You Didn’t Pay Child Support? We’ll Make it Harder for You to Work
10th November 2013
David Henderson, a Real Economist, points out ways that government makes life harder. One of his students makes an obvious point:
In many states, people who owe back child support are at risk of losing their driver’s licenses as well as their professional licenses. My brother has fallen into this trap several times over the past 5-10 years. Curiously, when his driver’s license was suspended, he was denied several jobs due to his being “irresponsible” and not being able drive a vehicle. This is an obvious Catch 22 because, without a job, he cannot pay the child support or pay to reinstate his license, and he will continue to be unemployed, which, in turn, leads to lost revenue for the federal government. Although my brother has never made much money, if he had been a lawyer or doctor and lost his practicing license due to back child support, the lost revenue would have been even greater.
The government should remove this punishment for failure to pay child support. No one benefits from making it more difficult for an individual who owes money to make money. According to Wikipedia, 1,372 drivers’ licenses were revoked in Tennessee in 2000. These individuals “owed more than $13 million of back child support.”