We get a huge discount on the taxes for being married, though. $11,000 gets deducted from the income just for that.
Does anybody know what the official rationale is for that? This has to bejustified in some way, right? But how can one create a non-religious explanation for it?
Clarissa's Blog 
This is a measure with the aim to encourage procreation. That’s one of the reasons why homosexual-haters are so against gay marriage.
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It is just the standard deduction, x 2, right? So this part of it isn’t a marriage discount … although depending on the other rules in any given year (and how the brakets work) there are marriage discounts or penalties? I am now confused.
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My accountant said, “This is a deduction you get for being married.” That’s all I know.
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I think your accountant misspoke and Matt’s explanation, way below, is right. Initially I thought he was being condescending / weird because everyone knows this and you had to be talking about something more arcane, but no.
You have an “exemption” for each person being supported by the income reported. So, married filing jointly, 2 exemptions, with children, more.
Then, if you take the STANDARD deduction (as opposed to itemize, which I do, because with mortgage interest and as many work expenses as I have, I can deduct more than the standard deduction), it is about $11,000 for two people. But you would also get half of that for one person, and more for more people.
So, this is not a marriage “discount” except insofar as it would be so construable in the situation of a man with a girlfriend, which is where I think the idea of “discount” came from. Traditional situation: he is dating someone and then marries her. Now he claims her as dependent on his tax return and is suddenly paying noticeably less in taxes. Nontraditional: couple living together, and as per Bellamy’s example, income disparity is wide. Therefore filing separately the well paid one pays a lot in taxes, and the other does not but then is not making much. They get married and file jointly, and suddenly get into a different *tax bracket*. That, not the standard deduction, is what could give them an effective “marriage discount” — also if you itemize deductions and have 2 or more people on your return, you are more likely to exceed the standard deduction and get more back.
So the “marriage penalty/discount” is an *effect* … what they are trying to do is put more cash back in pockets of people who are supporting families on one income.
If you are taking the standard deduction, don’t have mortgage/kids/complicated capital gains, etc., you probably do not need an accountant — might be able to do taxes yourself by hand in an hour, or less with software.
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“If you are taking the standard deduction, don’t have mortgage/kids/complicated capital gains, etc., you probably do not need an accountant — might be able to do taxes yourself by hand in an hour, or less with software.”
– I prefer to leave professional work to the professionals. We have already had a case in the family when somebody tried to save money and did not get a professional accountant and then had to pay a fine of more than a quarter of a million dollars. That he obviously did not have and never had. And there are still more fines coming. There is no way I will put myself at risk of ending up in this situation to save a few bucks.
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More precisely:
This is a measure promulgated by woman haters with the aim to encourage procreation and slave wives. That’s one of the reasons why homosexual-haters (who are almost the same faggots whom hate women) are so against gay marriage.
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Are you are saying this is the official explanation? “We are woman-haters, etc.”? Obviously not. There has got to be an official rationale that is iron-clad enough to have made it impossible to challenge on constitutional grounds.
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encouraging an great value: the family.
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The official reason: to encourage a great and empowering value; the family.
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That would be unconstitutional.
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It depends on ones income bracket. It has cost my wife and me several thousand dollars in additional taxes per year to be married. The tax law is written to reward couples with one couple having a much higher income than the other. If both are similar, and both fairly large, there is a penalty for being married.
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Exactly. Women haters are not interested to couples with no woman slave.
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by couples…
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I was asking for an official explanation. It has got to exist.
Besides, I have no reason to believe that any of this changes when the wife makes much more. We had such a situation last year, and nobody cared.
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Ah, OK I get it! We are the couple where one is rich and one is poor. I’m the poor one, of course. 🙂
Now I have a new question: why are couples where one person makes much more rewarded?
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Basically, it is to reward one paycheck families, as most conforming to the traditional ideal. Women staying at home with the kids because this is the most proper way to raise kids, and also not to create undue pressure on the job market, so all men could get “family wages”. I know it is outdated rationale by now, but this tax code has been created a long time ago, and the social conservatives would not let it change…
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If there were no more convincing rationale somebody would have sued a long time ago on the grounds of governmental intrusion of privacy. Since nobody is doing this, I’m guessing there must be another reason.
So many Libertarians around and not a single one gives a rat’s ass about this very real governmental abuse. This is just more proof that all US Libertarians are simply unhinged Christian fundamentalists.
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Because they’re of the heteronormative type that has women being dependent on men. That’s the effect, but almost no one would outright say it.
Personally, I think there should be no marriage benefit/penalty. Everyone’s income in a household should be lumped together and treated as if only one person was earning it. This is better than the current regime because (1) it’s simpler; (2) it provides no extra incentives/disincentives for someone to marry; I mean, if you truly believed that the free market was the best way to go, you really wouldn’t want to distort it by providing monetary incentives for people to alter their personal lives, right?
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I’m not married yet. But will be soon. And since I have student loan debt, marriage will be somewhat of a tax penalty for me. I think the law is essentially created to encourage “one income families” or to encourage someone to stay home with the children. So David is correct (though bombastic.) I would rather have the married tax credit eliminated and replaced with universal pre school. 🙂
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P.S. I think Valter07 and I commented the same thing at the same time. 🙂
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Congratulations!!! A new reason to celebrate is always a great thing. 🙂
Yes, universal preschool. . . What a dream.
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This is a perfect example of why Marxism fails: economic reasons are easily trumped by ideologic needs.
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Are both of us Davids bombastic??
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No, I’m THE only one who is bombastic! 😉
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OK, folks, wait, the really bombastic person here is ME! 🙂 🙂
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Years ago, before the Bush tax cuts, it was apparently a tax disadvantage to file married, rather than as 2 single, unmarried people. No time for further research on whether this was a calculated effect of the Bush tax cuts or not – possibly was just a response to people complaining about a penalty on married couples not being fair. Because for sure the government doesn’t want to *penalize* marriage.
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This is interesting. So probably this is just a random effect of a confusing tax code?
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I am pretty sure that “married filing jointly” was beneficial even before the Bush Tax cuts. And if did become beneficial during the Bush years, then I would absolutely say that the benefit is an outgrowth of his adminstration’s Evangelical world view.
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‘married filing jointly’ has been and still is advantageous for married couples where one is unemployed and the total income is not terribly high. The marriage penalty takes effect at higher incomes with both spouses having similar incomes.
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No time to unpack it now, but this CBO study (pdf) from 1997 has a history of how federal income tax law has treated married couples. See especially page 3 and pages 6-8.
From what I can tell, there’s a bit of a pendulum effect, with Congress favoring married couples in 1948, then switching in 1969, then switching back in 1981, and then doubling down on the advantage to married couples in 1995.
The only Supreme Court case I have found on topic is from 1930. 😛
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OK, now I understand that the whole thing has gotten so convoluted that nobody knows how to approach it any longer. 🙂
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“So many Libertarians around and not a single one gives a rat’s ass about this very real governmental abuse.”
In fact, there are many right libertarians (not left) whom even approve that kind of shit.
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An economist, Noah Smith, argues that Libertarianism is really (in terms of its impact) about increasing the liberty of “local bullies” to bully others, in particular allowing them to use subtle means of coercion.
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I find that you scratch any Libertarian in the US and you find a fanatical Evangelical. Their version of freedom is enslaving everybody to their Church.
The leaders are definitely bullies, but many of the followers are quite, nerdy, shy guys.
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The aim to “encourage a great and empowering value: the family” is at least the electoralist reason. I’m not sure what the official reason really is.
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François Tremblay about voluntaryism;
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I think Kellen is closest.
In the course of human events never underestimate the power of inertia and stumbling through. In any system as dysfunctional as the tax system of … just about any country there will be unintended consequences that disadvantage people for random reasons. Since tax systems in a country like the US are weird overgrown interlocking systems a change to make things better in one place will end up biting someone else in the ass in ways those making the change hadn’t anticipated.
There’s no way to equally advantage every living arrangement of two income couples. At present your in the category being disadvantaged. Sooner or later someone will probably do soemthing to ease that (and bite someone else in the ass).
I still think Sarah Vowell had the best working definition of Libertarian: Republicans who don’t believe in God.
I suppose there are libertarians who have some religious belief (beyond the free market and free ridership) but I can’t remember any (though I am out of the loop so there’s that).
While Islamism (or political Islam) is the non-functionable political system most in the limelight (it keeps failing and failing and people still won’t give up on it) I think that Libertarianism might have that honor in the future. Some country will have to try it (so it can fail spectacularly). It will almost be worth it to hear the sputtering an rationalizations.
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“I suppose there are libertarians who have some religious belief (beyond the free market and free ridership) but I can’t remember any (though I am out of the loop so there’s that).”
– Ron Paul and his son contribute HUGE sums to Fundamentalist groups.
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Sorry, I’m writing on the run and get everything messed up. I mean, these groups donate to them and endorse their campaigns.
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Hey Clarissa, will actually try to give you a real answer unlike everyone else…
Here is a wikipedia article describing it in more detail if you want.. but here is the summary version.
Every individual gets a standard deduction of $5,500 if they file their taxes jointly.
The whole “marriage penalty/discount” comes from determining what that deduction should be for a married couple:
1. Simply double the standard deduction because you have two people.. Hence 11,000..and not really an unreasonable choice
2. Only give a partial deduction for the second person.
This is only a partial explanation… wish i had more time to summarize but hopefully that gives some context on the standard deduction.
Matt
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Yes, but if we were living together without the official paperwork, we would still be two people but would not have the deduction.
Is the official explanation that there is need to distinguish married folks from roommates? In case there is a divorce and so that roommates don’t claim part of the partner’s property?
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In Québec, there’s no fiscal distinction between civil union (with a lower bound for time spent together) and marriage.
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Yes, I know. I remember how my Canadian accountant was persuading me to remember “anybody, just a friend maybe who spent the night a few times.” 🙂
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In Quebec, though, you don’t have to worry about losing money in a divorce because Ministere de Revenue will pick your bones clean anyway. Those people are predators, wild beasts.
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“In Quebec, though, you don’t have to worry about losing money in a divorce because Ministere de Revenue will pick your bones clean anyway.”
Perhaps if Quebec (1) didn’t opt-out of so many federal and interprovincial programs (allowing it to take advantage of nationwide economies of scale and reduce administrative costs) and (2) work together with the other provinces, its taxes might not have to be quite so high.
For example, in Quebec (or at least when I took a tax preparation course) you have to file one tax return with the federal government, and a different one (IIRC with a different definition of taxable income) for the province. This is in contrast to everywhere else, where it’s just one return. The current arrangement creates unnecessary paperwork, has higher administrative costs, and complicated tax planning and preparation. And what is the point, exactly? Every other province gets by just fine by sharing returns and tax definitions with the federal government.
Another example. Last week, at CBC News, I read that all of the provinces (except) Quebec will be bulk-buying generic drugs. How does this benefit anybody? By acting as a monopsony, the provinces collectively have immense bargaining power, and can therefore negotiate a better price. By not participating, Quebec reduces everyone’s bargaining power. This increases the price for the entire country. How exactly is anyone supposed to benefit from this arrangement?
FWIW, I’m pretty sure that most of the above are probably low-hanging fruit, and therefore wouldn’t make that much of a difference. But still.
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Where’s this marriage deduction? The only deduction on my taxes that’s close to eleven thousand is the standard deduction. It’s $5950 for a single person and $11900 for two married people. That’s double the single amount with nothing extra for being married. Am I missing a tax break that I don’t know about?
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Hmm.. love the down vote when I was one of the only people to actually explain the law.. lol
If you lived together but were not married you would have both the individual deduction of $5500 (or as anonymous pointed out below techinically 5950 this year I think).. and 2 x 5500 = 11,000.
For the most part it is that simple.
There are definitely issues around “marriage penalty” relating to the marginal income of a spouse either receiving better or worse treatment…but in terms of the deduction you get nothing special…
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What is “the down vote”?
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Those thumbs up and thumbs down buttons you see at the bottom of every comment, to the blue button with an exclamation mark and the words “Rate This”.
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Ah! I never pay attention to them but I should. I think they are new.
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On an initial reading of the post it appears that the “discount” couldn’t be the standard deduction … because you get that anyway, single or married. So your initial explanation seemed not to apply. Upon review, it appears that it is what the post was referring to.
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We asked the accountant to demonstrate what the taxes would look like if we were not married. Her tax program has this option. And it showed clearly that we would have paid more.
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@Clarissa below — yes but that isn’t because the $11,000 is a “discount” for being married — Matt is right about this.
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I can only quote what my accountant said to me. I have zero personal knowledge about any of this.
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The tax code is a bricolage, patch after patch and amendment / adjustment after amendment / adjustment.
Libertarians are Republicans who don’t believe in God and who smoke dope.
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This is such a myth, about Libertarians. They have invented it to make us believe they are somehow differemt from the Evangelicals. Just look at Ron Paul’s anti-choice ravings. The creep is an Evangelical and his stupid ugly son is even more so.
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There’s some differences between political libertarians and militant libertarians. We can’t describe militant libertarians as you do.
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When I see a single US libertarian who supports reproductive rights, evolution, separation of church and state, I will immediately inform everybody right here on the blog. For now, though, I haven’t met a single one. They are “against the government” only until said government begins invading people’s bodies. That they have nothing against.
A dislike of taxes doesn’t really make one a Libertarian. It only makes one childish.
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You may have a point. Local ones have left the church (were Catholic and are now nothing) and want to tax churches so to help with deficit or with funding in general, so my current impression of Libertarians is them.
They are all men. Confront them on choice, etc., and they are for it. But they don’t get that if they are for it they cannot vote for Paul. I get the impression they are people who in terms of personality would be left-of-Democratic if they came from a different culture — they have left the Catholic/Republican background they started with, which takes something of a questioning mind — but are still somehow of that.
Evangelical in disguise may well be, though.
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“When I see a single US libertarian who supports reproductive rights, evolution, separation of church and state, I will immediately inform everybody right here on the blog”
I have one in my blogroll: http://cheapsignals.blogspot.com
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I’ll check the site out, definitely. This would be a great discovery.
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An interesting tidbit from the Congressional Budget Office study I cited upthread (p. 8): “The United States is among a minority of developed nations that tax married couples. More than two-thirds of the countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tax married couples as individuals. Only three other developed countries tax couples jointly as does the United States, and four others tax all family members as a single entity…”
(This is as of the summer of 1997; things may have changed.)
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So I’m childish because I dislike the act of thief that is called “taxes”?
“When I see a single US libertarian who supports reproductive rights, evolution, separation of church and state”
Penn Jilette?
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And the vast majority of libertarian support taxes because they’re minarchists.
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“So I’m childish because I dislike the act of thief that is called “taxes”?”
– Please, don’t make me have another discussion of how you (and me) would not survive two minutes without the governmental structure in place. Unless you have enough money to hire your own private army (or enough training to get hired as a private army), you will end up dead very soon. There would be no food, no electricity, no Internet. just gangs roaming the ruins, trying to kill and rob each other. This is what happened EVERY SINGLE TIME in history where governmental structures collapsed. But the good news is: nobody had to pay taxes. Which surely was a big relief in such a situation.
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Better to laugh at it…
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You talk about anomie, not anarchy.
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Well, Clarissa is one of those high and mighty “how dare you” liberals, you know.
I prefer the “theetie-wheetie” liberals, at least you can talk to them without being shamed or scolded every five minutes.
Also, Clarissa wants people to shut up about women’s exploitation:
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Wow, buddy, you are still obsessed with me. This is cute. 🙂
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Gary Johnson?
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@Rob F
Healthcare is a provincial domain in the Canadian Constitution. And Québec secession wil reduce the number of tax forms. You seem the dismiss the numerous unuseful federal overspending.
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If Quebec separated from Canada, I am virtually certain that it would in the short to medium term be a major economic disaster, including snowballing debt and skyrocketing deficits (think of certain places in Europe). It won’t be some pragmato-anarchist paradise. Separation would also (and how’s this for irony) provide an impetus for sending the French language on a downward spiral.
But I guess some lessons are only learnt through failure.
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“If Quebec separated from Canada, I am virtually certain that it would in the short to medium term be a major economic disaster, including snowballing debt and skyrocketing deficits (think of certain places in Europe). It won’t be some pragmato-anarchist paradise. Separation would also (and how’s this for irony) provide an impetus for sending the French language on a downward spiral.”
– I agree completely. If just the talk of referendum made the Qc economy crash and burn, we can imagine what will happen with actual independence. This is why most Quebecois don’t want independence.
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Technically there’s no libertarian position on abortion besides not wanting government to pay for it (or any vaguely medical procedure).
Individual libertarians might be in favor of restrictions to abortions on the basis of the rights of the fetus as a real or potential human being but I’m not aware of unanimity on where individual libertarians draw that line.
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The only serious libertarian/anarchist position about abortion is to be pro-abortion.
Abortion should always be available and promoted until the State disengage completely from healthcare.
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Who cares what a guy thinks about organs he will never be able to grow? 🙂 🙂
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libertarians aren’t anarchists (an even stupider political orientation since anarchy minus religion pretty inevitably leads to gang rule).
Libertarians want some government, they just don’t realize the caretaker government is not feasible for all kinds of reasons.
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http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.ca/2011/05/five-reasons-to-have-abortion.html
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“Individual libertarians might be in favor of restrictions to abortions on the basis of the rights of the fetus as a real or potential human being ”
– Yes, that’s what I’m saying: religious fanatics. Anybody who is not passionately opposed to the government controlling what happens inside people’s bodies is not a Libertarian. It’s a contradiction in terms.
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I agree.
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When I say rights of the fetus I was referring to fetuses past the point of viability, that is fetuses that would have a fighting chance to survive if removed from the host/mother in a non-lethal way.
A position I’ve found a few times among libertarians is that early term abortions should be freely available to the mother for any reason (provided the money to pay for it is not coerced from the taxpayers). But, past the point of viability elective abortions (by which I mean killing healthy fetuses whose birth is not a health hazard to the mother and who are not the products of rape/incest) are a violation of the fetus’s chance at life. I would assume that very few women decide on elective abotions in month 6 or afterward so I don’t know how many cases this would actually involve, I assume very few.
I’m not saying that I entirely agree with that position. But, it’s not the product of religious fanatcism and seems to represent a good faith (as it were) attempt to approach the issue from the standpoint of individual rights rather than emotional extremes of seeing a fertilized egg as a moral agent or a fetus in the 7th month of pregnancy as a formless clump of disposable cells).
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So the State is not a “gang”, Cliff?
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It’s kind of a gang, but one that can be limited by rules of engagement, quite unlike the barbaric gangs that arise when state power falters.
The thing is I don’t have any illusions about human nature. The choices aren’t state tyranny vs peaceful anarchy, the choices are roughly subjecting yourself to life within the context of a state which restricts some freedoms, taking your chances with competing gangs which tends to be really dangerous, joining the gang and becoming a predator or following in the steps of Karp Lykov.
That being the case, I’ll take my chances with the state.
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“The thing is I don’t have any illusions about human nature. The choices aren’t state tyranny vs peaceful anarchy, the choices are roughly subjecting yourself to life within the context of a state which restricts some freedoms, taking your chances with competing gangs which tends to be really dangerous, joining the gang and becoming a predator or following in the steps of Karp Lykov.
That being the case, I’ll take my chances with the state.”
– Exactly. This is precisely how I feel and I believe that this is the only mature position on the subject. Living in a well-organized society does cause certain discomforts but it is definitely better for the absolute majority of us than trying to survive like wild beasts in a jungle.
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Not related to the post, but I thought you’d enjoy this 🙂
http://www.theonion.com/articles/housewife-charged-in-sexforsecurity-scam,948/
From the article:
AKRON, OH—Area resident Helen Crandall, 44, was arrested by Akron police Sunday, charged with conducting an elaborate “sex-for-security” scam in which she allegedly defrauded husband Russell Crandall out of nearly $230,000 in cash, food, clothing and housing over the past 19 years using periodic offers of sexual intercourse….
“Clearly,” Summit County prosecutor Andrew Dravecky said, “after quitting her job, the accused began receiving money under the table from some other source: How else could she have afforded to not work? It’s now pretty apparent that at that point she began supporting herself by providing a certain service to Mr. Crandall.”…
Crandall’s mother, Bernice Steuben, a resident of the Valley View Senior Home in Yuma, AZ, is being sought for questioning in connection to the case: Police suspect that Steuben may have introduced her daughter to the sex-for-security scam after having used it herself from 1932 to 1971….
The Crandall case is not an isolated incident, said criminologist John Ohlmeyer, who said there are “literally millions” of such cases across the U.S. each year that never come to court.
“This kind of thing isn’t as uncommon as we’d all like to think,” Ohlmeyer said. “A woman finds herself in a situation where she isn’t employable. Or maybe she has interests like child-rearing, cooking and home-maintenance that keep her from getting a job. So what does she do? She cooks up a scheme to entrap a man using her body as the bait. It’s frightening, but it happens every day in this country.”
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It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. 🙂
“Russell Crandall out of nearly $230,000 in cash, food, clothing and housing over the past 19 years using periodic offers of sexual intercourse”
– More like “periodic failed promises of sexual intercourse” from what I hear. 🙂 🙂
Thank you, this is really funny.
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Well, we have, in our Constitution, something like this in article 18:
“Marriage, being a union of a man and a woman, as well as the family, motherhood and parenthood, shall be placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland.”
So we at least have grounds to make married people’s live easier, give them tax breaks etc.
On a side note: this article makes LGBT movement’s goal of getting at least civil unions practically impossible.
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“If just the talk of referendum made the Qc economy crash and burn, we can imagine what will happen with actual independence. This is why most Quebecois don’t want independence.”
This is the stupidest thing you’ve said here.
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If most Quebecois do want independence, then why did both referendums fail? And where exactly is the new one?
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The last failed with 49.5% of the vote and fraud over referendum spending by the federalist campaign.
“And where exactly is the new one?”
The next time a separatist party will have a majority government.
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But I can’t blame you entirely; almost all of McGillers are racist motherfuckers. This is not surprising!
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What race do the Quebecois belong to, in your opinion?
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Ukraine should be re-annexed to USSR!
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In 1990, 90% of Ukrainians voted in a referendum for independence.
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Quebec, if it went it alone, would lose about 8 billion in equalization payments. And that is by and large a redistribution from other provinces; it is not the federal government taking money out of Q and then giving some of it back. So, a majority of this revenue will be gone if Q leaves. This will increase Quebec’s already huge deficit. Not to mention that an independent Quebec will have to assume responsibilities it already has done for it (like national defense). This adds up to a huge deficit.
In addition, Q becoming independent would require it to assume its per capita share of the national debt. Added to its own debt, the resulting net debt will equal about 88% of GDP. This is a level comparable to several countries in Europe that are suffering the effects of economic crises. You don’t have to be an economist to realize that that situation (huge deficits and huge debt) will be unsustainable. Something will have to give, most likely some combination of higher taxes and lower spending. If you imagine what happened when tuition went up, you’ll get more of that when everybody feels the pinch. And that is pretty much what anyone would call an economic disaster.
The only alternative to austerity are a default (which would be disastrous) or a separate currency inflating the debts away (which is, once purchasing power is taken into account, a default-by-stealth).
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“In addition, Q becoming independent would require it to assume its per capita share of the national debt.”
– There is no way they would do this.
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“It’s far easier to simply send welfare checks to Newfoundland than it is to spend the time and energy necessary to properly build up and manage its economy for the benefit of the people living there. You know, like what the Icelanders did with their own economy. I think the answer to the question of why Iceland prospered while Newfoundland stagnated is obvious. Newfoundlanders made the colossal mistake of handing over their sovereignty to the Canadian government and in return they got mismanagement and neglect. Then comes the welfare checks and the derision from the Canadian media for being beggars and welfare bums. A derision that is usually reserved for Quebecers.
Quebecer’s need to learn the lesson of Newfoundland and Iceland. Independence for Quebec is not just for cultural reasons, it is also for economic reasons. No one will look after our economic interests better than we will. It’s that simple. Iceland, a country with very few natural resources, doesn’t need handouts from anyone. They are masters of their own destiny and we should be, too.”
http://whyquebecneedsindependence.blogspot.ca/2013/02/dependence-vs-independence-newfoundland.html?spref=fb
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“A derision that is usually reserved for Quebecers.”
– Just this one statement makes it clear that the author is deluded. This derision is figment of his imagination.
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Reserved for Québécois by the Rest of Canada.
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The real question we need to ask ourselves is what independent country would have gone along with such a project without any real compensation? I’m not saying that the St. Lawrence Seaway is necessarily a bad thing for Quebec. The Panama and Suez canals are both money makers for their respective countries but the revenues Quebec gets from the Seaway are nothing compared to what it lost. The reality is that no sovereign country would have agreed to that. The province of Quebec, however, had no choice but to go along with a plan that was detrimental to its economy. Not only did Quebecers have to go along with the plan but they had to partly finance it through their taxes.
Being dominated by another nation has its price. We’re never told of this story and of how many billions were sucked out of Quebec and sent to Toronto. No, we’re not told about that but we are endlessly told about transfer payments and how Quebec is like Greece or a third-world country and how Quebec needs Canada to support its extravagant socialist life-style!?!
I think it’s time for Quebec to start writing its own history and stop letting others invent it for us.
http://whyquebecneedsindependence.blogspot.ca/2013/02/quebec-nationalism-and-decline-of.html
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“The real question we need to ask ourselves is what independent country would have gone along with such a project without any real compensation? I’m not saying that the St. Lawrence Seaway is necessarily a bad thing for Quebec. The Panama and Suez canals are both money makers for their respective countries but the revenues Quebec gets from the Seaway are nothing compared to what it lost. The reality is that no sovereign country would have agreed to that. The province of Quebec, however, had no choice but to go along with a plan that was detrimental to its economy. Not only did Quebecers have to go along with the plan but they had to partly finance it through their taxes.
Being dominated by another nation has its price. We’re never told of this story and of how many billions were sucked out of Quebec and sent to Toronto. No, we’re not told about that but we are endlessly told about transfer payments and how Quebec is like Greece or a third-world country and how Quebec needs Canada to support its extravagant socialist life-style!?!
I think it’s time for Quebec to start writing its own history and stop letting others invent it for us. ”
http://whyquebecneedsindependence.blogspot.ca/2013/02/quebec-nationalism-and-decline-of.html
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Since you brought in Ukrainians as an example, I have to remind you that they paid an enormous financial price for independence and are still paying it every day. If you want to convince yourself that independence – anybody’s independence – can possibly come without a steep economic penalty, feel free. Even though there is not a single place on the planet (except the huge US) where independence was not accompanied with a dramatic economic blow.
” No, we’re not told about that but we are endlessly told about”
– What’s with the impotent sentence structure? Only 5-year-olds need to be told things. Adults fashion discourse on their own.
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“If you want to convince yourself that independence – anybody’s independence – can possibly come without a steep economic penalty, feel free.”
There will be some economic clash at the start, clearly. Even Pauline Marois, the current PM of Québec, have said that. But at the long term, conditional to have our own currency, this should be profitable.
“What’s with the impotent sentence structure? Only 5-year-olds need to be told things. Adults fashion discourse on their own.”
The author is a francophone. This is badly written.
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“There will be some economic clash at the start, clearly. Even Pauline Marois, the current PM of Québec, have said that.”
– Then what are we arguing about?
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“In 1990, 90% of Ukrainians voted in a referendum for independence.”
And that’s great!
But they were wrong! 😉
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It doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. We are discussing how people who really want independence can make it known.
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Seriously, I wholeheartly approve their decision.
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“What race do the Quebecois belong to, in your opinion?”
No particular race, seriously. But almost all McGillers act like the Québécois are the black minority in South Africa…minus slavery and genocide, fair enough.
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I don’t think I can deal with yet another South African comparison this week. 🙂 🙂
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They do think that Québécois are inferior to them.
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Links, please. Otherwise, this is all a figment of somebody’s imagination.
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“We are discussing how people who really want independence can make it known.”
Good point. As you can see in Palestine (and Israël), battles for local autonomy are often very difficult and long-lasting battles. And this is even more difficult when a particular linguistic group want to stay in Canada and when we have so many people that feel too much confortable right now. And as René Lévesque said, Canada is not a gulag and he was absolutely right on this.
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About the immaturity of statism…
“It seems to me like he is not describing women as much as he is describing immaturity: the longing for someone, anyone, to take control and give them orders (a “decider”), the reliance on feelings, and to this we may add the previous points of being impressed by pageantry and the need to be kept ignorant. All of these are stereotypical traits of the immature, childish mind (which is not to say child-like: children in some respect are more mature than adults).
But of course most people do not recognize such a mentally retarded, starry-eyed attitude towards flashy newscasts and uniforms as being immature, because in fact it is hailed as maturity. More specifically, maturity, in statist terms, means to accept to “play the game.” In our society, there are many different games: the democracy game, the capitalism game, the religion game, the relationship/power relations game, the legal game, the attractiveness game, the reproduction game… there are as many games as there are collectivist belief systems. These games all perpetuate either because there is a class of people who benefit from such a perpetuation, or because they have been transmitted from generation to generation and accepted as gospel. In the former case, the rules are written and enforced by people, in the latter by tradition.
Why is there such a virulent reaction against people who refuse to participate? They do not hate their opponents so much. After all, how can you have a game without opponents? But it must necessarily be the case that anyone who refuses to participate in the games is considered to be against society and worse, because they are the only people who deligitimize the game itself. The real opposite of a player is not another player, but rather someone who fights against the game.
It is immature to give away one’s capacity to think in order to feel accepted. The only real opposite of the pseudo-maturity of “going along” and “playing the game” is the real maturity of taking responsibility for one’s actions and beliefs. The only responsible thing to do is to turn on your mind, tune into reality, and drop out of the game.
This is not to say that every single person who has a career or votes or believes in God is fixated on identities. Certainly it is possible to do these things because one really wants to do them, not out of any game duty. But I don’t think you can be authentic and follow all the rules, because they are precisely meant to take away your individuality and your values. They are meant to mold you into one body, one attire, one livelihood, one belief, one way of seeing others. What true self, what expansive being, what expansive mind, can fit such a mold? How do you fit the big principles of freethought in a ballot box without betraying yourself?
Statist immaturity is also related to faggotry in matters of relationships and sexuality. The immature mind sees sexuality as something disgusting, to be avoided, unless it is used for the sole purpose of playing the reproduction game, much like the faggot, who finds sex with women repulsive but must use it in order to affirm his masculinity by having children. The immature mind sees all relationships as power relations, opportunities to assert or lose control, with the male gender as the naturally superior one. All these things are also part of the faggot mentality, especially the male gender being superior: a woman pretending to be a man is amusing, but a man debasing himself to pretend to be a woman is vile. A woman having sex with another woman is relatively irrelevant, since they are both of the weaker gender, but a man having sex with another man is horrifying.
As I mentioned before, immaturity seeks authority. Indeed, the statist attitude towards authority is to officially repudiate it while actively seeking its favors. And this is precisely the paradox of democracy that, while it is formally a system where there are no authorities, it in fact cultivates authority. Because the individual finds himself alone and equally powerless towards his fellows, and yet caught in a law monopoly, he must look up to some centralized authority to bring about what he wants or needs. In short, social warfare is a necessary consequence of democracy, creating the political game.
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OK, this will end up bringing this guy over here again.
“As I mentioned before, immaturity seeks authority.”
– The opposite is true.
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The absence of authority seeks maturity.
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“Then what are we arguing about?”
We argue about this raving lunacy:
“If just the talk of referendum made the Qc economy crash and burn, we can imagine what will happen with actual independence.”
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You agreed with this statement 3 comments ago: “There will be some economic clash at the start, clearly. Even Pauline Marois, the current PM of Québec, have said that.”
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But this is the problem RIGHT NOW.
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But this is not the problem RIGHT NOW.
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“Links, please. Otherwise, this is all a figment of somebody’s imagination.”
You know those McGillers….
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And the rest of the Montreal West Island is even worse than those McGillers…
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I never heard the word “inferior” from anybody at McGill in any context except when we discussed coffee at Second Cup. 🙂
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You’re lucky. Or maybe your friends were not canadians.
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“I can only quote what my accountant said to me. I have zero personal knowledge about any of this.”
My point is: if you glance at the first few lines of the form, you see what the $11,000 is. Or if you look at the whole form, you see how the whole thing worked. Especially in the simple tax situation you seem to have, the forms are not at all hard to follow.
Then you are not vulnerable to whatever cute way the accountant decided to explain things, whatever some political candidate says on tv, etc.
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