← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Happy Hacker
Thread ID: 5287 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2003-03-02
2003-03-02 01:41 | User Profile
Take two people living together. Because the Married Filing Jointly deduction and tax schedule is not twice the Single, married people already pay more than single people. But, when those two living together have children, the marriage penalty skyrockets.
If two adults and two children are living in the same home, the adult with the greater income can file Head of Household and use the children as exemptions. The adult with the lower income can use the children for the Earned Income Credit.
For example, in the household of four, if one adult has a $40,000 income and the other has a $12,000 income, the total tax on this $52,000 is negative; they get a refund of $588! If theyââ¬â¢re married, theyââ¬â¢ll owe $4,226! In about 20 years, this couple will have paid the IRS over $100,000 in taxes just for being married!
Married people always pay a marriage penalty and they have been paying it their hole marriage, with or without children. And, over a lifetime most married people will pay over $100,000 in extra taxes just for being married.
The situation is easy enough to fix. First, make the Married Filing Jointly deduction and tax schedule twice the Single. Congress is already phasing in this change. Next, limit the Earned Income Credit only those taxpayers who claim the child exemptions. Congress has moved away from this. Finally, eliminate the Head of Household status. Congress isnââ¬â¢t about to do this.
What crime has a $100,000 fine? Marriage.
2003-03-02 12:14 | User Profile
Better solution - marry, and have children, instead of bringing more bastards here.
2003-03-02 16:04 | User Profile
The real solution is to marry and have the wife raise a family rather than work. The marriage penalty only nails married people where both spouses work.
2003-03-03 06:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Mar 2 2003, 16:04 The real solution is to marry and have the wife raise a family rather than work.ÃÂ The marriage penalty only nails married people where both spouses work.
True, in a better society with the right emphasis on things that would be good solution of sorts to shoot for. Although even in a pro-family society it would not alleviate the present financial difficulties and stresses on families that cause most wives and their husbands to feel, quite understandably, that they need to work. After all real family income for the middle class has been going down for quite a while now.
The solution to the family situation is not that simple. Groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) have a modest agenda, but even that has been strongly opposed by neocons like the WSJ, and for that matter a lot of libertarians, even paleo types, don't seem to really get the problem.
2003-03-04 17:25 | User Profile
It takes two incomes to live a nice upper-middle class lifestyle. But, I think most of these families who think they need two incomes are greatly mistaken and have made many expensive mistakes.
First, taxes really nail double income families, as I've already indicated. The federal income tax is very progressive and shouldn't be a burdon to families of modest income. Second, consumer goods and food are cheaper than ever. Third, there are many expenses associated with a double income family which eats up most of the additional income (day care, car expenses, frequent eating out, etc.).
People also make many expensive mistakes, such as going deep into debt for college or eating out much. But, I'll leave this avenue for another day.
Women working is the big reason why white birthrates have fallen through the floor.
It's too bad that families have been suckered into thinking that they need two incomes. It's too bad that massive sexual preferences for women (discrimination against men) encourge women to work rather than riase families. It's too bad that discrimination against men has made it harder for a man to support a family. It's too bad that unchecked immigration and the welfare state has made the cost of living higher than it should be. It's too bad that women are made to feel subwoman if they choose not to work.
2003-03-04 17:40 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Mar 4 2003, 17:25 **It takes two incomes to live a nice upper-middle class lifestyle. But, I think most of these families who think they need two incomes are greatly mistaken and have made many expensive mistakes.......
It's too bad that families have been suckered into thinking that they need two incomes. **
All of what you mentin is true. Going beyond this however there is the deeper philosophical reason - the radical individualism of women which has been drumed into them by school feminism when they are making their serious choices about what kind of life they want to lead.
Of course modern women are capable of resisting, as they see to some degree many of the things you mention. Many of them are latchkey kids who have grown up in two-wage families.
They also see however the lack of committment to marriage and the family and the ease and commonality of divorce in our society. This last factor I think is the no. 1 reason women pursue careers. The see the breakup of the family, and are nervous about making the full committment to it implicit in abandoning a full-time career.
A lack of committment, of course, which perpetuates the cycle.
2003-03-04 18:23 | User Profile
I guarantee that most married women with kids who work are doing so out of necessity. That little reality is part of the pricetag of a nanny state that can't wait to shovel money and services out to every subhuman with its hand extended.
I once got into an email brawl with Rockwell's dumb dora Karen de Coster on this subject: she kept assuring me that no wife NEEDS to work, it's just vanity and acquisitiveness that keeps them heading to the plant/office. I told her to quit writing her column then [women writers being as vain and frivolous as women lawyersor welders or checkout clerks] AND her CPA job [see previous], move in next to Leroy and Sugarfoots in Crack Alley,and squeeze out a few brats if you get bored of housework. No reply.
The ALLY McBEAL fantasy is just that. Ten or fifteen years in the workplace is enough to cure most women of the feminist claptrap they acquired as teenagers in school.
2003-03-04 19:08 | User Profile
We have 6 kids, all grown and happy. My Irish wife never worked, she is a great mother and wife. She came here penniless. I was unemployed when I sent for her. We started off in life with the $400 we got in wedding giftes, plus an Esso Card and a Diners Card.
I was recalled to active duty 6 months later, when she was 6 months pregnant. I stayed ACTY for 6 years, during which time we had 5 children, all on my Navy pay.
It can be done. We did it.
2003-03-04 19:49 | User Profile
No offense, Ed....same is true of my folks, who are of your generation. But that was when this was America. Not the revolving door, tax-and-spend enemy-of-its-own-people our elected officials have turned the joint into.
If they had to start out all over again, now... there's no way they could replicate that scenario.
2003-03-04 19:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Mar 4 2003, 18:23 The ALLY McBEAL fantasy is just that. Ten or fifteen years in the workplace is enough to cure most women of the feminist claptrap they acquired as teenagers in school.
From a political view that may be OK. But from a social and sociobiological view 10 or 15 years is, in the mean, too late. It is the decisions made by women during their years of prime fertility and marriagability that by and large are what determine the course of generations to follow.
2003-03-04 20:10 | User Profile
I think they can.
I remember after we were married our Honeymoon was a trip across country to LA in my Rambler, where I had a job promised me by Autonetics, a division of North American Aviation.
Herself had never travelled, and she was amazed at the enormity of the USA.
To preserve the cash, I gassed up at ESSO stations, and ate and stayed in places that honored the Diners card.
Instead of aying, I just handed in the card. This amazed her. "Sure, an how do you get one of those cards?"
I told her you just paid $10, and they sent it to me.
"My God", she said, "This is truly the land of milk and honey".
Then the bills came in. I broke the news to her. By this time she was pregnant wit Eamonn.