> But this all brings me to my newest peeve: Why is the tax bracket higher for an unmarried person with no children who doesn't even use the public school system? Married people get a tax break just for being married. If they have children, they get another deduction for each child -- the more children they have, the more tax deductions they get -- but the more children they have, the more they use the public school system! This is so backwards to me, that I wonder why no one's ever just thrown a hissy fit about it before now. I pay higher taxes just because I'm not married and have no children, yet I get none of the public education benefits whatsoever. HUH? And don't start with the whole, parents of private school children don't use the system, either... number one, that's their choice. Number two, they STILL pay less in taxes than I do. Can anyone explain this to me in a way that makes it sound any less ridiculous?

I don't think there's any way to explain taxes without making it sound ridiculous. In one of Piers Anthony's "Xanth" books (I forget which one), some character needed an unlimited source of gibberish for one reason or another -- the "New Revised Edited Tax Manual" solved that problem!

But, I'll try.

First of all, do you think anyone would actually /admit/ to being married if it meant they had to pay /more/ taxes? People who get married do so in two senses -- a religious sense, from which the "meaning" of marriage is derived, and a legal sense, from which the state benefits are derived. That's stuff like not having to make out a will to your spouse and, yes, being able to file taxes differently. It's possible for two people to be married in a religious sense without being married in a legal sense -- this is that state in which gay marriages (true ones, anyway) exist if gay marriage is not recognized by the state. But that's a different issue and I don't want to talk about it here. If /not/ being married /saved/ people money, then I think a lot less people would be married, at least on paper.

But the real issue here is public services.

What you suggest, basically, is that married families with children should pay more taxes because they use more public services. Certainly, there are lots of people who believe in that (that is, plenty of people have thrown "hissy fits" about it before). To extend the argument, people who don't use the health care system shouldn't have to pay taxes towards that system. People who can defend themselves and don't need police shouldn't have to pay taxes towards the police system. Nobody but criminals should finance the correction systems, and nobody but sick people should pay for mental institutions. People who use public parks should pay a fee to use them, and the fee could go towards making more public parks -- that way, people who /don't/ use the parks wouldn't have to pay for them. Similarily, all roads should be toll roads for the same reason.

It could work. It might work. It might be more fair, even. You might argue that it would be annoying to pay all those tolls to use the roads, but in fact, systems could be worked out to get around this -- for example, the whole thing could be done through a tax on gas. (The more gas you use, the more you drove; the more you drove, the more you used the roads and the more you should have to pay for them.)

The point is, it's not that no one /thought/ of running the country this way. They did. Your American founding fathers -- and the statesmen who founded Canada as well -- simply /decided/ that it would not be a good way to run a country.

There's a name for a system where people only pay for the services that they use: "Pure Capitalism".

The decision that your American founding fathers made, and that the statesmen who founded Canada made, was that some services -- such as education, roads, police, and in Canada, health care -- are so important that /everybody/ should pay for them, whether or not they use the system. The people should pay for these services because the services are important to the future of the /entire country/. Furthermore, if people were made to pay for their own schools, police, or whatever, then the poor might not be able to /afford/ these services. They would be denied the services, therefore, as a result of their situation in life. Your founding fathers decided that nobody should be denied these services.

Why families raising children get a tax /break/, though? The answer is that there's another institution that American statesmen decided was so important that it had to be supported by all Americans. That institution is raising children. To that end, people who do put in the time, effort, and money to raise children are given a tax break. It does not cover the extra costs of raising a child. But it does help.

If a family makes a /lot/ of money then it no longer recieves the child tax credit, at least in Canada, and the same goes for the states. But I think that we can respect that poorer families may need a "helping hand" in raising their children. Since it's important for children to be raised properly, your nation and mine provides this help in the form of a tax break.

A system in which people "pay their own way" for some services but in which the state collectively pays for others is called a "mixed economy", and currently, this is the most successful system anywhere on the planet. Incidentally, a system where the state pays for /most/ services is called "socialist", and many socialist countries have a higher quality of life than mixed economies like Canada and the United States. Finally, a system where /all/ services are paid for by the government is a special brand of socialism called "communism"...and we all heard stories in school about that. The point is, though, that the choice for the government to pay for some services while allowing people to pay for others is simply a social choice, and, so far, it has appeared to be a wise one.

Finally: You claim that you don't use the public education system. But you /did/, right?

> Mou"see, you went and got me started"sie

I don't know if I actually agree with the way taxation works in Canada and the United States -- but I can at least sort of explain it!

-Spacebar