Well, that’s not exactly true. You can continue to pay your premiums into the same group policy for up to a year under COBR coverage. And if you don’t want that policy, you can always purchase another. It isn’t that individual health insurance doesn’t EXIST — it’s that it’s granted a tax preference in the employer group setting that isn’t extended to the direct individual setting.

We can either pay for care, have our company pay for care, or pay more taxes to the gov’t for care. So, one way or another, our income pays for our health care.

Houses cost money and nice houses cost a lot of money. We can either pay for a house, have our company provide us with a house, or pay more taxes to the gov’t for our house. So, one way or another, our income pays for our houses.

Now, if you lose your job, are you homeless? No you are not. You can hopefully keep paying your rent or mortgage with your cash reserves. Or you can appeal to someone else to help you make those payments. Or you can sell something.

But if you lose your job, you are immediately uninsured. And that’s the bad marriage.

We can either pay for care, have our company pay for care, or pay more taxes to the gov’t for care. So, one way or another, our income pays for our health care.

The way I see it, all marriages are bad if there is no compromise in the relationship.

The location/school one also seems incredibly poor. It seems like a recipe for inequality, resentment and no incentives to improve the quality at said schools.

Social policy w/r/t home ownership
Social policy w/r/t provision of health care
Social policy w/r/t religious institutions
Social policy w/r/t charitable giving
Social policy w/r/t savings and investment patterns
Social policy w/r/t family size
Social policy w/r/t smoking, alcohol, and other vices
Social policy w/r/t (insert favorite tax code loophole here)

I think that those norms are quite amenable to change through reflection and discussion, as well as resulting from changes in circumstances of which policy is a part. For example, policy has played and/or could have played some role in determinning the extent to which a certain standard of living is attainable on one income. The norms under discussion are effected by the labor market and costs of living, as well as by such things as the women’s movement, norms regarding consumption, and the myriad factors that have led to increases in divorce.

I don’t think that the distinction between what is influenced by policy and what not is simple or straightforward at all.

how about, er, marriage and the state?

It’s all well and good to tell people that maybe they shouldn’t want to pair-bond with the same person for sexual activity and housemaking, but in practice they’re still generally going to want that.

The problems there are more or less inherent, not created by policy - and to the extent they’re merely social convention, they’re still not amenable to change.

(1) pair bond for household making, child raising, etc.
(2) pair bond for sex having

??

Not that this linkage doesn’t work for some, it does. But a person in my circles would have to be blind to ignore that there are lots of successful relationships that sever this linkage. And I think everyone can think of cases where the linkage has produced manifestly bad results. Of course their are downsides of severing the linkage too, but that is also probably true of any linkage you could think to criticize.

The freedom to choose your neighborhood without regard to its public school and the freedom to choose your work without regard for its health care plan are the two biggest political prizes that might actually be in reach of our generation.

Somewhere in the huge mess that is the legacy airline industry there must be a policy marriage, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.