CORRESPONDENCE
Correspondence A SUSPICIOUS SOLUTION Watch out for any article quoting Gunnar Myrdal: Allan C. Carlson and David Blankenhorn propose to solve the Social Security crisis by buying babies, thus...
...JEREMY RABKIN ITHACA, NY...
...30/Dec...
...defendant if an American official were charged with war crimes in a third country (Correspondence, Dec...
...Likewise, under the "evil" patriarchy, fathers were still expected to marry the live-in lover...
...DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH WASHINGTON, DC DISBAR DASH The Scrapbook makes the point that Sam Dash was wrong on the facts and the law when he asserted that Kenneth Starr violated his obligations under the independent counsel statute ("A Dash to the Exits," Nov...
...First, the exemption almost doubled for everyone, not just children...
...Second, fertility rates increased by a dramatic 9.7 births per 1,000 for teenagers, who earn too little to benefit from the exemption...
...But the correlation is spurious...
...As evidence of the power of taxation to produce babies, the authors cite a study purporting to show that raising the personal tax exemption for children resulted in an increase in the fertility rate by 5.5 births per 1,000 women between 1986 and 1990...
...HANS A. VON SPAKOVSKY ATLANTA, GA FATHERS BEAT BOYFRIENDS In actuality, John A. Barnes's "boyfriend problem" is nothing more than a reversal of the wicked stepmother problem of old ("The Boyfriend Problem," Dec...
...However, the women entering into those relationships garnered benefits for themselves as well, such as shelter and a home provided by their new spouse...
...Or, for a costless solution, why not allow more tax-paying immigrants from all those countries which followed policies consistent with Myrdal's advice...
...interests...
...America's biological fathers care far more about their children than this increasingly dysfunctional society wants to realize...
...I still think it is a bad idea to promote a trend in international law which would make such a trial more likely...
...Under Standard 28 of the Georgia Code of professional Responsibility, which is similar to provisions in most states, a lawyer may not reveal the confidences of a client, which include all attorney-client communications...
...It is in part because of women's increased earning power that we have seen declining fertility rates all over the world in countries as diverse as Brazil, Japan, and Italy, even as these nations get richer...
...All of which gives impetus to reconsidering the idea of paternal custody...
...GENE HOPP BELLEVUE, WA INTERNATIONAL LAW Following our previous exchange, Ruth Wedgwood has asked me to share these two further points with readers: (1) She has a professional appointment at the Naval War College, as well as at Yale Law School, and (2) she would most certainly take the side of the U.S...
...Correspondence A SUSPICIOUS SOLUTION Watch out for any article quoting Gunnar Myrdal: Allan C. Carlson and David Blankenhorn propose to solve the Social Security crisis by buying babies, thus increasing the child credit, allowing all parents to take the dependent-care credit, and doubling the size of the tax brackets for married couples ("The Solution to Everything," Dec...
...Violation of this standard is punishable by disbarment...
...Dash was retained as a lawyer by the special prosecutor, whose office has made it clear that it did not know that Dash was going to resign and did not give Dash permission to release to the public and the news media the letter he sent to Starr...
...However, what is even more striking is that while Dash's opinion on that issue may be debatable, what is not debatable is that Dash, the renowned ethics expert, committed an unethical act which would subject him to disbarment in Georgia and most other states...
...And doubling the size of tax brackets for married couples does not ensure that they have more children: They may spend more on existing children, buy a fancier house, take a better vacation, or increase savings...
...When paternal custody was the norm, stepmothers were the common result...
...The authors write that the dependent-care credit subsidizes only commercial day care...
...Dash's legal opinion about Starr's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee fits squarely within the definition of confidential communication...
...One of the major costs of having children is the forgone income of the mother, which, for the median wage-earner, approximates $23,500 annually, excluding fringe benefits...
...It is difficult to use tax incentives such as raising the child credit and allowing all parents to take the dependent-care credit without raising only the number of births to unwed mothers, since these incentives represent a smaller percentage of married couples' incomes...
...The incentives proposed by Carlson and Blankenhorn, even though they involve substantial tinkering with the tax code, do not begin to approach this figure...
...But I do not doubt that Wedgwood is devoted to U.S...
...In fact, it subsidizes any paid care to a legal provider...
...Third, fertility rates declined after 1990, and the exemption was still in place...
...And the big unanswered question at the end of the article is of course the cost of the proposal, and whether the tens of billions spent on it could be more efficiently used—perhaps by reforming Social Security and our tax code in one fell swoop by lowering the payroll tax and allowing individual personal savings accounts...
Vol. 4 • December 1998 • No. 15
