Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“The social impact of the housing affordability crisis is huge: fewer marriages, less household formation, lower birth rates, lower economic growth. The prices of stocks and bonds can go up indefinitely with few consequences. But housing is something people need, in addition to being an asset. It is an asset you also consume.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/02/trump-i-want-to-drive-housing-prices-up/
“The critiques aren’t totally wrong: Tradwives are sometimes performative, a made-for-social-media phenomenon that can look a little ridiculous. The most successful ones are the most extreme, curated, and out of touch. The more modest ones, who traffic in budgeting tips and great recipes, garner smaller followings and less fame.
But this cultural movement warrants celebration, not contempt. Tradwives don’t want domestic servitude. They want the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker to count as respectable options for the 21st-century woman.
Tradwives are feminists, too.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/20/tradwives-are-feminists-too/
Tradwife War Ripping Conservatives Apart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk0vez_LLYg
Population growth isn’t a primary cause of environmental damage or global warming. Other things matter much more. So, the environment is not a good reason to not have kids!
France had modestly successful pro-natal policies, so such policies can work! They were implemented in 1939. These policies produced an additional Paris!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zAQesNbIe4
“Here’s how the joint filing trap works: Under our tax system, higher incomes face higher marginal rates, meaning a couple’s combined income can push them into a higher tax bracket than if they filed separately. A married woman’s earnings, assuming she earns less than her husband, is taxed at the higher rate determined by her husband’s income. Joint filing essentially “stacks” her earnings on top of his for tax purposes.
To give a more concrete, albeit simplified, example: let’s say a woman, Kate, who earns $100,000, marries Jack, who earns $200,000, and they decide to file jointly. Together, their combined income of $300,000 would fall into the 24 percent tax bracket for joint filers. If Kate had filed individually, she would have been taxed in the 22 percent tax bracket, while Jack’s $200,000 would push him into the 32 percent bracket. Put simply, Kate’s earnings are taxed more when she jointly files with Jack.
Though married couples in the US have the option of filing separately, fewer than 7 percent actually do, as that almost always subjects their household to higher taxes than joint filing, in addition to causing them to lose other benefits.
These tax dynamics shape women’s behavior. Early in their careers, married young women often decide it makes more sense to quit working or go part-time, so their family can save on child care and pay less in tax.
Recent economic research has concluded that eliminating joint filing in the US would significantly increase married women’s workforce participation throughout their whole life.”
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“America stands increasingly alone in maintaining this system. In the decades after World War II, most countries copied America’s joint filing approach, but by the 1970s and 1980s — both to advance gender equality and to boost overall employment — nearly all OECD countries reverted back to individual tax filing systems.
The empirical evidence from these reforms is remarkable: Sweden, which abandoned its joint filing system in 1971, saw significant increases in married women’s employment, as did Canada, which shifted to individual taxation in 1988. In a telling contrast, when the Czech Republic bucked the international trend and introduced joint taxation in 2005, the number of married women in the workforce went down.”
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“The US system is particularly entrenched because health care and retirement systems have evolved for decades around joint family benefits. Married couples who file jointly, for example, typically qualify for lower health insurance premiums and more comprehensive coverage than those who file separately. Similarly, filing jointly gives married couples greater access to their spouse’s Social Security benefits.
Past decisions around work and family — including career gaps that erode skills and networks — have also created sticky “lock-in” effects that would be difficult for millions of couples to reverse, even if Congress abandoned joint filing tomorrow.
Still, more targeted reforms might work. During the Reagan administration, Congress briefly implemented a tax deduction for secondary earners, essentially reducing the tax penalty on wives by allowing couples to deduct 10 percent of the lower-earning spouse’s income, up to $3,000. Some economists have proposed bringing this idea back.
Michael Graetz, a tax professor emeritus at Columbia and Yale law schools, advocates both reinstating the secondary earner deduction and expanding child care subsidies. These changes would help protect secondary earners at a crucial career juncture, when child-rearing responsibilities often force women to reduce their working hours for financial reasons.
Tax policy might not be the first thing on the agenda for most feminist activists, but the case for rethinking joint filing is strong. As De Nardi’s research demonstrates, joint filing still poses a major barrier to women’s participation in the workforce, even for younger and more educated women.
“Over time, political inertia and the complexity of reforming entrenched tax systems have likely contributed to its persistence,” she said. “Policymakers and the public may also underestimate the long-term costs.””
https://www.vox.com/policy/390779/tax-wedding-marriage-joint-filing-women
“It wasn’t even until 1977 that women in Western Germany became free to legally seek jobs without their husband’s permission. The country still has a tax structure that penalizes married couples if both individuals work full time.”
https://www.vox.com/policy/379309/child-care-affordable-germany-motherhood-kita-daycare
“Immigrants, including those living in the U.S. illegally, can get a green card if they marry an American citizen. But U.S. law generally requires those who entered the U.S. illegally to leave the country and re-enter legally to be eligible for a green card. Doing so, however, can trigger a 3- or 10-year ban from the U.S., prompting many mixed-status families not to pursue that option.
While the Biden administration has argued its initiative promotes family unity in households that include U.S. citizens, Texas and the other Republican-controlled states said in a lawsuit filed Friday that the policy rewards illegal immigration. The red states, which have challenged nearly every major Biden administration immigration move, said the policy misused the immigration parole authority.
On Monday, Barker, the federal judge in Texas appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued an administrative order prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from granting parole to those applying for the Keeping Families Together policy.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-blocks-biden-administration-granting-000817351.html
“Before the 1960s, it was really hard to get divorced in America.
Typically, the only way to do it was to convince a judge that your spouse had committed some form of wrongdoing, like adultery, abandonment, or “cruelty” (that is, abuse). This could be difficult: “Even if you could prove you had been hit, that didn’t necessarily mean it rose to the level of cruelty that justified a divorce,” said Marcia Zug, a family law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Then came a revolution: In 1969, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California (who was himself divorced) signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, allowing people to end their marriages without proving they’d been wronged. The move was a recognition that “people were going to get out of marriages,” Zug said, and gave them a way to do that without resorting to subterfuge. Similar laws soon swept the country, and rates of domestic violence and spousal murder began to drop as people — especially women — gained more freedom to leave dangerous situations.
Today, however, a counter-revolution is brewing: Conservative commentators and lawmakers are calling for an end to no-fault divorce, arguing that it has harmed men and even destroyed the fabric of society.”
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“It’s worth noting that though the no-fault laws initially led to spikes in divorce, rates then began to drop, and reached a 50-year low in 2019, CNN reports. But today, an end to no-fault divorce would cause enormous financial, logistical, and emotional strain for people who are trying to end their marriages, experts say. Proving fault requires a trial, something many divorcing couples today avoid, said Kristen Marinaccio, a New Jersey-based family law attorney. A divorce trial is time-consuming and costly, putting the partner with less money at an immediate disadvantage. It can also be “really, really traumatizing” to have to take the stand against an ex-partner, Marinaccio said.
There’s also no guarantee that judges will always decide cases fairly. In the days of fault-based divorce, courts were often unwilling to intervene in marriages even in cases of abuse, Zug said.
No-fault divorce can be easier on children, who don’t have to experience their parents facing each other in a trial, experts say. Research suggests that allowing such divorces increased women’s power in marriages and even reduced women’s suicide rates. A return to the old ways would turn back the clock on this progress, scholars say.
“We know exactly what happens when people can’t get out of very unhappy marriages,” Zug said. “There’s much higher incidences of domestic abuse and spousal murder.””
https://www.vox.com/today-explained-newsletter/354635/divorce-no-fault-states-marriage-republicans
“In the roughly week and a half since former president (and presumptive Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying records to hide hush-money payments to a porn star, numerous national polls have indicated that voters have moved slightly toward incumbent president (and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee) Joe Biden.
A HarrisX/Forbes poll found Biden and Trump each getting a one-point bump after the verdict. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump losing a point. A Morning Consult poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump neither gaining nor losing any ground. And an Echelon Insights poll found a two-point Biden bump, with Trump support staying flat. (All poll results can be found in a chart here.)”
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“”The verdict has not overhauled the 2024 race nearly as much as Democrats hoped it would,” writes The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. “But the totality of the evidence suggests it has dinged Trump a little.””
https://reason.com/2024/06/10/the-conviction-effect/
“Every year, women and girls from Southeast Asia move to China, sometimes by force or coercion, to marry Chinese men, care for them, and bear children. While many migrate voluntarily, knowing that they are to be married, an unknown number of women from countries including Cambodia, Myanmar (also known as Burma), Indonesia, and Vietnam are deceived or trapped in their situations. Similarly, although some women are happy in their marriages, others are exposed to violence, sexual abuse, and forced labor.
China’s historical one-child policy (which formally ended in 2016), coupled with a cultural preference for sons, has led to a gender imbalance there, which is one reason for this migration. The country had about 35 million more males than females, according to the 2020 census. Moreover, arranged marriages are common, creating the opportunity for exploitation. Men looking for foreign brides tend to be poorer by Chinese standards yet may pay brokers or matchmakers several thousand dollars—and sometimes more than U.S. $40,000, according to researchers. The expectation for men to marry and produce a son is one reason for the dramatic increase in bride prices. The many men who are unable to find wives in China often face social pressures and a degree of public sympathy, as do their families, which contributes to normalizing the process of paying for brides.”
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/china-bride-migration-trafficking