I'm not going to dissect this fully since I should be preparing a presentation, but a couple thoughts...
I would argue that there's a correlation between the type of men who are willing to leave the state/work under the table to get out of paying child support, and the type of men who would not be working vigorously toward an equal marriage regardless of the post-divorce outcomes.
Even though I'm pro-big government, it seems like putting the money it would take to set up this system toward better enforcement would be best. As you pointed out, most parents pay the child support, so in this case it would be most effective to focus on those that don't.
On the other hand, this puts me in mind of more general arguments for and against government intervention. Your personal anecdote that your dad would do the right thing without the government makes me think of my personal anecdote wherein my dad didn't. So I guess we arrive again at the personal responsibility conundrum, just because many people would do the right thing does not mean we can go without government pressure to make them do so. But in this case I'm coming down on the personal responsibility side...maybe because I realize that when the government catches up with these guys and makes them pay, you might still get just your court mandated $62.50 a week!
It seems that the author's argument that such a system would lead to equality of post-marriage outcomes would mainly apply to those who have any money to be gotten out of them in the first place, and it's probably far more likely that such people are already paying.
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I would argue that there's a correlation between the type of men who are willing to leave the state/work under the table to get out of paying child support, and the type of men who would not be working vigorously toward an equal marriage regardless of the post-divorce outcomes.
Even though I'm pro-big government, it seems like putting the money it would take to set up this system toward better enforcement would be best. As you pointed out, most parents pay the child support, so in this case it would be most effective to focus on those that don't.
On the other hand, this puts me in mind of more general arguments for and against government intervention. Your personal anecdote that your dad would do the right thing without the government makes me think of my personal anecdote wherein my dad didn't. So I guess we arrive again at the personal responsibility conundrum, just because many people would do the right thing does not mean we can go without government pressure to make them do so.
But in this case I'm coming down on the personal responsibility side...maybe because I realize that when the government catches up with these guys and makes them pay, you might still get just your court mandated $62.50 a week!
It seems that the author's argument that such a system would lead to equality of post-marriage outcomes would mainly apply to those who have any money to be gotten out of them in the first place, and it's probably far more likely that such people are already paying.