HEY! I’m about to get EXTREMELY pedantic here. You might wanna click back later when I’ve got something a little more lighthearted to share. I’m just sayin.
Huzzah! There’s the sort of Britcrit we know and love! I knew he’d find that pesky text lying about somewhere or other.
So his fundamental question is this: “Why are married people being financially rewarded?” And my response: I dunno, maybe it has something to do with a little thing called Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman! …Oops. That’s from something completely different. (I hope someone out there knows what I’m talking about.)
Seriously. It all boils down to that quirky-but-lovable economic system we’ve gradually adopted as our own: capitalism. More specifically it has to do with capitalism’s raison d’etre, private property.
Private property–be it land, t-bills, or an entire collection of original, boxed Barbie dolls–is just that: private. It belongs to an individual or a specified group of individuals. When those individuals shuffle off, their private property remains (unless of course they’ve made arrangements to be buried in the manner of those decidedly anti-capitalist ancient Egyptians) and must therefore be passed on. And, of course, the legal family makes for convenient lines of such inheritances, conserving property and power among bloodlines. Marriage perpetuates and extends those bloodlines, thereby maintaining the family’s wealth.
Oh, and let’s not forget: building family = building the nation.
So, basically, as long as we’ve got private property, the family will be of central importance, because, yo: it’s all about the benjamins (and keepin’ ’em around for your hunny). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t open ourselves up to more diverse sorts of legal unions: if Jonno and I were to decide that Tom was really top-notch in our book–and who’s to say we won’t?–we should be able to form a three-way hitch that’d ensure the proper handing-down of all our photos, mementos, and my sizeable collection of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys. (Actually, you can have ’em all, Tom. Jonno can’t stand ’em.)
So given all that, is it any real shock that governments favor the family unit? I mean, maybe when we start mowing down people at 30 like they did in that lovely Logan’s Run, maybe then we can talk about nixing financial breaks for the old married folk. But given our current position, I think it’s a bit unreasonable.
Besides, legal unions ain’t all that. I mean, married folk have to attend twice as many family functions, which takes all the fun out of saving a couple hundred bucks on annual taxes.
The great thing about it, of course, is that I think Tom, Jonno, and I would probably agree on a lot of the same issues. I’d even send him an email if my #@$%! SMTP server was working properly….
sturtle [dot] com 