I read a suggestion in a novel that the government should institute gigantic financial awards for people who stay married for 50 years. It encourages early marriage, makes divorce a losing financial proposition, and encourages people to take better care of their health because what if you croak a week before the 50th anniversary of the wedding?
People will object that there will be fraud. But honestly, how many pairs of fraudsters will file joint income tax returns for half a century with the hope of getting a payout after that? I’m sure there will be a few but it won’t be a mass phenomenon. Imagine opening your entire finances to a stranger who you know is a crook. And how do you avoid starting a real relationship where the actual wife or husband won’t tolerate you never marrying them and being legally bound to some stranger?
Also, I believe that the payout should be doubled if people raise at least 3 kids in such a long, committed marriage. Huge, fabulous awards. This will openly establish what we value as a society.
Currently, our social payments reward dysfunction. We take money away from people who do everything right and award it to those who do everything wrong. This makes no sense. There should be rewards for socially productive behavior that advances society.
Clarissa's Blog 
I could go for that. My husband and I have been married for 48 years and raised four kids, all of whom are paying taxes and none of whom are on public assistance.
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Right? This kind of a lifelong commitment is becoming increasingly rare. We spend tons of money on welfare, in many cases feeding grift and dishonesty. Why not reward socially positive behaviors instead?
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Amen, sister.
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Philosophically this sounds good. but thinking about how this applies to my situation–would this be an objective sum or tied to income? I am divorced, but also rich. We might have stayed married (and tried harder to cover up the dysfunctional part of our relationship) if there had been a financial incentive to do so (we are also quite materialistic). Would society be better off if we had done that ? Maybe. Or maybe at a certain income level the societal rules change (methyl ethyl has discussed this issue when it comes to drugs).
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Maybe you would have married a different person, somebody more suited to you, if you knew that you’d be losing the eventual reward.
As for income level, what time period would we take into consideration? There are people who are born rich but then waste everything. There are people who are born poor and then make a great living.
The important thing here is not fairness on an individual level but that we together as a society make it clear what we value. Because right now it looks like we value dysfunction.
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From experience (my parents have never, in my lifetime, liked each other, but they’ve been married over fifty years now): I’m in favor of people sticking it out whenever possible, and believe it is a net good, maybe not for the individuals who are married, but for the extended family, broader community, etc. Particularly when there are kids (with all the obvious caveats about not staying with someone who’s going to kill you).
Divorce in a society is like free radicals in the body. A tiny bit of oxidation is not too bad, but the higher the rates are, the more destructive to the whole body.
-ethyl
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I probably agree, but kind of wonder how far this goes. In some cultures (I’ve seen this with Asian culture) this leads to situations where one spouse is covering up the other spouses’ long-term extramarital affair/second relationship that may have also produced kids. I’m not sure that level of lying/avoidance is good for society either, even if nobody gets killed.
-YZ
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Or theres’ the Latin American approach, where the extramarital is totally out in the open! Don’t know if that’s an improvement either, but it results in less of an economic drain IMO.
Funny story. My sibling went to college with a lass who was from one of the more stratified latin american countries– colombia? venezuela? It was a long time ago. Anyway, the whole friend cohort was totally mystified/enthralled by her family situation. Her mother was a pretty young secretary. Her dad was the secretary’s married boss. When the wife found out that her husband had knocked up the secretary, she forced a wild re-shuffling of the family: she was done having kids, her children were grown up, and she simply decided the baby (not yet born) would NOT be illegitimate. She divorced the husband (on paper anyway), forced him to marry the secretary (on paper), moved the secretary into the guest house, and the lass grew up in the family. I can’t even imagine the social dynamics involved there. But also: she grew up with solid financial support, a home, and a family. (shrugs)
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As disgusted I am with the casa chica practice in Latin America, at least there everybody knows what they are doing. The young woman who enters the arrangement as a paid mistress does this consciously. She’s not floating around like a girlfriend who keeps expecting something that never comes which happens frequently these days.
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It seems weirdly similar to east Asian/Buddhist “second wife” arrangements.
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