Sambal

Mark Shea wrote this: “[L]ibertarianism is a philosophy for people with no children.”

Why is marriage such a big deal? Why do some people care deeply enough about marriage to want to expand the historical and traditional definition to include same-sex couples, and others care deeply enough to claim that such an expansion would destroy marriage?

My wife and I were talking this over on Wednesday and one of the points that came up is that marriage is a partnership contract like no other. In a typical business partnership, there is a “shotgun clause” which allows one the partners to terminate the contract by offering to buy out the other. A partnership can be ended unilaterally; and the resolution is fair and final.

Marriage, on the other hand, is a putatively lifelong contract. The rules for terminating a marriage have been jury-rigged on to our legal tradition in the last few hundred years, and then twisted in the last fifty. The concept of alimony makes much more sense when you’re talking about a pre-WWII divorce for cause, rather than a modern “no-fault” divorce.

Contrasting marriage to a business partnership point by point, we see that a marriage can be ended unilaterally, like a partnership. But there is no “shotgun” — no means of pricing the marriage. Instead the marriage assets are divided evenly. And divorce is not final. A court can award alimony and child support, which continue indefinitely. I suppose this is an attempt to fairly value the lifelong commitment promised in the marriage; but the effect is rather nasty.

Alimony (and child support) are initially based on the higher-earning spouse’s current income (in the case of child support, the non-custodial spouse; but this is usually also the higher-earning one). As the years pass, they are adjusted to track current income. Or perhaps the higher-earning spouse is malingering by deliberately taking a low-paying job or returning to college? That’s OK — alimony will be based on “imputed income” — on the amount of money the malingering spouse could have been earning.

Basically, after a divorce, you can wind up with a nondischargeable claim on your ex-spouse’s future earning capacity — and also with the ability to compel this person to work at the best of their ability to support you. Of course the alimony claim can be forgiven by the recipient. In earlier times I believe this was called “manumission”.

Here’s Larry Elder on marriage and gay marriage, proposing King Solomon’s solution: okay, we’ll cut the baby in half! One side wants gay marriage, the other side wants no gay marriage — let’s have no marriage at all!

I have begun to think that this is the only consistent position for the supporters of current marriage rules to take. Certainly I would expect that if same-sex marriage becomes state-sanctioned, religious groups who strongly oppose same-sex marriage will refuse to perform civil marriages. Perhaps they won’t — perhaps, like the case of rubella vaccine, made possible by tissue taken from an aborted fetus, the church will weasel and take both positions, claiming that gay marriage is wrong but still acting for the state in certifying opposite-sex marriages.

Certainly there is a political risk in refusing to conduct civil marriages: many people may leave the church over it. (But haven’t they left already?)

I was working on our taxes the other night and I had some loose thoughts about campaign finance and the difference between the American and Canadian systems.

But first, why was I working on our taxes in February when they’re not due until April 30th?

Because employers have to file the T4 summary form (documenting all payroll taxes paid for all employees) by February 29, and we are technically an employer — at least, our corporation is. I had better records this year, so I was able to set up what I needed in about half an hour. It then took me nearly an hour to file with Revenue Canada’s T4 Web Forms. Much of the time was spent getting my access code issued (never received one in the mail) and then re-issued (”Hmmm… that does seem to be your access code. And you can’t log in with it? I’ll just issue you a new one.”)

That was Monday. Tuesday, Revenue Canada printed me up a “TAX DEDUCTION, CANADA PENSION PLAN AND EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE DISCREPANCY NOTICE” which I received in today’s mail, but it’s OK. I was prepared for it. Back in January I nearly had a heart attack when I noticed that the total amount that we should have collected for the year was different from the amount that Revenue Canada reports is in our payroll tax account, by somewhat over two thousand dollars.

The difference is in our favor — we overpaid, which is actually worse than if we had underpaid. If we had underpaid, Revenue Canada would have just charged us some interest and that would be that. But since we overpaid, they want to know why.

And the reason why is that in 2002, I didn’t keep very good records, and we found ourselves having underpaid our payroll taxes by rather a lot. And therefore owing rather a lot plus interest, in April of all times, and therefore having to pay rather a lot all at once. Then for some reason, Revenue Canada took our arrears payment for 2002 and interpreted it as a tax payment for 2003, and then they decided that our monthly payroll tax payment for 2003 was rather a lot and sent us a few bills for that amount. This all took a while to straighten out, and in the end we had overpaid 2002 by an amount of money which is somewhat over two thousand dollars, which was subsequently (June 18th if you must know) transferred to 2003. And this is what Revenue Canada wants to know about now.

Anyway, back to why I was doing our personal taxes. One of the products of the T4 Web Forms application is a set of beautifully-printed T4’s, so I decided to throw the numbers into Excel and see what the damage was in our personal taxes.

And now we can get back to campaign finance. I’m not sure of this, but I think in the United States, political contributions are not tax-deductible. On your tax return there’s a box you can check if you want $3 to go to the federal election fund, but it says right on the form that it won’t affect how much tax you owe. Other than that I’ve never noticed any political stuff on our tax forms.

Here in Canada, however, you can get a tax deduction for making a political contribution. Yes. Actually it’s worse than that. In Canada’s screwy tax system, there aren’t very many personal deductions; most things handled as deductions in the States are handled as tax credits here. For example, instead of deducting your student loan interest from your taxable income, you get a nonrefundable credit of 16% (which happens to be the lowest marginal tax rate) of your student loan interest. So a credit can never pull you down into a lower tax bracket, while a deduction can. Put another way, in the U.S., deductions come off the top of your income; in Canada, off the bottom. Charitable gifts are a little more complicated; your credit is 16% of the first $200, and 29% (the highest marginal rate) after that, up to 75% of your total income.

But as I said, it’s even worse with political contributions. If you give $100 to a political party, you get a credit of $75. So instead of getting a credit at the lowest marginal rate (as with student loan interest) or at a mixed marginal rate (as with a charitable gift), you get a credit at nearly five times the lowest marginal rate or more than twice the highest. After $200 in contributions the rate drops to 50%; after $550 to 33.33% up to $1,075 in contributions ($550 in credit).

It’s still a loss for the individual taxpayer, even at the best rate. You have a choice of giving $75 to the government or $100 to a political party; if you choose the latter, you’re still out the additional $25. But look at your matching funds: the government matches you 3 for 1 for your first $50 in political contributions. Not bad, eh?

Except that this is a horrible abuse of government power. If the state is going to collect income tax, it has to allow deductions for the costs of doing business. Further, it usually (ab)uses its power and creates deductions to encourage certain behavior in its citizens: hence the charitable gift deduction to encourage giving; the student loan interest deduction to encourage education; in the U.S., the mortgage interest deduction to encourage homeownership.

But for the political contributions, which is it? Does the government of Canada recognize political contributions as a “cost of doing business”? Or does the government want to encourage money gifts to political parties?

Somebody, please tell me again how the campaign finance system in the U.S. is corrupt.

An excellent amusement at the Claremont Colleges last night would have been to make a few hundred small crosses (say three feet high) and hammer them into the grass all over campus so people found them this morning.

What are they for? Are they because it’s Ash Wednesday today? Because of the movie (Mel Gibson’s Passion opens today)? Because of the cross-burning?

What would the administration do with them? Pull them up and throw them out? Certainly not burn them!

There is a 4-kg bag of sugar in my cupboard right now, and it’s nearly full. I could go and eat it all. It would taste good. I would surely be sick later, though, and because I know that would be the consequence, it’s hard for me even to seriously consider doing it.

I came up with this example this morning as I was thinking about the more adult forms of self-denial that I should (or do) practice. Often I feel an impulse to self-denial — or I know I should feel one — but I do not know the consequence well enough to have that as a reason to follow through. Perhaps I don’t understand viscerally what the consequence will be (as I do with the sugar), or I simply don’t know or can’t predict the result of my action. And so I am left with an impulse to self-denial warring with my desire.

This morning I asked myself: When I came to the Church, did I really expect that it would always be easy to do what was right? Did I expect that I would not feel temptations, or that if I did they would be easy to overcome? Did I expect that I would not be tested?

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a day of fasting and abstinence. It’s a good day for it outside: there is a heavy fog, unusual for Edmonton, and the air itself looks ashy. The fog reminds me of unpleasant things; to me it is the miasma of the whole human race, a visible manifestation of our sins.

Cheerful, yes? Usually on Ash Wednesday I read T S Eliot’s poem of that name:

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

GST = Got Screwed Today! Ah yes, the mail-order GST. Colby got bitten by it today. If you receive a product by mail from overseas, Canada Post collects the GST for you — which is to say, from you. Plus a $5.00 handling fee. The worst story I’ve heard is about someone who ordered a 15-cent lightbulb for his car, which was only available from by mail-order from the U.S. GST on that comes to one cent. So that’s a total tax of 3300% if you count the handling “fee” as part of the tax….

I have often fantasized about starting a business which offers Canadians a postbox in the States where their US deliveries can be sent. I would then truck the goods across the border, paying the GST, and mail them in Canada. For this I would charge less than $5.00, undercutting Canada Post.

Sadly, this business would probably still lose money, since Canada Post is taxpayer-funded. And it would probably infringe on CP’s postal monopoly. And I don’t live close to the US-Canadian border, either. But I can dream.

Incidentally, Colby should make the bullet points in this entry a teensy bit bigger. I can see them now, but when I first read this part:

Perhaps I’m helping to spoil a useful male pressure tactic, but I can only think this guy got what he deserved.

it looked like a continuation of the previous item, about Christ. (If you follow the link, it’s obviously not.)

Now it certainly could be claimed that Christ was getting “what he deserved” for fomenting rebellion (though the central tenet of Christianity is that He got what we all deserve), it’s unusual for Cosh to just toss off a phrase like that — usually when he’s attacking Christianity, he has a point. I looked a little harder and found the bullets separating the items. (Dude: use <li>)

UPDATE: It is accomplished!

Really

Of course, some of us know that Spot’s actually just gone undercover to supervise Halliburton’s construction of a pipeline from the oil fields of Mars to West Texas….

The editor of prestigious British medical journal The Lancet wishes that a 1998 study purportedly linking the MMR vaccine to autism had never been published. Seems that the study author failed to disclose a conflict of interest — he was also working for a legal aid firm, attempting to help determine if parents of children harmed by MMR vaccines had grounds to sue.

CDC has a summary of good MMR-autism research.

From Joanne Jacobs, this link to a dialect survey. Sadly, the survey is no longer open to participants, but you can view the results. The best so far?

What do you call the insect that looks like a large thin spider and skitters along the top of water?”

I’d call it a “Water strider” but whoever came up with “Jesus bug” deserves a award for “Most Inventive Blasphemy”.

Oh yes, and What do you call a drive-through liquor store? — where do they still have those?