David Blackburn

Love and marriage

It’s all a bit of a puzzle. How will David Cameron incentivise marriage? In an interview with the Mail, Cameron dismisses IDS’s transferable tax allowance scheme. “It would be wrong to say that they are Conservative Party proposals.”
                    
Considering the scheme will cost £4.9bn, the pro-cuts Tories can ill-afford an incentive that would benefit the middle class in the immediate term. Cameron and Osborne are searching for a cheaper way to honour the pledge.

Pete and Fraser debated whether marriage should and could be financially incentivised. On balance I side with Pete, marriage should not be financially incentivised. I’ve nothing to add to Pete’s analysis except that I doubt tax changes behaviour markedly. Arguing from the other side of the coin, green taxes and extortionate booze duty have not stopped people making those choices. Besides, who is to say that a couple who endure each other for the sake of £20 a week will bring up their children any better than if they had separated?

However, the Tories are correct to assert that marriage, both in its civil and religious forms, provides society’s strongest form of social organisation.

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