Opinion
Featured Image
 WorldStockStudio/Shutterstock

(LifeSiteNews) — A proposal from a Texas legislator to offer significant tax breaks to families with many kids is a great starting point for a broader goal of society — supporting large families.

State Rep. Bryan Slaton’s legislation would give increasing levels of tax breaks to families based on the number of kids they have, with families with 10 kids or more receiving a 100 percent property tax break.

Furthermore it would affirm that marriage is between one man and one woman and would prohibit the tax credit from going to a couple if at least one person had been previously divorced.

Since the goal of public policy should be to encourage positive choices and beneficial lifestyles, Slaton’s legislation should be supported.

It supports three good choices — getting married, having kids, and staying married. It is an established axiom of economics that society should subsidize what it wants more of and tax what it wants less of, so subsidizing families is a good idea.

Furthermore, it is a good idea to punish divorce, given the enormous externalities, or consequences, that it brings upon society and which taxpayers must subsidize. The costs of divorce include criminal activity, substance abuse, and poor educational performance, all of which government entities and society in general must pay for, either directly or indirectly.

A typical libertarian argument would be that the government should just stay out of marriage — but no one who has gotten divorced fully believes that. After all, when a couple gets divorced it is often the courts, i.e. the government, that must step in and make custody decisions.

Divorced parents also want the government to facilitate child support payments and enforce parenting and alimony decisions. Society is already invested in families — it is time that it is done the right way.

Of course, a simple property tax rebate or discount is not enough to keep marriages together. Other ideas to incentivize marriage and punish divorce should be proposed as well. There should also be proposals to deal with difficult situations such as adultery and abuse.

Objections could be raised that families who struggle with infertility are going to be cut out of the benefits through no fault of their own. However, every public policy decision will support some people without supporting others.

RELATED: Texas GOP platform calls homosexuality ‘abnormal lifestyle choice’

A subsidy to attract firefighters or police officers to a state will necessarily leave out people who cannot be or are not first responders. Scholarships for potential nurses or medical professionals will cut out the retired or other people who are not reasonably going to change their careers.

That is okay — not every policy will directly benefit each person, but citizens still benefit from the police and healthcare professionals.

Furthermore, Slaton’s legislation sends the right message, which is that real, heterosexual marriage with kids is the best choice for society. Sometimes the late, great Andrew Breitbart is right, that politics is downstream from culture.

But also culture is downstream from politics. Leftists understand that, which is why they are so intent on changing the culture through political action, such as promoting pornographic books in schools and libraries and shutting down open debate on Big Tech platforms and cable news through political coercion.

They know if they can use political power to change the culture, then their political ideas will be favored, since competing good and moral ideas, will be shut out from the public square. Consider how the Biden administration has used political agents such as the Department of Justice to shut down pro-lifers, by siccing armed federal law enforcement on faithful men like Mark Houck.

The Biden administration wants unlimited abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, but what is standing in the way of his team changing the culture are peaceful Christian pro-lifers who pray and counsel individuals to choose life.

That is why they need to change the culture to support abortion and contraception by sending a message to other pro-lifers that if they are outside of abortion facilities they are liable to prosecution on trumped up charges.

State Rep. Bryan Slaton has a good idea and conservatives should seriously consider it. Society should support large families and Biblical marriage and should fight against pornography, gender ideology, and other harmful policies.

9 Comments

    Loading...