Huckabee & the "Scourge" of Single Motherhood: A Personal Story

"Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.[sic]"     --Former Gov. Mike Huckabee

I was 25 years old when it became clear to me that my (now ex) husband didn't have the maturity, desire, or will to fight his severe drug addiction.  But it was the night he called me, high as a kite, and threatened to rape and murder me in front of our daughter that my decision was made for me.  I didn't want my daughter to grow up thinking that that's the way women are supposed to be treated, so I became a single mom.

Even so, it was an agonizing decision.  Not because of my ex-husband--his addiction and abuse had long since killed any positive emotion I had toward him--but because I was terrified of the prospect of becoming a single mother.  Growing up in the Bible Belt, I had been socialized since I was very young that women were incapable of raising a child on their own.  Becoming a single mother was not an easy decision to make, even if the alternative meant a lifetime of pain, abuse, misery, and neglect.

The Myth of the Worthless Public Employee

Damn those greedy Public Employees!!!  They've got their cushy jobs where they make cash hand over fist and contribute NOTHING to the world!

If you believe this, think again.  First of all, the money is NOT great.  More and more recent research has found that if you take education into account, public employees make LESS than their private sector counterparts:

Bender and Heywood did a study last year for the Center for State & Local Government Excellence, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, in which they concluded that “although a comparison of unadjusted average earnings will show that wages are higher among jobs in state and local government, this result is largely due to the fact that the workers in those sectors have more education.”

They said, “Holding education and other characteristics the same, typical state and local workers earn an average of 11 percent less and 12 percent less, respectively, than comparable private-sector workers." (from A Guide to Public Employee's Rights and Benefits)

I can personally attest to this.  But what about the part of the myth about how public employees don't create anything or contribute anything to the economy?