I want to cut the total tax for the lower income brackets for precisely this reason. The turnaround charge for a plumber and landscaper legally trading services is brutal. A 20% tax in each direction means a 36% tax on the exchange. (Each side keeps 80% so 80% of 80% is 64%, which is 36% less than 100%.
I want to make the labor tax a flat 10% for the first 50K or even 100K of individual income. Then add an additional 5% for each big tic on the log graph (x2,5,10,20,50,100...) Withholding could then be a simple 10% federal.
And I'd replace FICA and Medicare taxes with consumption taxes: tariffs, carbon tax, national sales tax for interstate transactions, whatever.
All these things are forthcoming in the next Rule. I hesitate to publish it as it will make Reaganoids cry.
...when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
I'm not trying to insist housework is not boring. A lot of it is.
However, I found raising my children to be anything but boring.
And, quite frankly, are we really going to posit that most jobs don't have lots of boring moments to them?
I'm just saying, let's be real and let's stop assuming that jobs women have outside of the home are necessarily more exciting. It's not like they all get amazing jobs that fulfil their potential while not causing a number of times when they agonize over being split between two priorities, job and children. I truly tried to support my working mom friends, but I also observed and I wouldn't have traded places with any of them. Not even for a day.
My husband and I made these calculations several decades ago. Not because I wanted to work, I wanted to be a SAHM, but for life insurance purposes. We were surprised at how much he would need to replace everything I did should something happen to me. Now that I am thinking of it, this could be a more "value neutral" way to make the calculations for a particular family. We revisited it in a later year when finances were extra tight. However, because I was homeschooling our children, and we both considered that to be our best educational option, adding the cost of private school on top of the other expenses made it a no brainer for me to stay at home. And, BTW, it is not as if school takes up no time from a parent. So much of our perceptions these days are based on Points of View that are half blind. Homeschooling, for example, takes fewer hours than most people imagine. And you have a better opportunity to train your children and teach them how to do much around the house, adding some extra labor to the home work force precisely during the years it is most needed. :)
For the win!
I want to cut the total tax for the lower income brackets for precisely this reason. The turnaround charge for a plumber and landscaper legally trading services is brutal. A 20% tax in each direction means a 36% tax on the exchange. (Each side keeps 80% so 80% of 80% is 64%, which is 36% less than 100%.
I want to make the labor tax a flat 10% for the first 50K or even 100K of individual income. Then add an additional 5% for each big tic on the log graph (x2,5,10,20,50,100...) Withholding could then be a simple 10% federal.
And I'd replace FICA and Medicare taxes with consumption taxes: tariffs, carbon tax, national sales tax for interstate transactions, whatever.
All these things are forthcoming in the next Rule. I hesitate to publish it as it will make Reaganoids cry.
great analysis! I don't think we could afford to have my wife work outside the home. Sometimes it feels like we can barely afford my work.
...when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
GK Chesterton
Straight down the middle, man. Excellent.
Oh, and BTW, I was never bored being a SAHM.
I'm not trying to insist housework is not boring. A lot of it is.
However, I found raising my children to be anything but boring.
And, quite frankly, are we really going to posit that most jobs don't have lots of boring moments to them?
I'm just saying, let's be real and let's stop assuming that jobs women have outside of the home are necessarily more exciting. It's not like they all get amazing jobs that fulfil their potential while not causing a number of times when they agonize over being split between two priorities, job and children. I truly tried to support my working mom friends, but I also observed and I wouldn't have traded places with any of them. Not even for a day.
My husband and I made these calculations several decades ago. Not because I wanted to work, I wanted to be a SAHM, but for life insurance purposes. We were surprised at how much he would need to replace everything I did should something happen to me. Now that I am thinking of it, this could be a more "value neutral" way to make the calculations for a particular family. We revisited it in a later year when finances were extra tight. However, because I was homeschooling our children, and we both considered that to be our best educational option, adding the cost of private school on top of the other expenses made it a no brainer for me to stay at home. And, BTW, it is not as if school takes up no time from a parent. So much of our perceptions these days are based on Points of View that are half blind. Homeschooling, for example, takes fewer hours than most people imagine. And you have a better opportunity to train your children and teach them how to do much around the house, adding some extra labor to the home work force precisely during the years it is most needed. :)