Garrett Moritz over at gTexts has some thoughts on the Marriage Penalty, and further thoughts on the matter, all of which are completely wrong and not worth reading, let alone responding to.

Okay, just kidding. He makes several good points, and in an entertaining fashion. However, I do think he misses something, or several somethings. To no one's surprise, I'd like to share some of what I think. Moritz is dead right to say that...

...the marriage-penalty debate seems strangely twisted. I think some of that strangeness has to do with stereotypes. For example, I suspect you'll find very few conseratives (outside of sitcoms, The West Wing, or Paul Begala's fever-dreams) who would be so appalled by the prospect of stay-at-home dads as to view them as a threat to the Republic.

In fact, I think the marriage penalty issue reveals something I've talked about before: today's so-called conservative movement is, in fact, a progressive liberal movement pushing for social change, while the wrongly-labeled "liberals" are pretty much the status-quo, authoritarian reactionaries. To prove this point, I've often asked people to name one new Big Idea or proposal for major reform to come out of America's political Left in the last decade. Other than to mention nationalizition and/or greater regulation of various industries (which is, arguably, really a right-wing idea), the response is usually silence.

Anyway, I've led a fairly well-traveled life, but I've never met a person of any political stripe who does not advocate equal pay for equal work or allowing women to persue whatever careers they want (except, I guess, combat soldier). This includes highly conservative Christian Fundamentalists I've been priviledged to be friends with. Even Pat Buchanan, everyone's favorite example of a "right-wing extremist," wrote that when he was growing up in the 1950s, his sisters and mom all had jobs, and that in his extremely conservative Catholic family, feminists were "pushing against an open door" until they started advocating things like abortion-on-demand as a civil right. (See his highly entertaining autobiography Right From The Beginning--I'll dig out the page #s if anyone really wants me to.)

Where are these conservatives who want women out of the workplace? Laura Schlesinger? The extent of her extremism, aside from the sharp tongue she uses in expressing it, is to advocate that moms stay at home for at least the first year after a child is born, and thereafter either father or mother should always be with the child. She praises families who arrange their schedules so that both parents work at different times so one of them can be at home for the kids. (My wife and I do this, by the way.)

This question is rhetorical, but I'll ask it again: where are these conservatives who would, as a matter of course, advocate legal penalties for people who don't live like Ward and June Cleaver? They may exist somewhere; in a country of 300 million people, you can find people who believe anything I suppose. I happen to know one American citizen who is a (quite serious) advocate for creating a Monarchy, although he's otherwise pretty much a soft-shell socialist. But is he a movement?

It often seems to conservatives that people who argue with them are really arguing with what they think conservatives advocate, rather than what they actually do advocate (not that they're never guilty of same). Of course, maybe I'm reading too much into Moritz' brief comments. Rumor has it that he has a sense of humor, and he probably wasn't expecting quite so lengthy response to a throwaway line.

Beyond these broad-scale generalizations, however, Moritz hits the bullseye when he notes that the "marriage penalty" is really only a penalty on homes with two earners, and eliminating it will only help those households. It seems strange that social conservatives are not at least talking about doing more to help one-earner households.

My wife and I have often mused about this; it hasn't been my only disappointment with the Bush domestic agenda, but it's been my biggest. For the first couple of years after our son was born, Rosemary stayed home full-time. Due to serious problems in my career, she eventually had to find work outside the home. It was a major concern for us, because it looked like tax penalties would eat up a good portion of whatever benefit we got from her income. It's hard to express how it feels when you're getting phone calls from bill collectors, can practically smell your credit report smoking, and suddenly realize that, once again, the "progressive" tax system is going to fuck things up for you.

You would think that social conservatives would advocate doing more for families where, for example, one member takes part-time work in order to supplement the family's income. You would also think they would advocate much higher standard-deductions to help families who make the financial sacrifice of losing a second income to stay home with the kids; while Moritz rightly points out that the tax code currenty favors them, it doesn't favor them much.

If social conservatives really wanted to help traditional families, they'd advocate something along the lines of doubling the standard deduction for married couples with children who have only one earner, or for two earners when one earner makes, oh, let's say less than half of what the other makes (we can leave it to policy wonks to come up with more specifics). There are things like that which social conservatives among the political class in Washington could be arguing for, but are not. It's disappointing; while I don't consider myself a social conservative, in this area I would think society could benefit from their voice, which seems strangely silent.