[Johnfl]

New to the forum. Wanted to throw this out there. Apologies in advance for offending anyone on my first post.

I'm a 41 y.o. white male, above average looks, 100k plus annual income. HS education, I've never married, no kids, pets, etc. I live well, gamble, party, hookers, etc.

I can not understand why a young woman, assuming they are attractive, settle for low-paying waitress jobs while churning out children. The husband, if they are even married, provides little in financial support, as he most likely works in a low paying job as well. If he did make good money, his pregnant wife wouldn't be selling beer at the local bar.

I was at a local sports bar tonight, both bartenders are in the middle of a pregnancy. Both require someone to drop off & pick them up from work, as they have no car. One waitress was openly discussing the fact that she was going to get a payday loan after work, to pay her power bill. Both pregnant girls have above average looks outside of the pregnant issue.

Am I out of line for thinking these people are absolute idiots? Or do I have it all wrong, whereas I should have married a girl, impregnated her, and forfeit my hard earned income by the estimated cost of $1,500 a month per child? Is raising a child that fulfilling?

In summary, I don't think that I'm that smarter or better than the other people around me, or am I?

[Tex Cruise]

Hi John,

Are you sure your surname isn't Bozzz?

[Chicopicante]

No you're not out of line, these chicks are idiots.

[RatInTheWoods]

Maybe their impregnators have solid game...

[Windom Earle]

I'm guessing you've never seen Idiocracy?

[realologist]

1st of the month

[Alsos]

The fruit of moral hazard. Someone has always been there to (temporarily) save their bacon whenever they find themselves in trouble. They've never had to face significant consequences for their actions - they do something dumb or ill-advised, have the consequences mitigated, are thereby spared the learning experience, learn instead that those behaviors "aren't as bad/dangerous as people say", and do something a little more dumb or ill-advised the next time.

These women will qualify for welfare, food stamps, housing assistance, child support taken from the fathers, Medicaid, reduced public transit passes, and other government programs and transfers. Plus, there are numerous religious and volunteer charities out there which preferentially assist pregnant women and single moms.

They may seem to be idiots for disregarding life advice and traditions refined through centuries of practice, but in a way they are making rational decisions based on their own trial-and-error experiences. Why should they take the long-term view, sacrifice a little now and live to classical virtues like industry, frugality, temperance, chastity, and modesty and thereby reap the lifelong rewards of an ever-increasing social standing and personal and familial stability, when they can screw off and party and chase momentary excitement at someone else's expense?

YOLO is more fun than Aristotle, after all.

ETA: these are the "rational decisions" of people whose adherence to societal norms and laws is motivated (ironically) by the risk of shame and prosecution, and who are dimly or not at all aware of the abstract principles underlying those norms and laws. Exactly like 1960s counterculturalists, they in their own dim and unarticulated way regard rules as wholly artificial impositions, which they will follow only until they find a way to evade them. "Virtue" is a meaningless abstraction to them. They cannot understand anything but externally-applied consequences, and when those consequences are mitigated as noted above, the disincentive to violate norms based on those virtues erodes rapidly.

[bbgun]

[dicknixon72]

Earned Income Tax credits, SNAP, EBT, subsidized housing, and stupidity are creating a maelstrom of future problem children.

And to think we're just now starting to see a decline in the national crime rate because we switched to unleaded gasoline...