The refusal to build a real safety net for people who aren’t partnered means that some people may feel pressure to do anything to be and stay partnered, even if it means enduring psychological or physical abuse. It also means that single people deal with all the same things that anyone without a safety net deals with: They often stay in bad jobs, they take fewer entrepreneurial risks, they’re less likely to follow opportunities that people with a spousal safety net could. They simply don’t have the stability that makes it not just possible but also conceivable to do so much else. It seems clear, if we want to actually support “liberty” or lift people out of poverty, or even make it easier for people to have traditional (or nontraditional!) families, then we need to reconsider the way we organize tax policy and public benefits.
Paying women and minorities properly would be a great start.
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“The first duty of the colonized poet is to clearly define the people, the subject of his creation. We cannot go resolutely forward unless we first realize our alienation.”
— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (via philosophybits)
