“Kansas child support payments could see increase” is a TV news story about a court-run process in Kansas that will make it more lucrative to obtain custody of a child (they are seeking public comments through June 22). To me this is interesting because, as noted in the Kansas chapter of Real World Divorce, it is already more lucrative to collect child support in Kansas than it is to go to college and work (in the case of two children from two different mothers, a plaintiff father just needs to find defendant mothers who each earn at least $145,200 per year). Child support in Kansas, for anyone suing a middle-class defendant, will exceed what married couples actually spend on children (see UCLA Economist William Comanor’s analysis). Child support is also potentially unlimited. A person could join the Top 1% in Kansas in terms of spending power simply by having sex with a high-income Kansan (somewhere around $1.5-2 million per year).

[In theory this system can be used by both men and women, but March 2014 Census Current Population Survey data show that 100 percent of Kansans surveyed who were collecting child support were women.]

To me this is interesting as an example of a bureaucracy’s urge to grow. Judges apparently like watching paid attorneys arguing in their courthouse and will adjust the rules as necessary to keep the plaintiffs coming. See this Electronic Frontier Foundation discussion of how the rules in the Eastern District of Texas, a popular venue for patent plaintiffs, are different from those in other federal district courts (also listen to this NPR story or read this arstechnica story: “And those trials tend to be short, as it can be tough to put on an effective defense, especially with multiple defendants. Trials are often over within a week; the invalidity trial over the Eolas patent, a case with the potential to affect the future of the whole Web, took place in all of four days.”).

What other examples can readers come up with for government bureaucracies that change the rules so that more business will come to the bureaucracy?