Is My Marriage Gay?

[Graeme]

I just came across this in the New York Times:

Is My Marriage Gay?

An interesting read, and quite thought provoking.

[DesDownunder]

Indeed an interesting article Graeme.

It highlights not only the inconsistent treatment by various states, but in so doing also invites reexamination of societal taboos and values inherent in the laws relating to domestic relationships as well as sexual identity.

This indicates the need to extend the human rights' concepts of freedom, to include personal expression of lifestyle, and life-sharing between consenting adults. The basis of such freedom would have to be secular, and without reference to gender, but there would be nothing stopping religions from granting their own conditions of marriage vows according to their tenets.

[Trab]

It seems so simple to me: marriage is a legal commitment binding two consenting adults together as a family unit. Just leave out all the other waffling details and it's all covered just fine.

The whole mess reminds me a bit of the tax laws. 10% of income is easy. However, they seem to insist that this is better: 10% of income from this source, but 4% from that, if the full moon is over Jamaica at the time you sell a house to a corporation in Hawaii in a leap year, or failing that, your spouse divorced you in Alaska in the first 10 days of a month ending in "er". Talk about over controlling.

[Cole Parker]

It seems so simple to me: marriage is a legal commitment binding two consenting adults together as a family unit. Just leave out all the other waffling details and it's all covered just fine.

The whole mess reminds me a bit of the tax laws. 10% of income is easy. However, they seem to insist that this is better: 10% of income from this source, but 4% from that, if the full moon is over Jamaica at the time you sell a house to a corporation in Hawaii in a leap year, or failing that, your spouse divorced you in Alaska in the first 10 days of a month ending in "er". Talk about over controlling.

I assume you're talking about 'our', meaning US, tax laws. I didn't and don't know Canadian ones are so bad.

Our tax laws were made by a combination of lawyers wanting a lifetime of highly paid work awaiting and guaranteed them, special interests in Congress looking for breaks and wealth, paid lobbying interest looking for loopholes for clients, powerful and connected Americans who inherited wealth and wished to keep it in perpetuity, a greedy government which kept looking for and then manufacturing ways to get its profligate hands on citizens' money, and an array of others with individual axes to grind and no social conscience.

Any system that becomes too complex for anyone to understand begs to be abused. Even the people running our tax system don't understand all the ins and outs of it, and like the Bible, there are many openly contradictory sections, ambiguous writing, and contravening mishmashes of arbitrariness.

The fairest system I know would be a simple one-rate sales tax. People who spend more pay more taxes. Everyone understands it. There is no need for an IRS as all taxes are collected at point of purchase. There are no estate taxes, no gift taxes, no capital gains exemptions, no mortgage exemptions, no dependent child deductions, none of this crap. It's pure and simple and understandable.

Or it would be until our dedicated public servants in Washington began fiddling with it, unable to help themselves. And I mean that last bit in all possible ways.

C

PS - You may now resume your intended discussion of the meaning of marriage. This was Trab's fault. He's to blame!

[DesDownunder]

Best summary of Tax laws I have seen, Cole. It applies to so much of the bureaucratic system.

As for the idea of one tax applied to everything, We have had a goods and services tax for some years now in Australia. It was ushered in to replace all other taxes. The tax would be collected by the federal government and then all of it would be returned to the states according to a formula that saw the smaller states not disadvantaged.

The idea was along the lines Cole specifies. So what went wrong? I mean something had to go wrong didn't it?

Well the Federal government legislation demanded that the states give up all its secondary taxes like stamp duty on transactions and payroll tax. The states didn't comply in giving up all these taxes immediately and there is evidently nothing the Feds can do about it.

While the simpler system we now have is returning more money to the states than ever before, they still can't seem to manage a budget or stop themselves from delaying removal of state taxes.

The Australian Federal government itself, survives on funds derived from income tax, in other words they didn't rely solely on the value added tax replacing income tax, because the VAT (or GST) rate would have had to have been too high. (it is set at 10%.) There is still a tax bureaucracy which is needed to collect and administer the system.

This leaves the Federal government in receipt of the income tax which is adjusted from time to time according to who is in power, to favour either the rich and powerful or the government with handouts to various sections of the population as well as to commercial interests. The balance of the system being achieved by raiding various public moneys, or fiddling with superannuation funds amongst others. At least that is how it appears to me.

Complexity has been reduced, but not to the degree, that either Cole and I would like, and the opportunity for mismanagement is still very apparent even if the instances of corruption are not as evident.

We have a long way to go.

[TracyMN]

Australia well in advance of the US again, go figure. Not perfect, but from where I sit,

enviable, indeed.

I applaud your description of the US and tax law, Cole. It reminds me of conversations

with Rick, and I can't help but think he would so much enjoy the company here.

As it is, I can pass it along to him, and continue to enjoy my education here.

Now i'm back to read the initiator article to this thread.

Regards and greetings everyone,

Tracy