The High Price of Being Single in America | Hacker News Reader

The High Price of Being Single in America

theatlantic.com

104 pointsKopion104 comments

This is unusually bad writing for the Atlantic. The article concludes: "Our lower-earning woman paid $484,368 for being single. Our higher-earning woman paid $1,022,096: more than a million dollars just for being single."

Breaking down those numbers, $381,600 (79%) and $763,200 (75%), respectively, of each person's additional cost comes from living arrangements--the fact that married women spend less on housing than unmarried women of the same income level.

They say: "We did consider that the discrepancy was in part due to the simple logistical fact that two people can split a rent or mortgage. However, other less obvious factors also come into play."

They wave their hands and point to discrimination against single people in finding housing, but then completely avoid trying to quantify those effects and just use the big number. No shit it's cheaper to split a household with someone than to live alone. That's one of the purposes of getting married.

The same is true for the "health spending" category. They again wave their hands about "discriminatory policies" but fail to actually point out a single policy that might explain higher healthcare expenditures by singles. They point out that married disabled people fare better, because they can combine their incomes, but that again reduces to the obvious argument that it's cheaper for people to couple up than to try and live alone.

The whole income tax calculation ignores the fact that around half of couples (I've seen figures from 40-60%) actually pay a tax penalty to get married. My wife regularly (half-)jokes that we should get a divorce to save money.

For some reason that escapes me (or maybe just depresses me), the editors of The Atlantic have a strong interest in trolling upper class/professional women, and do it regularly. They are not particularly interested in the quality of the pieces.

The spouse's income is described in para. 7 (depending on how you count):

"Our married women's husbands worked too, earning $51,000 and $103,000 respectively."

Thanks. Corrected.

It's interesting they set the husband's salaries based on the idea that women earn $0.78 for every $1.00 earned by men, but fail to account for the fact that a woman who stays permanently single is far less likely to suffer the reduced lifetime earning power that comes from having kids.

I also found it interesting that they pick the women's salaries from statistical averages, but don't do the same for men, but just extrapolate based on some hand waving guess of a multiplier.

The article misses the entire point of civil marriage in the first place, which is to provide incentives for a structure historically seen as positive for society, not to give individual people what they want. We provide (dis)incentives for all kinds of activities, of which marriage is one. Charitable giving and smoking are a couple other areas we try to nudge behavior with tax policy.

The authors are people in one sphere of society saying they don't like laws that incentivize behavior that is different from their own. But nevertheless, they are making a conscious choice (even with information about the additional economic costs etc.) to remain unmarried, which includes associated costs and everything else that comes with that choice.

In their case, we all win in one sense. Society gets some additional tax revenues to support social services, and the authors get something they prefer instead: singleness.

Not all of our preferred behaviors are given incentives by the government; only the ones considered compelling and in the public interest. Civil marriage primarily exists for the state; not really for you.

Note: Sure, there are good and interesting arguments about the social value of civil marriage, whether or not it should even exist, and if so, in what form. I'm not going there. I'm just pointing out that the authors are making a conscious economic decision and are disappointed that they pay an added price.

We do not exist for the benefit of the state, the state exists for the benefit of the people. Stop using tax resources to discriminate based on lifestyle choices.

Let's suppose hypothetically, for the sake of argument, that numerous careful, politically neutral scientific studies have been conducted, and they reveal that children who grow up in two-parent homes have significantly better outcomes -- fewer suffer abuse and neglect; on average they get better grades; they have more education and get better jobs; they live longer, healthier and happier lives.

Let's suppose these studies correctly controlled for all conceivable other variables like race, income level, education, profession, etc.

Don't we owe it to those children to make sure that as many as possible are born into two-parent families? Isn't a financial incentive to marry a great way to balance society's interest in maximizing the well-being of its future citizens in this way, while still allowing its citizens who desire alternative lifestyles the freedom to do so?

I have no idea whether real studies have been conducted that are similar to my hypothetical ones. But based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence, and without knowledge of scientific evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable to me to assume that heterosexual two-parent families generally have better outcomes.

Then let's suppose there's a study that shows children who grow up in a rich family grow up healthier and happier and have better education and better jobs. Don't we owe it to those children to make sure that as many as possible are born into rich families? Raising children as single parents is already hard enough, a financial disincentive for them will only make matters worse.

Not really. At most, we should give incentives to those who marry and have children.

Agree. I was drowning in the flood that was the authors' self-entitlement.

I'm not sure how you can say that "the article misses the entire point" when the third paragraph is entirely devoted to addressing it.

They didn't address it in the slightest. They mentioned "social good" in a sentence and then demonstrated that they either didn't understand what that meant or decided to completely ignore it by then talking mostly about individual happiness. Society is more affected by your behavior and your drain on its resources than by how happy you feel.

Get rid of marriage from the tax code entirely. If you both make near-equal income, there's not a marriage benefit, but a marriage penalty. My wife and I pay $5-10k more a year in taxes because we decided to get married. The tax-code still encourages the old paradigm of one breadwinner and one person staying home to take care of the children.

It's not that simple, for any tax code which is progressive (i.e. where someone making $200K pays a greater percentage in taxes than someone making $20K).

Because it you're single, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your own income. But if you're married, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your combined income -- so it doesn't matter if you make $180K and your spouse $20K, or you both make $100K. In a marriage, you want to be able to "trade around" resources like that, instead of one partner being classified as "living in poverty" and the other considered well-off.

So if you want a tax code that seems progressively "fair", you're pretty much forced to take marriage into account.

> [If] you're single, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your own income. But if you're married, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your combined income -- so it doesn't matter if you make $180K and your spouse $20K, or you both make $100K. In a marriage, you want to be able to "trade around" resources like that, instead of one partner being classified as "living in poverty" and the other considered well-off.

Why?

You know, you have a good point. Now what about this family's children? Perhaps they will qualify for half of Medicaid and half of a food stamps subscription while they're attending their $30,000/yr preschool.

Or you could treat them exactly the same as children of single parents are treated. In other words, count them as beneficiaries of the income of both parents.

No reason we need a marriage penalty to prevent to stop your scenario from happening.

Because it's cheating the system if people can collect public assistance while simultaneously being supported by their spouse.

That's social security, different from taxation. There is no fundamental reason the numbers used to calculate owed taxes from should be the same ones used whether one gets food stamps (this reply counts for both replies to the GP, no need in me making the point twice :) )

Yeah, there are some weird incentives if married. If one spouse makes $1mm/yr, it makes less sense for his wife who makes $0 to earn any marginal income than it would for a single woman to do so, since the first $0-10k of her own income will be taxed at a very high (~55% in California) marginal rate.

This has real consequences when people divorce -- since it's so disincented for one partner to work while married, professional skills are likely to have atrophied. There are also social/psychological/etc. issues why more equal incomes make more sense.

It's not net disincented, half of a professional salary is nice walking around money if you already have living expenses covered.

I guess that's a valid point. Though it would be an issue if there were a negative income tax.

The tax rate could easily be based on the average of the salaries of the (adult) individuals of the household. If you have one person making 100k supporting one person, why not pay the same rate as two people making 200k to support two people. Instead, those two people currently pay the same rate as one person making 200k to support one person (more, technically, since it also moves them above the limits where they lose many writeoffs).

Why??

What's special about their spouse giving them money, vs. being supported by any random person?

The fact that you refer to it as "giving them money" indicates you have a very poor grasp on the concept of marriage. A family generally lives together, pools their income, and pays for most things together anyway. There aren't usually many outright transfers.

To answer your question, living off the support of "random people" is not very comfortable or lucrative. You might see people around who try to do that. We call them homeless people. They don't usually pull in enough to worry about.

Get rid of marriage from the law entirely. Marriage could be expressed in a standard contract that gives the sorts of rights the it currently carries. The state shouldn't have any say in who enters this sort of agreement.

This was Mitt Romney's suggestion for gay marriage, but the truth is that there are all sorts of rights that can only be conferred by marriage. For example: you can't write a contract that says your business partner should pay less taxes, but marriage can. You can't write a contract that gives your business partner the right to a green card, but marriage can. There's literally hundreds more.

We are a species that likes to pair-bond; we consider it a greater hardship to separate members of a pair than members of a looser association like friendship. The legislation reflects that. Social engineering via tax breaks are a dumb idea, but deleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is impractical and probably undesirable.

I think you could change the law to allow the currently-conferred-by-marriage rights to be otherwise assignable.

I basically am in favor of religions being able to define "marriage" however they want (and am confident there would be a variant, if not primary variant, of every major religion which supported and another which denounced gay marriage).

The state should do something else, for everyone, with all rights handled through the state's thing.

The quick hack is to just require all new marriages also be civil unions, and not recognize future marriage otherwise. Civil union should get every current private and government benefit of marriage. Strictly religious benefits from private entities could potentially be withdrawn from civil unions (I honestly have no idea what those would be).

This has been repeatedly suggested, but given all the fuss from the religious right over giving others equal rights, the uproar that would be caused by attempting to take rights away from them would be enormous, and political suicide.

In most of the country this is political suicide anyway (there is probably 50% of the country where stripping non-heterosexuals of citizenship would be a winning political strategy).

I have a lot more faith in a judicial solution than a legislative one. March should be interesting.

I am torn, because I want to upvote your first para which accurately addresses the points raised by the parent; yet your second para is all fluff, empty rhetoric, assertions totally without justification.

If you are a new kind of troll, I salute you.

It is never my intention to troll, as I hope my commenting record attests. Which of my statements do you consider unjustified?

I was thinking specifically of the statement "[D]eleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is [...] probably undesirable."

Hmm good point, I'm taking notes from this one.

Social engineering via tax breaks are a dumb idea, but deleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is impractical and probably undesirable.

The only rights of marriage that cannot be conferred by contract are the parts that fall into the "social engineering via tax breaks" (or redistribution) category.

Immigration rights are not tax breaks, and they are a hugely valuable benefit of marriage. Marriage gets you a green card within two years; attempting to do the same as, say, a 25 year old with a bachelor's degree could take upwards of 7 years. (Marriage is also much cheaper)

There's other rights, like hospital visitation, legal indemnification, etc. that also don't fall into that category.

You get hospital visitation with a medical proxy contract.

You are correct about immigration and legal indemnification, though I question the social utility of both those benefits.

Are you suggesting that marriage can be expressed as a contract between two people, without the government being involved? This is not the case.

For example, my earnings go into a account I hold jointly with my wife. If marriage carried no special privileges, then we would need to keep track of how much of the income she "received" from me, to pay gift taxes. "Ok, honey, we ordered a $20 pizza, and you ate four slices, so I guess that means you received $8 worth of income..." Fortunately, we are spared this insanity, because gifts to spouses are tax exempt. This allows us to share our money like we share our lives.

Spousal green cards, spousal privilege in court, and Social Security survivors benefits are other examples of privileges that cannot be granted through private contracts, but that require the government's involvement.

You are right that marriage currently cannot be expressed in this way. However, I would like to see it be able to be expressed this way.

How would that be accomplished? For example, spousal residency.

Would that be a general right - any US citizen could grant permanent residency to anybody else, through a private contract?

Or would you rather eliminate the right entirely, so that if you fall in love with a foreigner, you have to hope they can make it to you through other immigration channels?

Hmm. As a fiancee visa recipient (now Lawful Permanent Resident) who is necessarily familiar with that area of immigration law, your proposal is probably more interesting than you realize.

US Citizens who wish to petition USCIS to grant permanent residency to their fiancee or spouse must, as part of the petition process, sign a form that creates a legal contract with the US Government that the US Citizen sponsor must repay any means-tested social benefits the beneficiary receives. This is in addition to the filing fees incurred as part of the process.

Given that this bond must be created as part of the process, I could see your proposal as potentially being OK, except that USCIS would have to set up rules to limit this ability if the sponsor fails in their implicit duties to get the beneficiary on their feet. Basically, I see it as potentially being a privilege, not a right.

That sounds interesting, a sort of "personal sponsorship" visa. You vouch for somebody, they get to move to the US, and you bear partial responsibility for their actions (like a parent would for a child) until they obtain traditional residency?

Exactly. This is what I try to explain to people all the time when they bring up gay marriage. I argue that the state should be out of marriage - all marriage - it is a social contract.

Marriage wasn't even in law until the late 1800's when they had to define it to outlaw polygamous Mormons.

What do you mean? Marriage licenses were issued in the American colonies, so state marriage licenses are in that sense older than the USA.

You do get some choice in how to file. I'd much rather the tax code applied equally to everyone - single, married, children or childless. The goal should be for the tax return to be less than a page long and so dead simple that billions of dollars are not spent each year just on filling them out.

I've heard of a proposal to replace income taxes with consumption taxes.

This way, the government wouldn't have an excuse to poke its nose into every citizen's private finances.

Unless you're running a business, paying your taxes is dead simple: When you buy stuff, pay the price that comes up on the register.

Of course, it punishes people who save money, because anyone with savings at the time the law changes would be taxed twice: the (pre-change) income tax they paid earning the money, and the (post-change) consumption tax they paid spending the money.

You'd think it'd be political suicide to propose something like this (and, indeed, despite the IRS's regularly topping the list of most-loathed government agencies, the consumption-tax proposal has remained well on the fringe). But consider: The US government's inflationary fiscal and monetary policies punish savers, too, and they get away with it. Clearly, living within one's means is only for losers.

Fun fact: the poor consume more than they produce, while the rich produce more than they consume.

Thus, a consumption tax would hit the poor the hardest (proportionate to income), and are thus unpopular. Don't get me wrong - I personally favor them. Consumption taxes hit people in proportion to the benefit they receive from society. But they are a political non-starter for this reason.

I think consumption taxes combined with a basic income/negative income tax (to replace other government assistance) are more politically viable than strictly consumption taxes on the first dollar alone.

But then you have the "they're taking away your food stamps! your social security! and new taxes" etc., even though you're giving them net more money.

Agreed. The government should not be in the business of social engineering to increase tax revenues. That aspect of governance should be entirely reactive, not proactive. The government should be a subservient entity, not a manipulative one.

Eh, overall I think tax-related stuff is the "least bad" way for the government to influence behavior, compared to criminalization and the use of force. (The assumption here being that a government with no way of exerting control over its populations behavior is impractical, though I know some disagree with that premise.)

(Referring to the idea of using taxes to influence behavior in general rather than the specific; in this case, I'm having trouble coming up with any realistic (for the modern UN) way more heavy-handed approaches could be applied.)

Government should not be in the business of influencing behaviour at all, except for preventing direct harm by one person to another. Any thing else is just nanny state visit bullshit

How does the tax code work in other countries? Is US unique in its treatment of marriage versus singles?

In Australia married couples file their own tax separately.

One income supports 5 people in my case, but I am taxed the same way as if that income supported one person.

No system is perfect. The US system much better recognizes capacity to contribute taxation.

as is the case in india - everybody files taxes individually (and not as a family unit). Having moved to the US recently, it was quite a surprise to me that I was paying more in taxes per year than if I my wife and I were filing taxes individually as single people.

1) I don't believe this is possible on a joint return 2) If indeed it is possible, what's stopping you from filing as "married filing separately"?

There are different different brackets for single vs married (http://www.mydollarplan.com/tax-brackets/). Filing separately uses the joint brackets divided by two.

If two people each make $500k (nowhere close to the average/median, but it illustrates the point). They would pay the 39.6% rate on anything over $400k if single, or 2 * 100k * .396 = $79.2k. If married filing jointly, they would pay 39.6% on anything over $450k, or 550k * .396 = $217.8k. If filing separately, they would pay the same $217.8k (2 * 275k * 39.6%).

Even looking at something like each making $150k, the marginal tax rate for singles is 28% and the rate for a married couple is 33%.

1) It is possible. A quick look at the tax code would show the 33% bracket starts at 178k for individuals, and $217k for couples. 178*2 > 217.

2) Married filing separately is not even remotely the same as filing as a single.

Tax code encourages having kids. If family has kids, then it's unlikely that spouses would have about the same income.

"Insurance policies—ranging from health, to life, to home, to car—cost more, on average, for unmarried people compared to those who are married."

Well, the actuaries actually process statistics on why rates should be lower. That has nothing to do with gvt and everything to do with statistics. I'll buy an actuaries reason over the govt, as they are specifically doing this to make the most money for the insurance companies.

The question that comes to my mind is, which of the following situations is true?

A) Marital status is an input to the insurance model. If all other inputs but marital status are changed, the model outputs different values, and the marriage is lower.

B) Marital status is correlated with other factors, which are input to the insurance model. For example, it is quite conceivable that individuals who are either very young or very old are likelier to be unmarried, and also likelier to be higher risks for many types of insurance (e.g. a young driver is risky due to inexperience, an elderly driver is risky due to declining faculties and health problems that interfere with driving).

As an Indian, and asking purely from a cultural perspective how is the family system in America?

This might very well be stereotyping but the impression we have about US is that divorces are very common and marriage rates are low. And the family system is pretty disintegrated. There was a article posted here few days back on how a guy was sleeping on the streets while he could stay with his sister. That sort of thing is not imaginable here in India.

Also being married has its own advantages. Regardless of whatever the feminist movement believes. Married women do get a great deal of financial security, physical security and comfort by the very virtue of the way marriage is structured.

Something that is seen to be happening here in India is increased rates of Alimony claims, false dowry cases and super powerful laws in favor on women(which seem to be abused currently) may lead to problems like these.

This article makes a nice read.

I realize that since you are Indian, your culture is your basis of comparison and contrast with the US, but you should be aware that India and other South Asian countries consistently rank among the worst on Earth in international humanitarian organizations' analyses of women's rights.

I'm married, I think being married is great, and I also know that America has some serious social ills, but I would never trade America's "disintegrated family system" for the current system in India where numerous forms of violence against women are so rampant. A little bit of feminism would do Indian society a lot of good.

>>but you should be aware that India and other South Asian countries consistently rank among the worst on Earth in international humanitarian organizations' analyses of women's rights.

Not denying. You are very correct.

But I guess not all form of oppression include hitting, beating and other forms of violence.

Leaving a women all alone to herself and asking her to earn a million dollars more than a man merely to survive is nothing short of a slow torture in itself. Something against which you cannot scream, complain, whine or even expect others to show sympathy about. In the name of freedom this is just bonded labor of a different kind.

Freedom(or a illusion?) is of no use when you tell a woman she can do whatever she likes in the time left after a 15 hour work schedule, tending to kids and other needs of her dependents.

Coming to India's problem with violence against women. It looks big also because of the mere population scale you are looking at. Although I agree with you as a society we have a long way to go when it comes to protecting women.

Numerous forms of violence against women in India are not as 'rampant' as you think they are. There is little causal relationship between sexual assault in India and the integrated family system. The US on the contrary has the one of the highest rate of sexual assault on women in the developed world - obviously feminism doesnt help as much you think it does.

The integrated family system is one of the best things about India and its culture and is amazingly effective in improving life satisfaction levels across demographics.

For a more objective comparison of the benefits of Indian culture, which discounts the skew resulting from living in a developed economy, you probably need to compare life satisfaction levels of Indian Americans with the rest of America.

divorces are very common and marriage rates are low

I believe today, this is pretty accurate. In the USA, reportedly around half of all marriages end in divorce, and around half of the adult population is unmarried.

the family system is pretty disintegrated

This varies on a case-by-case basis. Some families are as tight as can be, some are not.

The issue is not forced by social pressure as much as in other countries because of the "set out to make your fortune" aspect often seen as part of growing up in the USA.

Growing up, many of the kids I knew had divorced parents, who were often remarried.

While I agree with the general premise...

I'd love to see these numbers run again, but with a child or two thrown into the mix at marriage, or 5/10 years down the line.

Many societies try to promote childrearing via tax benefits - our just has it structured primarily through a marriage credit.

I had that thought too, but they sort of addressed that. Per capita, child rearing costs single women more than married women. That's because married women get to split costs with husbands.

If you look at divorce statistics, for all that men feel that they get screwed, after a divorce the ex-husband usually has a significantly better standard of living, and the ex-wife and kids wind up worse off. (My source for that is _The Price of Motherhood_ which is a fascinating book, but was not exactly the most comfortable book for my wife to have found while pregnant with our first.)

Thus if you add in children, marriage becomes an even better relative deal for women.

(Note that all figures that they offer are aimed at women, and not men.)

>>If you look at divorce statistics, for all that men feel that they get screwed, after a divorce the ex-husband usually has a significantly better standard of living, and the ex-wife and kids wind up worse off.

In all fairness, comparative troubles hardly make any sense.

The fact of the matter is, Alimony is a huge demotivating factor when it comes to marriage. No ones likes to part away with what they have earned because a relationship ended, the best protection against that at this time is to somehow stop getting into a relationship at the first place.

This makes problems more worse for most women.

Contrary to whatever is going around in the name of freedom, marriage is a really an amazing institution for many societies around the world. When it comes financial security, physical security and center of responsibility in most cases marriage works like magic. And alimony sort of becomes a very demotivating factor to get married.

In process what happens is alimony protects a few women, much of the alimony system is abused. And the side effect is most women suffer because of it.

I think the biggest complaint from men in divorces is not that they get screwed economically, but that the courts are heavily biased towards giving the mother the children. Sometimes "standard of living" isn't the most important factor in play - otherwise custody cases would be two parents trying to make the other one take the kids, instead of the other way around.

I haven't done the research to make the argument that their complaints are true, (though I think it is), but you are somewhat misrepresenting the complaint.

I've never been married, divorced, or had children, so if I am missing something obvious, please let me know.

Statistics that I've heard on that one. A significant majority of the time, children go with the mother. In a significant majority of cases where fathers contest custody, children go with the father. This is at least in part because the father usually has better finances, so can make a persuasive case that he'd be in a better position to be a caregiver.

That said, it is very common for men to threaten a custody dispute then back down with some other concessions. It is difficult to tell how often this is because he didn't think he'd win, or preferred the concession.

My source on this is the same book.

Disclaimer, I've been married over 20 years, 2 kids, never divorced.

> In a significant majority of cases where fathers > contest custody, children go with the father.

I have a fair amount of familiarity with family law (not a lawyer though) and I have to say this is hard to fathom. To my knowledge fathers have to basically prove gross negligence or substance abuse or other criminal activity by the mother in order to stand a chance of winning physical custody. It is generally presumed that kids are better off with the mother and any father seeking custody needs to prove otherwise. Having better finances usually doesn't factor into the decision AFAIK -- if the father has better finances to support the child, he can do so with child support.

I was quoting from a book that I read 8 years and 2 moves ago. But the best that Google turned up is the very dated http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias... that found that when fathers choose to contest custody, 70% of the time they win sole or joint custody.

I have found elsewhere a claim that usually this is joint, so women are still coming out better. This seems believable, but that claim was not sourced.

Several places I found the claim that women receive sole custody about 70% of the time, joint custody 20% and men get sole custody a bit under 10%. But also the majority of custody cases are not settled by a judge, so that proportion does not speak to what happens when a judge makes the choice.

So I should put a question mark next to the specific claim that men who contest, have a good chance of getting custody. Because I don't have good sources to back it up.

You could both be right. Perhaps fathers, being usually the better-off partner financially, often get lawyers when it comes to something as important as custody for their children. And perhaps those lawyers usually tell the father they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting custody unless they can prove the mother's unfit, and the father usually decides not to contest custody to save everyone's time and money, unless the mother actually is unfit and thus the father has a very good chance of winning.

Result: Usually the children go with the mother. But when custody is contested, it's often because the father has a strong case, and so fathers usually win contested cases.

"The husbands' salaries to reflect the fact that a woman earns 78 cents for every dollar a man earns"

If that were actually true, why would any business hire a man when they could get the same work for less?

It's rarely the case that an equally skilled woman earns 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. There are a wide variety of factors that lead to the wage gap.

  * Women take more time off for child-rearing
  * Women still devote more time to household tasks + children
  * Women are more likely to choose careers for reasons other than money
  * Discrimination against women surely plays some part
  * Women are less likely to negotiate salary
  * Assertive women are often perceived negatively, unlike assertive men.

There are many others. But if you take a male and female, and put them in the same job for three years straight out of college, there won't necessarily be much of a wage gap. In some cases the women earn more.

Men are also more likely to take dangerous jobs that are more likely to get them killed, which pay better

Because you don't hire a receptionist to fix your plumbing. Men make more because the sorts of jobs they do make more money.

They make more inside the same profession, too, but not as much more. They also work longer hours, commute farther, and travel more on business.

People aren't rational. The top two explanations would probably be: society says women shouldn't be doing those jobs; the person hiring believes women shouldn't be doing those jobs or would rather have men around.

If we made every decision based off of sound economic or similar principles there's a lot that wouldn't happen. Gas guzzlers wouldn't be so popular (from a global or national perspective gas sippers make far more sense for pollution, personal finances, overall security because of reduced dependency on others). But they are.

Actually, the whole thing is kind of a myth. That statistic doesn't compare men and women working the same job for the same number of hours. Since men often work in more dangerous and harsh conditions then women, this would account for the disparity. Here is some more information about it:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-tha...

Strictly speaking this is true. For a number of (perfectly rational and moral) reasons, women on average bring home less money than men. This statistic is not terribly good evidence of discrimination, but it does make a bit of sense here, because we're talking average people.

I'm assuming the lower salary is because of assumed lower competence, so an employer engaging in discriminatory pay wouldn't want to hire only women.

This is a crock, the social purpose of marriage is raising children that are properly socialized to inherit society the financial benefits are there to help partially defray the cost of raising children. And as was stated below throw some kids in and see how the numbers work out.

I know you did not mean to offend me, but whenever I see this "married families raise better kids" line I take offense. I was raised by a single mother and a tight knit extended family (grandmother+grandfather+uncle). I was showered with love and parental affection/guidance. Moreover the house I grew up in was dramatically more peaceful and nurturing than it would have been had my parents stayed married.

> I was raised by a single mother and a tight knit extended family (grandmother+grandfather+uncle).

I don't think he implied that it is true in every single case. If you had to bet a lot of money on a random family with happily married parents vs. a single-mom, where would you place your money?

A better statement would be "families raise better kids." You had a family because you had a close extended family. That isn't a normal occurrence.

I was an orphan from age 11, dad had a bad heart.

But if you look at the conditions that existed up until say the 1950s work was mostly muscle powered, ie being able to lift 50-100 lbs all day was expected at work and there was much less office work to be had. That meant that men being bigger and stronger had a big edge so they worked and women took care of the house/children, this was also a full time job that just took less strength to do. Doing laundry, cooking and cleaning by hand is a lot of time. So since this guy now had to feed 2-7+ mouths on one check he was cut some slack.

and up until very recently the atomic family was odd, why would you abandon all your relatives(ie the people who will help you) with out a very very good reason.

Think about a hypothetical person who didn't graduate from high school, but taught herself to program, started a company, went through YC, went public, and made a ton of cool products, money, fame, prestige. Should she be offended when people say that a high school diploma is important to be successful in modern life? If she takes offense whenever someone suggests that we should be helping more kids graduate from high school or go to college, would you feel she is justified?

So are you suggesting the credit only be given to couples that have kids? Your observation doesn't change the imbalance argued in the article.

No I am saying that under the social system in which marriage was formalized it was expected that people would have kids because there was no birth control and people like to have sex, kids were pretty much assumed as a general byproduct of marriage. And for the vast majority of the couples it was true so the barren were rounding error and were not considered as a separate case.

I'm a married male with children, and this is bullshit. I recall at my first job my manager saying, "Yeah, tax the hell out of you young single rich guys". The state should have no discriminatory power of taxation w/regard to marital/reproductive status. If anything, young single people should be taxed less, as they are a lower draw on social services and are more likely to deploy capital rather than save.

Tax rates are set based on a person's ability to pay, not on their expected use of social services. You could argue that this discriminates against young wealthy singles, but then you'd effectively be arguing that the impoverished or the chronically ill should pay proportionately higher taxes because they are more dependent on the state for their day-to-day wellbeing. The problems with this position should be obvious.

We're entering the area of considering charity vs. penalty. The current system penalizes those that have no need of charity doubly. Not only do they have to subsidize those more dependent upon the system, but they are penalized on top of that with more taxation. The problem with that situation should be obvious, as well.

This was not my experience at all. When my wife and I married and combined incomes we jumped a bracket, didn't qualify for IRA withholding, tuition credits (I was in night school at the time), or DC's first time home buyer's credit. Two people with career salaries are much better off (with respect to taxes) before marriage... yes, we gamed out filing jointly and separately - we got hosed either way.

This neglects "The Price of Being Married" which is rarely an instance of frugality and prudent fiscal discipline.

I'm not implying that ALL members of a married home are frivolous with their money, but it sure seems that way sometimes.

How much money does having a wife or husband cost? I'm willing to bet it's a sh*t load more - not to spread words of discouragement or anything.

A huge amount of the money it "costs" to be single they get from splitting living costs. Turns out single people can and do have roommates.

The next biggest chunk is from taxes saved by being married, using contrived earnings. Turns out, that it varies wildly depending on how much each person makes. There are certainly some amounts of money where you pay less taxes being married, but there are quite a few others where it costs far more. It just depends on where you fall in the tax bracket. (Generally if both spouses make a similar amount of money the tax code hurts them, if one makes significantly more it helps.)

They got some of the particulars of the inherited IRA wrong. There are two options:

* take at least the required minimum distribution starting in the tax year following the transfer, or

* draw down the entire account within 5 years

This applies to any inherited Ira that is not from your spouse, even if you are married. I.e., my inherited Ira (I'm married) is treated no differently from my sister's (she's not).

Distributions from inherited iras are taxed like ordinary income, no matter when they happen or by how much you take, unless you're unlucky enough to have not done your red, in which case there's a crazy penalty.

Taxes generate government revenue as a side-effect of their purpose as a social engineering tool, not the other way around. Not sure why people get that backwards so often.

Rather poor mathematics they did, and they should have consulted someone who could the maths a lot more accurately. Financial differences are just part of the way that singles are discriminated against - here is a longer list http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benef...

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Perhaps they should find husbands then.

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Literally addressed in the first sentence of the article. Please read the article before commenting.

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