To the Editor:
The Occupy Wall Street protestors want Big Government socialist solutions to combat poverty. There are other ways government can tackle poverty.
Poverty should be dealt with by government alleviating the Biblical definition of the Institution of the Family which is the married one man and one woman at the exclusion of all others martial union as a unique legal entity and with special legal status. This should be at the deliberate discrimination of all other unions, as law of the land.
In the U.S. in the 90s, it was stated, if you were married and never divorced, completed Grade 12, had no children out of wedlock and had any job - even starting at minimum wage, the poverty level of such families was four per cent. Married black Americans had only a eight per cent poverty level. It is still by far the lowest of all social demographics. Common law cohabiting males make only half the income of married men. Children of common law families have a fives times higher poverty rate then kids in married homes. Common law relationships are unstable and short lived and lacks commitment by its very design. For government to grant common law union status rights just fuels poverty.
In the public-schools which government oversees, have a sex-education curriculum that strongly pushes abstinence until marriage. The state education cartel can start telling students the truth that "safe-sex" leads to unplanned children (big time poverty through out-of-wedlock births) while its impossible to have unplanned pregnancies when practicing abstinence. What do you call those who use condoms for birth control? Shocked parents.
Tied into this, government can reduce poverty by making divorce illegal except for adultery and physical abuse. Adultery should be a criminal offense like physical abuse is and thus should help greatly cut down divorce rates. Easy Divorce laws obviously greatly increase divorce and it greatly increases poverty as well. Divorce leads to two dwellings having to be maintained instead of one, huge legal costs and the dividing of assets. They all increase poverty.
Government should recriminalize all gambling like it once was to fight poverty. Gambling addicts often put themselves and the rest of their families in the poor house through their addiction.
Government can also live within its means by balancing the budget and being a small minimalist government in order to facilitate a huge drop in taxes without going in the red. A small minimalist government can greatly reduce poverty because it has the room to lower the tax burden due to the low cost of governing, since the poor are the least able to pay any tax.
The sad thing is, this tried and true solution to poverty will never be adopted for it attacks a fair number of the scared cows that liberals and the Left hold dear. As long as any zany union of people gets legal status, as long as gambling is legal and promoted, divorce is easy obtained, teen pregnancies are common due to liberal sex education and as long as we have a crippling tax burden on the poor to pay for big government, poverty will remain a huge social problem.
Stanley Reitsma, Carman, MB.
