Make American Families Strong Again Act

Every year a family stays married, they get an increase in this new tax deduction for every year they stay married

Year 5 $5,000 tax deduction
Year 10 $10,000 tax deduction
Year 20 $20,000 tax deduction

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What do non-married people get?

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I agree with the sentiment, but I don’t feel this would work. As another said, “What do the unmarried people get?”. So that’s one issue with this. It’s my opinion that the other issue is that the incentive is strictly financial, through the IRS. Financial incentives are valuable because , unfortunately, it’s one of the only things that get the attention of many of us. However, it took 50+years to completely change the hearts and minds of the people (not all) of the United States. Slowly, new policies and laws were enacted, and encouraged through the entertainment industry, news outlets, etc. Between that and the silence of those who could see the danger of these changes, the hearts and minds shifted and ultimately changed drastically. Because of that, an important part of the foundation of a prosperous people has nearly crumbled. We have become a society that values individual satisfaction over the nuclear family. Sure, tax incentives would be great, but it would not reverse the damage or promote healing. We need to instill values again. We must remember the benefits of individual sacrifice for the good of the family unit. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have the freedom to do whatever they feel is best. That was always there, is just that people chose differently not that many years ago.
I hope I was able to explain why I believe this proposal won’t work in the long run. The two major issues are major flaws in my opinion. I do believe it’s worth exploring though. The nuclear family is foundational!

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This could cause unhealthy, damaging relationships to continue for the sake of financial stability though, which could damage children and spouses even further… also unfair to people who work hard and choose to stay single. I like the idea, but needs a lot of work

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I feel the same way.

Personal anecdote, I can remember a tweet from Elon Musk where he’s quoting someone who mentioned a story about the Romans levying a 50% tax on citizens who were unmarried or didn’t have children or something like that and Musk’s attitude was “Romans didn’t go far enough” (add it to the list of reasons I view him with suspicion);

My personal attitude, as someone who is unmarried and doesn’t ever expect to get married - and as consequence, doesn’t expect to ever have kids - is that in a theoretical case where the US government threatened to tax me at a 50% rate if I didn’t get married and have kids, I would actually just suffer through the 50% tax rate because I expect I would actually save money vs what I’d have to spend on a wife and kids and the 50% tax rate would nothing to address any of the reasons why I’m unmarried and childless.

Similarly, nothing about this proposal would move the meter for me insomuch as the slightest.

This is the core issue.

Amid all the talk about increasing number of people choosing to skip marriage and kids the discussion usually completely misses what the real problem is.

The issue of marriage and kids isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom. To try to address the issue of marriage and kids directly is like trying to treat the outward appearances of a disease but not addressing the disease itself.

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I agree 100%