From: "Russell Coker" <russell@coker.com.au>
http://www.alternet.org/marriage-dying
Interesting article about the support for marriage being a way of attacking poor people, interracial couples, and other couples who aren't liked by the people in power.
http://www.acoss.org.au/uploads/ACOSS%20Poverty%20Report%202012_Final.pdf Table 4: Risk of poverty - proportion of people from different groups living below poverty lines in 2009-10 (%) 50% of median - At risk group 60% of median Single, no children: 25.3 41.5 Lone parent: 25.0 36.4 Couple, no children: 8.4 18.5 Couple, children: 9.0 14.0 Obviously living as a couple decreases your risk of being poor. It starts with basic income safety: With two people at work you do not loose all earned income if one is out of work. Of course, couple does not equal marriage. AFAIK (and from experience) Australia treats married couple and de facto relationships equally in most aspects (e.g. taxation). In Germany it is different. There are quite high incentives to marry for financial reasons. Whether it covers a $27k wedding and a potential divorce is debatable;-) Regards Peter
On Mon, 18 Feb 2013, Petros <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au> wrote:
http://www.alternet.org/marriage-dying
Interesting article about the support for marriage being a way of attacking poor people, interracial couples, and other couples who aren't liked by the people in power.
http://www.acoss.org.au/uploads/ACOSS%20Poverty%20Report%202012_Final.pdf
Table 4: Risk of poverty - proportion of people from different groups living below poverty lines in 2009-10 (%) 50% of median - At risk group 60% of median
Single, no children: 25.3 41.5 Lone parent: 25.0 36.4 Couple, no children: 8.4 18.5 Couple, children: 9.0 14.0
Obviously living as a couple decreases your risk of being poor.
Living in shared accommodation decreases per-person living expenses, this is why so many university students live in houses with 4+ people. That doesn't require being married or even being a couple. There are further cost savings to having multiple people per bedroom but that doesn't require being married.
It starts with basic income safety: With two people at work you do not loose all earned income if one is out of work.
You are assuming that most married couples involve both people working. When people have children it's typical to have one parent cease full-time work to look after them (the school day ends at 15:30 while the work day ends at 17:00). Losing a full-time income is going to hurt even if the other parent has a part time job.
Of course, couple does not equal marriage. AFAIK (and from experience) Australia treats married couple and de facto relationships equally in most aspects (e.g. taxation).
As we should.
In Germany it is different. There are quite high incentives to marry for financial reasons.
Whether it covers a $27k wedding and a potential divorce is debatable;-)
The 27K wedding is a bogus issue. The small number of people who can afford multi-million dollar weddings and the larger number who spend $50K push the average up. The minimum cost for a traditional middle-class wedding would probably be around $7K, that's based on a rough guestimate of $1500 for the wedding dress, $1000 for the church and car hire, and a bit less than 100 people having a $50 meal. Wedding prices go way lower than $7K. If you want to just go to a registry office and then have drinks with friends afterwards then I'm sure it would be well below $1000. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Russell Coker wrote:
There are further cost savings to having multiple people per bedroom but that doesn't require being married.
The converse also holds ;-) (That is, spouses sleeping in separate rooms, in case I was too oblique.)
Wedding prices go way lower than $7K. If you want to just go to a registry office and then have drinks with friends afterwards then I'm sure it would be well below $1000.
Depends if they're sysadmins. Did LCA drink the pubs dry this year?
On Mon, 18 Feb 2013, "Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Russell Coker wrote:
There are further cost savings to having multiple people per bedroom but that doesn't require being married.
The converse also holds ;-)
(That is, spouses sleeping in separate rooms, in case I was too oblique.)
Sure, but that's a luxuary that's not available to poor people.
Wedding prices go way lower than $7K. If you want to just go to a registry office and then have drinks with friends afterwards then I'm sure it would be well below $1000.
Depends if they're sysadmins. Did LCA drink the pubs dry this year?
My observation was that not much alcohol was consumed at LCA. At the cloud computing free drinks event I didn't observe any signs of excessive drinking and I was there until 5 minutes before the free drinks were closed. I also didn't observe any significant drunkenness at the penguin dinner which apparently had free alcohol with few if any limits (I was drinking Coke so I didn't care much about such things). This was a stark contrast to previous LCAs which had significant obvious vomit problems at conference events and binge drinking contests. Anyway if someone has a registry office wedding then they probably aren't going to buy lots of drinks for everyone that they know. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
participants (3)
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Petros -
Russell Coker -
Trent W. Buck