Chris Jepson: How many impoverished Americans are you willing to support?

OK. Everyone out there who wants to voluntarily support another man’s (or woman’s) child, raise your hand and open your checkbook. Along the same line: how many more children does America require to be born to impoverished parents in 2014? Or, what percentage increase in low-wage adults will the United States work force require in 2030 for its fast-food industry or as retail clerks in Florida Wal-Marts?

As public policy, if we (as tax payers) are expected to underwrite the living expenses (food/housing/medical care, etc.) of employees of low-wage corporations, how many of your fellow citizens do wish to support? We, you and I, actually subsidize America’s corporations in their effort to be “competitive” (return to stockholders) by supplementing their low wages. Seriously, if full-time employment provides an impoverished standard of living requiring government subsidization, how many such citizens are you willing to financially support?

If you say, “Hell-no, I do not wish to support the uneducated, foolish, lazy, indigent, unfortunate or irresponsible,” I totally understand. If the vagaries of life has someone clerking/serving for an unlivable low wage, so be it. Such is life. There are no guarantees. I get all of that. I do. Now what? I ask again, how many such individuals — your fellow citizens — are you willing to support?

Two major predictors of financial success/sustainability in America are, 1) Being born into existing poverty, and 2) Being raised in a one-parent home. If these factors are present when conceiving children, the statistical probability of successive generational poverty (one generation of the impoverished begetting another, ad infinitum) increases substantially. We have been acutely aware of this “phenomenon” since the 1960s, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his controversial report on the decline of the black nuclear family.

The percentages of single-parent households for white America are now at the levels that Moynihan cited as detrimental six decades ago for black families. The statistics are even more alarming in today’s African-American community. My point is that more and more children are being born into existing poverty in single-parent households. I ask again: how many such Americans, born in these circumstances, do we require?

If you’ve read my column for any period of time, you understand that I am unequivocally pro-choice. I would have no government involvement in what an individual woman does or does not do with her body. To interject the government, at any point in time, by requiring America’s daughters to relinquish control of their bodies is a form of institutional rape.

That said, let’s remove abortion from this immediate discussion. Let’s consider intelligent family planning (before conception becomes an issue). I believe there is common ground on the subject, that a large majority of Americans embrace the availability of safe, affordable and accessible birth control.

I would have our federal, state and local governments initiate and fund sex-ed programs. I’d throw a funding-bone to religious organizations that want to promote “chastity” as a form a birth control (such programs might be effective with 2 to 3 percent of the sexually active). I’d make birth control as ubiquitous as M&Ms. I’d make responsible sex (sex without unintended consequences – pregnancy/disease) a laudable national attribute. I’d fund programs to underwrite existing (on the dole) low-income women to not have any more children. I’d pay for vasectomies for low-income men; actually I’d provide cash-incentives to get cut and tubal ligations for women as well. I’d make responsible parenting the highest patriotic endeavor.

If not, ask yourself how many impoverished Americans are you willing to support?