Does government provide incentives for people to NOT get married?

Indian economist Aparna Mathur, whose work I’ve featured here before, writes about it in Forbes magazine.

Excerpt:

The fabric of our society is changing. In 1980, approximately 78 percent of families with children were headed by married parents. In 2012, married parents headed only 66 percent of families with children. In a new report, Bradford Wilcox and Robert Lerman explore the role of family structure with new data and analysis, and document how this retreat from marriage is not simply a social and cultural phenomenon. It has important economic implications for, amongst others, men’s labor force participation rates, children’s high school dropout rates and teen pregnancy rates. Since these factors are highly correlated with economic opportunity and the ability to move up the income ladder, this suggests that income inequality and economic mobility across generations are critically influenced by…

“Jesus died to save people from a blood-thirsty God!”

That, says my friend Mac, an influential atheist “evangelist,” is the message of Christianity. “Then, in our place,” he continues, “God sadistically tortured his own Son to death. If God really wants to forgive people, why can’t he just forgive them?”

Funny thing is, a few years back, this same Mac was an influential Christian evangelist with pretty much the same message: “Jesus died to save us from God!” Only now he preaches against it.

Here’s why he was wrong. Then and  now: God isn’t an angry Judge anxious to punish the human race, but a loving Father anxious to rescue it. And Jesus didn’t die to save us from God.

He died to save us from us! (Matthew 1:21) So why can’t God simply forgive us and leave it at that? Look around: Is a world of forgiven-but-unchanged Hitlers and…