How things work in real life.

[gwendally]

Someone called me today to discuss whether they should get married.  I discussed the tax aspects.  One of them makes a .gov wage in the $60K range, the other makes essentially nothing, maybe $8K/year.  That is the only situation where it's beneficial for the tax code to get married, and also beneficial for getting social security benefits under the

Comments

[gwendally]

Top soil depleted when I bought cheap food. Fossil fuels my children should have had available for emergencies that I used to get cheap transportation. Clean air I sacrificed for cheap electricity to power my computer. Poisoned eventual landfills for when I dispose of business equipment. I have all sorts of externalized costs.

[ford_prefect42]

The bulk of those are far less externalized than we tend to think, or are far less "costs". Modern power generation has virtually no actual air quality repurcussions, most business equipment is recycled, and the parts that aren't don't poison landfills, modern landfills don't leak, as a civil, I can tell you that the precautions are *extreme*, involving multiple layers of impermeable clay, 1/4 inch HDPE, and sand drains. The fossil fuel depletion issue isn't an example of "externalized costs" depletion is paid for in the cost (saudi oil extraction costs are $2/barrel, and marginal production is around $60), depletion is being paid for in the price of a gallon, and then some. When you buy a gallon of gasoline, you own that gasoline. By every reasonable ethical standard

[gwendally]

"Modern power generation has virtually no actual air quality repurcussions

[ford_prefect42]

Even the *worst* nuclear plants are pretty much totally clean. There's a *huge* amount of false information surrounding those. Let's put it this way: Do you know how many people died or will die from radiation induced illnesses at fukushima? 0. Did you know that per kwh produced, rooftop solar kills more people than Chernobyl did? A lot of actions are taken as regards radiation out of an abundance of caution. For example, quarantining areas in which lifetime exposure would amount to 1/10 the amount that would show a statistical correlation to measurable increased lifetime cancer risk. It makes for scary looking press "25 square miles cordoned off due to radiation risk", but... as things to worry about go, they're asinine. Purely the result of paranoia and bad education

Reasons to not get married.....

[mehitabelmmoss]

My sister was all set to marry. Her expected husband was reluctant but willing. Then she spoke with a financial advisor and decided that her hubby should not be on the hook for her kids education, and that it would actually cost them over a thousand a year in taxes.
They had a 'wedding' (which totally annoyed our whole family for various reasons - me because she kept saying you only get married once when she had been with a female partner for 17 years and had 2 kids together) and have been happily semi-married for almost 10 years now.