QOTH: Jonathan Edwards

“Seek not to grow in knowledge for the sake of applause, or to enable you to dispute; but seek it for the benefit of your souls.” – Jonathan Edwards

Food for Thought That DOESN'T Lead to Indigestion Isn't Worth It

Original article here.

THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2012

The $67 Billion Feminist Tax that Women Primarily Pay

Follow me closely on this one because it takes some explaining, but I’ll try to make this as clear and as simple as possible so you see my point.

In order for something to be taxed there must be some kind of transaction. You get a paycheck, you sell some stock, you buy gas, you sell a house, etc. etc. That transaction is recorded not just in company or government records, but at banks, so if you were ever to get audited, there would be some kind of proof a transaction did indeed occur. There are only two ways to avoid this taxation:

1. That transaction is done in cash (and therefore no banking or electronic proof that transaction occurred).

2. You barter for services or goods (again, no electronic record of any transaction).

Now, that being said, the IRS still requires you to report any cash or bartering transactions so you can pay taxes on it, but they’re relying on the honor system in these cases. Naturally, there’s an incentive to make transactions via cash or barter, resulting in an US underground economy estimated to be anywhere from $500 billion to even $3 trillion.

When you think “underground economy” you usually think drugs, weapons, maybe contractors doing favors for one another, but you rarely think of housework as part of the underground economy. Basic house maintenance, upkeep and cleaning is viewed more as a chore and even the most ardent of IRS agents I doubt would advocate somehow requiring homemakers reporting whether or not they vacuumed that year or mowed the lawn.

However, they don’t really have to. Feminism has already done that for them.

Again, before I continue on, let me get the disclaimers out here so we can blunt the knee-jerk reactions from the non-thinking reactionaries. Let me state that I for one never viewed house work as “beneath” anybody. I never viewed what could be considered traditional “women’s work” beneath traditional “men’s work” and to this day still am looking for proof where society placed less value on traditional women’s roles than they did traditional male’s roles. Truthfully, I believe having “men’s” work and “women’s” work categorized was really more of a symbiotically beneficial division of labor allowing both groups to produce more than had they tried to do both jobs, but that is for another debate at another point in time. For purposes of our discussion now, I view traditional “women’s work” just as vital as traditional “men’s work,” while at the same time agreeing there are instances where the traditional roles could be reversed that would also be beneficial.

But getting back to my original point, feminism has indeed brought a lot of the unspoken labor involved in house work, house maintenance and traditional “women’s work” out of the world of barter and into the official (and now taxable) economy.

How?

Well consider this.

1950’s home maker Sue spends her day cleaning and taking care of the house. Washing dishes, doing laundry, cooking meals, and (more importantly) taking care of the kids. All of this has vital value to the continuing function of the household and thus the economy and thus the country, but because she is not paid to do it, there is no way to put a market value on it and therefore no way to tax it.

But today, many thanks to feminism, women are no longer “shackled” to the doldrums of the 1950’s housewife. She can go and pursue her own education, her own career, have kids, have a home, have a car, pursue her hobbies, run for president, fly to the moon and cure cancer. She can do it all and she can have it all because she has moxie and grrrrrl power (TM). And so, in 2012, Amy is “having it all” as she works as a lawyer in a prestigious DT law firm, with her 3 children, her house payments and car payments, as she participates in the local wine club, and goes out and partays as she is single because her ex-husband was a jerk.

The question is, naturally, if Amy is out doing all these things, how does she take care of her house and her children?

Simple, she doesn’t. She pays somebody else to do it. She outsources all these things.

Uh ohhhhhh!

“Did you say, “outsource,” Captain?”

Yes, yes I did. And you know what that means. That was a transaction. A transaction that is recordable and now, thusly, taxable.

In short, by kicking the homemaker (whether it was male or female, it doesn’t matter) out of the house and into the working world you no longer have a willing and amiable spouse to stay at home and do all that work for “free.” You have to pay somebody, and NOW you get to pay taxes on it.

How much? Well, shucks howdy, a cool $67 billion every year ladies and gentlemen.

How did I come about that figure? With my patented “Super Awesome Economic Genius,” of course!

If you go to the NIPA accounts and look at personal consumption expenditures and add up all the various “household services,” “day care,” “cleaning services,” and other things that would have been done by a traditional housewife, you get $169.3 billion spent on everything. But in the 1950’s, that wouldn’t have been a transacted number. That would have been a theoretical value applied to the barter. But since $169.3 billion has actually been transacted, you need to apply the roughly 40% tax rate to that amount, which results in the $67 billion tax bill I estimated above.

Now who pays this tax?

Disproportionately women.

Men were already working in the official economy and therefore paying income taxes. It’s not like male labor force participation jumped since the 1950’s. But to pay for the outsourcing of house maintenance, home keeping, child-rearing, etc., this bill fell on women who were now on their way to having it all. Women were now not just working and paying regular income taxes, they were now paying that extra $67 billion in taxes to essentially free them up from those horribly oppressive traditional roles so they could pursue their careers.

However, this brings up a funny “chicken or the egg” observation.

Often times I will hear people (not just women, but men too) say,

“Well, you need a two-person income to support a family today. It’s impossible to have a stay at home parent.”

Really?

Is it that you need to work two jobs to pay for everything, or is it that “everything” costs so much because it was cheaper for one parent to stay home instead of paying $22,000 a year for day care, $10,000 a year for a cleaner, and an extra $12,000 a year for eating out at restaurants because nobody has time to shop for groceries let alone turn them into meals?

Sadly, today the point is moot. Society, in voting in a bevy of social programs, has made the option of a parent staying home nearly impossible. Too many government programs exist today to accommodate the two-working-parent model that if you decide one of you will stay home to rear children and take care of the house, you’re stabbed on property taxes, sales taxes, and other non-income tax related levies. You are also forfeiting “free” government programs that have taken over some of these traditional housewife duties.

However, the fact there are so many government programs brings up two last, but wickedly ironic points.

Point 1 – Cleaning the house, doing the dishes, etc., etc., is one thing. But the most expensive item that was bartered for back in the olden days was rearing children. Society, in all of its wisdom, has effectively outsourced that to the government. You have day care, pre-school, early childhood development programs, high school care for teenage moms’ children. You could even argue elementary school is largely a baby sitting operation. And with the early-morning school programs and after-school programs, you can hardly argue it isn’t. You can pretty much just go and have a child and after a bit of maternity leave, drop the kid off at some school, institution or daycare and the government will either subsidize it or outright pay for it. Thank god, you don’t have to deal with that icky, yucky, gross child of yours, let alone RAISE that darn thing! Whew! Onto your masters degree.

But who then raises your child?

And here is the wicked part.

Point 2 – Though not always, predominantly other women take care of your kid. Amy the lawyer or Kelly the engineer would be one thing in that the economic argument could be made that in outsourcing their traditional housewife duties, they COULD make more as an engineer, pay somebody else to maintain the home, pay the extra “feminist tax” on those transactions and STILL come out ahead. They and their husbands could make bookoo coin, fly around the world, gallivant and drink wine, and heck yes, more power to you, AS LONG AS YOU DON’T HAVE CHILDREN. However, that is not the case in the majority of working women. The majority of working women are not only NOT engineers, the majority of women DO want children.

So what ends up happening?

Women, in droves, disproportionately major in “early childhood development,” “education,” “child psychology,” “sociology,” “social work,” and a bevy of other worthless degrees to do what????

Take care of other womens’ children.

Not only do you NOT get to take care of your own children, you get to work to pay the taxes to pay other women to take care of yours (and the taxes needed to employ this veritable army of social workers is infinitely more than $67 billion).

Of course, this is all good. We’re all empowered. We’re all “having it all.” We’re all happy. I’m sure the government does a much better job at child rearing than actual mothers (or stay at home fathers) do. Thank god we abandoned traditional roles that somehow developed (for no reason whatsoever) over the millinea of human history. Otherwise there may have been some longer-term consequences that would dwarf the mere $67 billion tax bill. And that certainly isn’t possible now, is it?

Bully for Bullies!

Hamilton-Wentworth Family Action Council

www.hamiltonfamilyaction.org

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up

against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought

to make it obedient to Christ.”  2 Corinthians 10:5. 

As parents up in arms, complaint filed against gay public school teacher who bashed Christianity

by Peter Baklinski

Fri Mar 23 11:25 AM EST

DUNDAS, Ontario, March 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Trustees of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) are lending their ears to the growing clamor of parents and ratepayers who want to know what happened on November 23rd, 2011 at Parkside High School in Dundas during a school-wide gay-straight alliance (GSA) assembly when a guest speaker reportedly tried to convince the audience that biblical teaching on homosexuality is obsolete, archaic and “wrong.”

The controversy over Parkside’s November GSA assembly has only gained momentum as Premier Dalton McGuinty gears up for a vote on his new anti-bullying legislation, Bill 13, which critics say conceals a radical homosexual agenda that would trample on religious freedom and parental rights. A key element of McGuinty’s bill involves forcing all school boards to permit openly homosexual, student-run GSAs.

One ratepayer Derek Kerr told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that he was “shocked and dismayed” by the response he received from Paul Barwinski, Parkside’s principal, when he asked questions about the “gay speaker who had re-interpreted the Bible and Catholicism to push her own social agenda on staff and students.”

“Mr. Barwinski began by asking me if I had any children who attended Parkside High School to which I answered ‘no’, I had not, and that I didn’t feel that it was relevant [since] my property taxes go the public board and I am a public school elector,” said Kerr. Kerr was not pleased that Barwinski “refused to answer” any of his questions, telling the ratepayer that he would only speak to parents of children who attend the high school.

Kerr told LSN that he was frustrated that “no one is willing to come forward to address my concerns.”

Dundas trustee Jessica Brennan wrote in an email to one concerned parent, the contents of which were leaked to LifeSiteNews, that the GSA assembly was “never intended to harm or disrespect anyone or their religion.”

“At the assembly, three current Parkside students and three former Parkside students spoke about their personal experiences in telling those around them that they were gay. The guest speaker spoke about e [sic] her religion and commented on her personal perspective regarding other faith traditions.”

Jackie Penman, HWDSB’s Corporate Communications Manager confirmed to LSN that the guest speaker was Laura Wolfson, a certified teacher with the Ontario College of Teachers who reportedly identified herself at the GSA assembly as a lesbian and youth worship leader from a synagogue and held herself out to be an authority on Old Testament Scripture.

Sources, who do not wish to be identified for fear of reprisals, told LSN that during the speech Wolfson sought to discredit Catholic beliefs by suggesting that since the eating of fish on Fridays by Catholics is no longer adhered to, neither should its beliefs on homosexuality.

Wolfson would not respond to LSN’s repeated attempts to contact her for comment.

LifeSiteNews requested a copy of Wolfson’s speech from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board so as to examine the accuracy of the source’s information, but HWDSB’s Communications Officer Mark Taylor declined the request for the speech.

LifeSiteNews has since filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain Wolfson’s speech.

Terry McFadden, organizer and co-MC of the Parkside GSA assembly, blogged that Wolfson was invited to the assembly to “address the boundaries some students face when confused about their sexuality, namely their religious beliefs.”

Wolfson reportedly started her treatment of Scripture in her speech by defining the word “abomination,” after which she pointed out that two offenses other than homosexuality that are labeled “abominations” in the Bible are things as common as not keeping the Sabbath holy and getting drunk. Since no one now would consider these two acts “abominations,” then homosexual acts also must not be condemned as wrong, she reportedly argued.

One concerned parent, who also wishes to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told LSN that they found the incident to be “pure brainwashing.”

“This wasn’t about safety or bullying. This was about discrediting Judeo-Christian beliefs [and] a complete bastardization of Scripture,” the parent said.

East Mountain HWDSB trustee Laura Peddle told LSN that after reviewing the speech, which was circulated to trustees as part of an Issue Note from the board, she could “understand how it would be offensive to traditional beliefs.”

“I can understand why different people with different beliefs would perceive it [the speech] as being more offensive than others would,” she said. Peddle noted that she herself does not hold traditional beliefs.

Peddle mentioned that after the board looked into the matter, they came back with “recommendations to make sure that everybody remembers what they have to do to make sure that the speakers are appropriate for a school setting.”

Chair of the HWDSB Board Tim Simmons told LSN that “whenever we have guest speakers they have to recognize the diverse community, the diverse audience, that they might be speaking to and be respectful around that. Everybody has to do that.”

“My concern is less about what was said because what’s said has been said. [My concern] is about if anything inappropriate was said, that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Central Mountain HWDSB trustee Lillian Orban told LSN that she would consider the reported content of Wolfson’s speech to be a “bullying statement.”

“In my opinion, if I read the policy on bullying, that [Wolfson’s speech] would be deemed to be a bullying statement,” she said.

Orban mentioned that she is a staunch supporter of what she called “religious accommodation” in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.

Suresh Dominic of Campaign Life Catholics told LSN that he had previously sent a letter to the Minister of Education demanding an official investigation into what he perceived as a “serious violation” of the Education Act.

Ontario’s Education Act states that it is the “duty of a teacher” to “inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality” (264.1 (c)).

When Dominic learned that Parkside’s GSA assembly speaker is a certified teacher, he said that Campaign Life Catholics would file a complaint against Wolfson with the Ontario College of Teachers.

“Teachers in the secular public school board are required by the Education Act to inculcate respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality,” Dominic told LSN.

“They’re also prohibited by the Act from engaging in indoctrinatory religious exercises,” he said, adding that “what Wolfson did was clearly an indoctrinatory religious exercise and showed disrespect for religion and Judeo-Christian morality.”

“Disciplinary action is required. We will file an official complaint with the College of Teachers.”
To respectfully express concerns, contact the following:

1. Education Minister Laurel Broten (Liberal)
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 416-259-2249
Constituency office: 100-701 Evans Ave., Etobicoke, M9C 1A3

2. Education Critic Lisa MacLeod (Progressive Conservative)
Email:  [email protected]
Phone: 613-823-2116
Constituency office: 3500 Fallowfield Rd., Unit 10, Nepean ON, K2J 4A7

3. Premier Dalton McGuinty
Email:[email protected]
Phone: 613-736-9573
Constituency office: 1795 Kilborn Ave, Ottawa, K1H 6N1

4. Tim Hudak, Leader of the Opposition
Email:[email protected]
Phone: 905-563-1755
Constituency office: M1-4961 King St E., Bearnsville, L0R 1B0

5. MPP for your riding. Find their contact info here.

6. Catholic Bishops of Ontario contact info can be found here.

7. Trustees page of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board here.

Copyright © 2010 LifeSiteNews.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

See how fast CBC gobbles tax dollars:
http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/index/cbc/waste-o-meter/