Discussion: In Defense Of Alimony, From A Feminist Economist

No, I neither said or implied any of that. What I said was that the specific structural bias of marriage and divorce against women needed to be taken into account in all cases to be fair to both parties. How that plays out in any specific instance depends on the specifics of that instance. But to ignore the problem will always lead to unfairness.

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I don’t advocate ignoring the problem, but I am saying that spousal support is not the tool to work on fixing the problem. It should be focused on one specific thing, which is enabling the financially worse off spouse some income to stabilize their financial situation after a divorce. It’s not to fix income inequality, it’s not to fix gender role bias, it’s not to fix career inequities. If those things cause the financial situation to be unequal, that financial situation should be address with spousal support. Oprah Winfrey grew up black, female and desperately poor in an environment not supportive of women, but if she and Stedman ever split up, I assure you that she will not be getting alimony from him. The result matters in spousal support, not the causes.

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Yes, I think we do agree on this. I would only add that understanding causes that are deeply embedded in a system is the only way to come to a correct analysis of the result and a fair outcome.

Feminists want to be equal, except where women have had advantages in the past. She’s working on an advanced degree; which does not exactly make her second class, but it would be so much easier if she could make her ex pay for it. So she rationalizes why he should.

This sort of whiny, self-serving feminist article is why I did not renew my Prime membership.

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She did not say or imply anything you attribute to her. She pointed out the simple and extremely well documented fact that marriage and divorce are deeply biased against women and that in order to be fair any settlement should take that into account.

My best guess is that the author got dumped for being a lazy-ass freeloader crybaby.

I can see many reasons why Alimony is important for women, but all I read was some incoherent whining about something.

She left the labor force to pursue a degree, not to take care of children, which is huge difference. She can just go back to work and get the degree later,

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Since you seem to have trouble understanding plain English, I will try to keep it simple.

  • Both marriage and divorce have deep structural biases against women.
  • These problems place an undue financial burden on women in a way that they do not on men.
  • Alimony needs to take these additional burdens on women into account in order to be fair to both parties.

Any questions?

Sorry do you not understand how to use the “reply” button?

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To whom are you replying? Nobody knows…

The reply button does not seem to be linking correctly when you reply to the last post in the thread. Your reply did the same thing so I guess it is a general problem, not just me.

I can’t see why this would be your best guess. She doesn’t specify what the reasons were, so you may as well postulate that they divorced because her husband cheated on her, or came out as gay or monsters from outer space zapped them with a divorce-o ray. It’s really not relavant. I agree that her absence from the work force for school is less unfair to her than if she were raising kids, but it’s still not really relavent. You’re just slamming her because you don’t like her conclusion and that’s not fair and doesn’t really lend your argument much heft. You can do better.

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Reply to eraser - marriage is unfair to both parties - husbands are forced to move to accept a job to support their families which may force them to move from their extended families and friends. Everyone makes sacrifices for a marriage to work - being female doesn’t give you extra bonus points

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Weirdly, I moved to where my partner was based because she’s in academia and it limited her ability to pick where she lives at, (only so many positions for what she does and they open at non-predictable locations and times,) but I woujldn’t dream of griping about it. It was important to me to be where my partner was, so I chose to move there. Not because of some need to pay back gender inequality, but because I love her and would gladly sacrifice one thing to get something else. Marriage is a partnership and sometimes you have to make choices that are more advantagous for one person than the other, but overall better for the couple. That’s just life.

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It was perhaps a bit of an unfair attack, but it is possible to infer what sort of person would write this article, and it’s not a flattering inference.

Except for the extremely well documented fact that marriage and divorce are deeply biased against women. This means that regardless of any sacrifices a man may make for his marriage and family, he will always receive advantages that are structural to the institution of marriage and that are not given to women. And that these advantages are much, much more than any structural advantages offered to women. Similarly if the marriage ends in divorce, the man will always benefit from structural biases against women, regardless of the individual circumstances.

This does not negate or diminish sacrifices a man may make for his family, however he should not get extra bonus points just for being a man. Since the system does give extra bonus points just for being a man, this must be taken into account in order to be fair to both parties.

No, it’s really not possible to infer that. As I said, we have no idea what reasons caused her marriage to end. She might be justifiably upset about the reasons and taking the high road about it, or she might have been divorced after being a harridan and freeloader. There’s really no way to know, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m more interested in talking about the role of gender equity in spousal support. The author seems to think that general inequality between the genders justifies treathing men and women differently in the awarding of support after a marraige has ended and I simply don’t agree with her. She may be a perfectly fine person or she may not and it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this discussion.

Yet again, no specifics … just vague allegations of “bias.”

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Yes, I know what you said, and you’re wrong. You can make inferences about people. Simply stating that you can’t as a conclusory fact does not make it so.

I simply don’t agree with your premise. Regardless of why things are financially unequal at the end of a marriage, that is what needs to be addressed. If you want to work on the reasons women frequently come out of the short end of the stick, that’s a completely separate thing. Two spouses who are doing esentially as well financially as the other should not be treated differently in spousal support because one is a woman and one is a man and you’re just not going to convince me otherwise.

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You can infer things. You can’t infer conclusively and accurately. Feel free to pull whatever material you want out of your butt, but don’t expect to consistently get it right.