltering from the Democratic line, it’s not because they’re suffering per se; it’s because they’re feeling angst looking at their 401(k)s. The grocery bills are getting ridiculous. There is talk of eating out less. The credit card statements have been creeping up, and that’s uncomfortable.

The Democrats must keep these people, their core constituency, content at all costs. They learned through the Obama years that the college-educated are easily manipulated and must be kept in line, or else Democrats lose elections. Happily, the very online media reflects most of the mores of these people and certainly represents Julia.

This constituency frayed somewhat in the last few years. The married college-educated with children, while at home during the COVID lockdowns, got a bird’s-eye view of what passed for education, and even their very liberal sensibilities were offended. This took some doing, but Randi Weingarten and her slacking teachers infuriated this group. Not only was the curriculum horrid, but working women had to sacrifice their jobs and time to do the jobs teachers unions wouldn’t. More moms quit their jobs to educate their children, and now they’re more involved in the schools. This is disastrous for failing schools but also for Democrats trying to get elected. This group inspires so much fear that Democrats sicced the FBI on these parents. They cannot win without these voters. They need them harried, working, angry, and too busy to pay attention.

Note that none of this addresses the issues of the poor and working class. While the college grads started to complain at $5-a-gallon gas, members of the poor and working class are being decimated right now with gas around $3.90 per gallon. They’re not making enough money to pay for their groceries and gas, and they see winter coming. They’re worried about making rent.

Members of the inner-city poor and working class have it worse. They, too, have relatively low unemployment, around 4 percent. But with inflation, crime, homelessness, illegal immigration, and drug abuse, their quality of life is diminishing. The BLM and Antifa riots, burning and looting, decimated the middle-class sections of their cities. They no longer can get common goods like car parts, medicine, and home supplies. Those businesses were torched and looted and they haven’t come back. It wouldn’t matter anyway; the people living in these neighborhoods have no excess money.

The recession is starting to affect jobs, and the jobs poor and working-class people do get aren’t paying enough to cover the bills. Inflation is outpacing income and making working less appealing. It’s not the business owners’ fault. Costs of all kinds of raw materials have inflated to such a point that their margins are slim or sliding backward. Workers’ salaries must be cut or eliminated. Some businesses, if still operating, limit hours. They don’t have the money to pay for their goods or their employees.

The Democrats have addressed none of these problems. They’re too busy passing electric-vehicle subsidies to encourage Julia and her college-educated friends to buy them.

Democratic policies necessarily harm the middle class. Inflation makes money worth less, and this destroys purchasing power and pushes middle-class people down into the ranks of the working poor. Interest-rate increases make house buying nearly impossible for this group. It’s quickly becoming impossible for the middle and upper-middle class, too.

One would think that the Democratic policies would at least somewhat focus on these people. But no, unless the blanket pardon for federal marijuana charges counts. The moves Democrats make to help these folks are largely empty and symbolic.

The Democrats have given up on the votes of the less-fortunate workers. They’re relying on their core constituencies: those who are reliant on the government and those who are college-educated. If it seems that even the upper-middle class should be worried and considering voting for Republicans, they should be, but they’re myopic. Just watch the stock market and the unemployment rate. If the college-educated have jobs and their 401(k)s aren’t hurting too badly, the election will be close.

The working poor, lower, and middle classes don’t matter to Democrats so long as the college-educated are in their pockets. Perhaps talk of nuclear war, increased inflation, job firings, freezes at tech companies, and a stock-market slide will get their attention. Or, maybe, America is descending into the politics of the have and have-nots, and the haves vote Democrat.

https://spectator.org/democrats-contempt-for-the-poor/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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