Renegade

The guidelines still apply. What happens is both spouses calculate how much support they would have to pay if the other spouse has sole custody. The parent with the higher income then submits the difference. If one spouse has little or no income (i.e. a remarried stay at home spouse) then the other spouse ends up paying full child support under the guidelines _and_ paying for care of the children 50% of time. http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/sup/pub/guide/step_6.html I stand corrected. The shared custody situation is still accomodated in the guidelines. That would mean that a higher income parent with 59% physical custody still could be obligated to pay 100% of the cost. This is even worse than I first thought.

In our society we DO distinguish those who are fully mentally competetent and those who are not. For example, we don't allow people who are less than 18 to vote, presumably because they do not have the maturity to make such a decision. It is entirely consistent to only give the ones with mental illness a subset of the rights, but it would have to be demonstrated that they lack the competence to make their own decisions. My previous remarks were directed and were presuming a fully competent adult member of society. Same as above. Someone with a mental illness may not be capable of exercising the same rights as others. Yes, so to remove the arbritariness of individual perception from play, in setting rules for society, we have to determine what a reasonable person would constitute a threat. In my view a resonable person would consider it a threat if others posessed nuclear or other arms. It may be strategic but it is not logical and it defies common sense to suggest a policy where individuals are allowed arms. How do we restrict it? Dont we do today by outlawing posession? On a national level we should also do so, but unfortunately we don't currently have a system of enforcement which is strong enough. And yes it woudl mean that those now in posession should give it up, and new nations would not be allowed to construct or possess it. Just as police would raid a grow-op, an international force woudl be justfied in raiding a nation suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. I would not consider deterence as a defensive capability of the weapon. Deterence is the reaction of others based upon posession of the weapon. You need to look at the direct capabilities of the weapon itself not the indirect outcomes. Since you believe that you cannot distinguish offensive from defensive capability, do you advocate that society allow the individual posession of any type of weapon? Do you really believe if posession were allowed on a widespread basis, it woudl not be used? Perhaps the reason no society exists which permit the unrestricted posession of any weapon, is becaue any that did wouldn't exist very long. Why are we discussing this in this thread anyway? Isn't this way off tangent from the original thread topic?

RW, I don't believe your statement is accurate. The child support guidelines only apply for situation where one parent has more than 60% physical custody, so in a 50-50 situation the guidelines would not apply and the situation would vary case-by-case. However, you are essentially correct that the system does not distinguish between the situatin where the paying parent has 39% physical custody or the paying parent has 0% custody. If the paying parent has 39%% physical custody, he or she essentially have the same fixed costs as the reciepient parent but the system does not take that into account.

Let me give you some examples: 1. Unions go to their employers demanding pay increases. 2. Parents demanding the government provide child-care programs. 3. Seniors demanding more investment in medicare 4. Investors demanding tax breaks for dividends. It is rare that people lobby against their self-interest. So I guess, you should consider anyone who supports a program or policy from which they woudl personally benefit, selfish.

They are only wrong in your or presumably government's moral judgement. And even if they are "wrong", so what? I guess what I dispute is the presumption that society can impose its designation of what is right or wrong on the individual. IMV the rules of society should be defined based upon how we impact each other. (eg killing is disallowed, not because it is "wrong", but because it impacts another's right to live. Suicide shoud be legal, regardless of it is is "wrong", because it only impacts myself ). There have been many societies which have tried to impose their view of "right" and "wrong" on their members. Theocracies are one example. They too, are dictating rules for your life, "for your own best interest". Not sure about you, but that's not my vision of society.

Such a fund already exsit in Canada. It's an RESP. Unfortunately currently the payor parent has no say that the money they pay is directed toward an RESP at all. In fact it is perfectly legal for the payee parent to use the money on a vacation for themselves, and even not include the child.

Paint myself as a moralist? Never! I'm not out to impose my sense of morality on anyone, nor do I want society or anyone else to impose theirs on me. Personally I don't try and evade taxes, not for any moral reasons, but simply because the potential consequesnces are not worth the savings. I do however try and avoid taxes as much as possible, because there are no negative consequences of this. As I've said, I don't see one as morally superior to the other. If you want to consider that selfish behaviour, that is your call. But then anyone who acts in his self-interest first would be then considered selfish. If nobody admits to needing protection from themselves or even asks to be protected from themselves, why bother protecting them at all?

If I'm an employee the government makes it difficult to not pay taxes as it is witheld without my consent. If I did avoid paying taxes in areas where the government could not withold it, I know exactly what would happen. When the government found out, they would coerce me either with force or the threat of force into paying whatever they wanted. It is an important distinction. Where do you draw the line on if the person is threatened or only feels threatned? If someone draws a gun on me do I simply feel threatened or is my security already threatned? Do I need to wait until they pull the trigger before I take action and it becomes self-defense? If someone calls me up and utters threats to my life, do I just feel threatned or is that an actual threat to my security? Do I need to wait until there is an actual attempt? In my view it is enough that a reasonable person would feel a threat to their security to justify self-defense. Whether disease or nuclear weapons, where we differ is simply that I would deem the potential for harm is sufficient justification for its restriction. If everyone could own a nuclear weapon, there would no doubt nut cases with an axe to grind who would explode one. Would you wait until someone exploded one before taking action? Disease is somewhat different in that it is unlikely that someone would willingly acquire a disease. Regardless of if it were acquired willingly or accidentally, if someone had a disease which was a threat to others, it woudl be justified to quarantine such an individual. I think you misunderstand me. Of course any weapoon can be used for self-defense as it can for offensive purposes. The kinds of things which I refer to which are primarily for self-defense are generally not called "weapons". Militarily, systems as chaff used by aircraft fall into such a category.

You are correct the coercion is not restricted to taxation. It is equally wrong that coercion is applied to other aspects of our lives as well. I have limited my comments to taxation simply because that has been the focus of this thread. The word "cheating" implies that you already make a negative moral judgement on the form of protest used. Any action which violates the rules of the system is "cheating", irregardless of if the rules are just or not. By that standard, a slave trying to escape is "cheating". Tax-avoidance is technically not cheating because one is able to exploit the rules for one's own advantage without violating those rules. Tax evasion is "cheating" in that the rules are explicitly violated. Personally I see very little moral distinction if you essentially believe the rules are wrong to begin with. It is frequently the court system which has forced the governmetn to have laws changed. This has been especially true when minorities have had to fight for rights. I'd like to think that courts would vote consistently and their rulings would not depend upon the whims of society, but that is likely just idealism. I admit I don't have a solution here, but what I would like to see are principles enshrined in a constitution and upheld by the court system. We have gone partway toward that by enshrining some individual rights, but I think there are other areas where individuals need protection against coercion which are not addressed. In my view a govenment is not a parental authority who ought to be protecting me from myself. I'm an adult who should be free to act even if that action is not in my self-interest. Personally I wouldn't trust government to protect my self interest anyway. As far as laws which forment social peace, again I feel it is overstepping the bounds of government. Ironically a government which can compel me to go to war against my value system, is the same one which can pass laws to "forment social peace"

No I would not impose a policy. A policy would be difficult to implement and very subject to interpretation. Even without policy your neighbours would coerce you by shunning you socially (as is their perogative to do). Because it clearly defines the mandate of the military. If I protest against some government tax policy, I wouldn't want the taxpayer-funded military used to quell the protest under the guise of protecting the government. I guess it depends what you mean by arms. Possession of arms involves a conflict of rights. On one side is the right to possess weapons for self-defense. On the other side is the right of individuals not to feel that their security of person is threatened. If you let people own nuclear weapons, certainly people are threatned even if the weapons are never used. Where would I draw the line? I would say that unless an arm can be shown to be primarily for self-defense it shoudl be restricted.

Yes freeloading is tolerated in our society, but it shouldn't be. I would imagine if you had a house and let it detioriate to the point where it brought down the value of your neighbour's property, they would not be pleased, and would take whatever action they can to change your course of action. Yes I can too. I would expect the primary use of the military is for external threat.

Yes that is true that grey areas can be manipulated to in effect create transfers of wealth, however interpretations of intent are somewhat the reason d'etre for courts. Presuming that one can agree on the mandate of government to provide services and not wealth transfers, then if what occured was a wealth transfer in disguilse, such a matter would be before courts to decide. This is much the same situation with our rights today. Yes that might work. Yes I agree, except I wouldn't see it as a pay-per-use as you would for electricity especially since usage is so infrequent. You benefit if a hydrant is near your house even if you don't use it, but simply because it is available for use. Charges for the service could probably be based upon a combination of fixed and usage charges. What you are pointing out is that you benefit (as demonstrated by your savings on insurance) if your neighbour is insured, and visa versa. Under normal circumstances this is not an issue because you provide him reciprocal benefit by insuring your own house. However, if you choose not to insure your own house, you are being provided a benefit for which you did not pay. That woudl seem unfair, as one of the principles I would espouse is that you should pay for benefits you recieve. I understand that you didn't choose to recieve this benefit, but I don't see a way around it. Imagine a situation where you have no fire insurance, and your house catches fire. The fire brigade contracted by your neighbour has to put out the fire in your house simply to avoid it burning your neighbours house as well. Again you are receiving a benefit you did not pay for but in essence are riding on the coattails of others. In other words, a feeloader. I don't think freeloading should be tolerated. To both questions I would answer "No, not completely". However, they situation is not binary. The situation in each case would be far worse if there was no military at all.

I am pessimistic. I still feel that it may be vulnerable to abuse and I do not know enough about legislation to see a fail-safe. Please give me an example. What a service is, is probably better defined by defining what it is not. A transfer of wealth is not a service. Hoarding of wealth is not a service. There are areas which the government funds which is arguably grey, such as foreign aid. Is that a service? In my opinion, no it's not, it is a transfer of wealth. Ultimately what a service is will ultimately be decided by whether people are willing to pay for it. While yes I think it is possible for simultaneous public and private fire-brigades, the issue arises where there is infrastructure required which needs to be shared. In this case it is the fire hydrants and water. It would be inefficient to duplicate the system for public and private use, and if eveyone needed fire insurance coverage, you couldn't really let him opt out of paying for the hydrant infrastructure. Also what happens if you don't need your house financed? Does that mean you can opt out of fire insurance and paying for the fire fighting infrastructure? Let's say you opt out, your house catches fire and burns to the ground, but not only does it burn, it causes your neighbours houses to burn down too. Should we still allow the opting out? I was thinking of something like the military which needs to be a unified force for defense of the country.This is a tricky service to reconcile. Naively, I would say: "Easy! Cancel the federal military!" and see small scale private security companies fill in the voids. As an aside, crony-military-industry-companies in the Middle East hire their own security companies when they are doing construction. In war zones, these "security guards" are effectively mercenaries. My cynicism takes over and I think we can extrapolate and learn from their example. I firmly believe that the vast majority of war is commercially based. The military is a tough one, because while it doesn't provide visible service to the taxpayer, it is undoubtedly necessary for self-defence and to fulfill our obligations to allies. It would be possible to do away with the military, but only if all countries do the same. Unfortunately it won't happen and I can see justification to not allow taxpayers to opt out of paying for the military.

The problem that I fear with this condition is that it might be impossible to explicitly specify policy. What fail-safe mechanism can prevent it from evolving over time into misuse of funds? For example, today we may accept tax-funded police, law and order services. Tomorrow, we collectively believe that road safety is part of those services and we assign the police the tasks of patrolling streets for dangerous driving, speeding and seat-belt enforcement. The next day, a friend (who owns a lumber pulp and paper mill) of a politician lobbies his friend to criminalize marijuana because the hemp manufacturer is able to produce paper at double the rate and with less by-products. Under the guise of protecting the public from danger, we have public money going into more law enforcement. Outside of law enforcement, cronies constantly lobby government to support their personal commerce. Laws and public spending are often presented as public services to dupe the electorate. An other example could be electricity and energy. We may designate them as essential services. However, instead of using clean wind-power, we burn coal and gas to power our generators. Why? because some crony-friend-of-the-government owns a local power plant or some secondary industry related to it. There are only two mechanism's to prevent such abuse. First by giving the taxpayer the power to opt out. If sufficient taxpayer find that the service is nothing more than a sham to pad pockets, they will opt out, thus depriving the system of funding. Second, what a service is can be more rigorously defined, and courts can be used to enforce such a definition. I wasn't meaning fire insurance. I was meaning the fire trucks, hydrant infrastructure and firefighters, however I am open to a better example. Again, this sounds good but personally, I can not think of what monopoly government service would would be exempt. Please provide a possible example. I was thinking of something like the military which needs to be a unified force for defense of the country.

As the law stands today, the payor would have to go to court and petition the court for an adjustment to the support order. If they no longer had any income, they court would revise the judgement to order no support payment. Given the cost and tedium involved, what is more likely to happen is that the payor would simply stop paying and wait for the payee to take him to court. Needless to say, once they get to court, the child-support order will be adjusted anyway.

How about we just set a maximium amount which is reasonable for child support? Anything above the maximium is at the discretion of the payor.

I agree that any law will be unfair in circumstances where one or both parties are out to punish each other. However, there a few improvements that are desperately needed:1) The courts need to be as harsh with deadbeat moms who deny access to children as deadbeat dads. I understand the argument that support payments should not be directly linked to access but the courts have to send the message that denying access to a parent who wants to be part of a child's life is as serious as refusing to contribute financially. 2) The terms that allow a single child to collect child support from multiple fathers/step fathers must be ended. The biological should be the only father that is responsible unless the step father explicitly adopts the child - at that point the biological father should be off the hook. 3) The court should take into account the money that a paying spouse contributes directly to the children's care. For example, if a parent has custody of the kids every weekend and is paying 100% of their costs during that time then that contribution should be taken into account when calculating child support. RW, all good suggestions. To that I would add that the payor should have some control to where support payments are directed. For example, the payor should be able to contribute to an RESP on behalf of that child and get credit for that contribution in lieu of a child support payment.

It would seem the life-long obligation of which you speak does very much depend upon your marital status (at least in law). There is no law which obliges you to have your children benefit from your success and position in life while you are married, so why should there be such a legal obligation when you are no longer married. As you have stated, most parents look out for their kids, and provide for them and even make sacrifices to provide extras for them. Why should the law presume that you would not provide those extras when no longer married? In effect the law has designated the parent who has physical access to be the proxy through which all benefits must be directed. I think this is the situation most payor parents object to.

I am curious to know: what defense would you want? Would it be a type of opt-out clause? I think a couple of things can be done. 1. The purpose of taxation should be restricted to funding for services provided. Taxation should not be used to raise funds for any other purpose. 2. Each citizen should be given the option to either accept the service and the corresponding cost, or to opt out. The government should not prohibit opting out without sufficient justification. (For example, the government may decide not let citizens opt out paying for fire protection services as the effect of fire can impact more than any one individual). 3. The government should not be able to prohibit any service provided from also being provided privately (eg health insurance, EI). Where the government must provide a service as a monopoly, it must provide sufficient justification. 4. The cost of the services provided should be distributed according to the benefit recieved. (ie user pays).

I am not advocating that people have the right to not being taxed at all. Let me define what I mean by taxation. By "taxation" I mean the right of the government to raise funds. Through history, and even in the world today, governments raise money through a variety of means. In the past some countries did it via colonialism. Today some countries leverage the natural resources of the country and don't have any income or sales taxes. Yet others rely on pay-per-use systems. What I am against is the threat of force used in our current system. We have no defense either in our constitution or law to the unilateral power by the government to tax to the level it chooses to. The only real defense is tax-avoidance and tax-evasion. Tax avoidance is prevelant among the wealthy and self-employed as they can afford the effective use of tax-minimization structures and loopholes. Tax evasion is prevalant in the service industries. (Look at the use of cash in the home construction industry as an example). The biggest loser in this is the working middle class. They have little ability to evade as their income is taxed at source, and they don't make enough to use tax avoidance techniques. It seems to me simply morally wrong that one has to wait until society's sensibilities catch up in order to declare an injustice. In my view, morals are not something which is relative to how a given society feels, but universal in nature. In some parts of the world girls 12 years old and younger are sold, against their wishes, as child brides. It is consider perfectly acceptable in those societies. Does that make it any less wrong? No, actually most laws define what we cannot do. They are reasonable based upon their justification to protect the rights or property of others. I don't see any similar justification in a law which says "You must pay taxes or else...". Who's rights are being violated if I don't pay?

To be consistent, why is it the Albertans separate and take Alberta with them, and I should leave and have to find a remote island? Why can't I just stay and declare myself independant just like the Albertans would, or why can't the Albertans leave and find some remote island to live and create their own social contract?

True, but I doubt that any court would include an overtaxed individual into "other groups". Basicly your argument boils down to it's the will of the majority so tough luck for the minority. Tell me why not extend that argument to homosexuals. (ie if the majority doesn't think they should marry, then homosexuals can believe what the want about their right to marriage). Any time coercion exist in the tax system it is an inequity. While I can see and agree with an argument that a basic set of services must be provided for by the government, the government goes far beyond the basic set and then coerces individuals to pay for it. Further, the costs are not allocated according to who benefits from the service resulting in further inequity. I would not just property rights enshrined in the constitution, but protection for the taxpayer for services which are unilateraly imposed. For example, I think taxpayers should be able to opt out out of any service and not have to pay the tax to support that service (eg EI, health care). I understand that it is not possible in every case to opt out, but there is no governance as to the level of tax burden and how that burden is distributed. That is left to the whim of the government.

I guess it comes to what do we as parents think we owe our kids. When the spouses are married there is no minimium standard that the govenment enforces on what lifestyle they should provide the kids (beyond the bare food and shelter). I don't agree that kids are "entitled" to a lifestyle beyond a minimium standard. I agree as parents you have a set of obligations to provide for your kids. In my view those obligations should be better spelled out both for parents who are married and those apart. Those obligations should be to provide food, shelter, clothing, education, and other essential. They shouldn't include discretionary expenses such as a tropical vacation every year or a new car when the child is 16. Whether a parent funds those discretionary expenses should be up to the parent. As I've pointed out before, it doesn't depend upon if the mommy is a multi-millionaire, it depends upon what she earns. Said another way, child-support payments depend upon income not wealth. Yes I agree, if the kids lived with dad and the mom earned the income, the mom would be the one paying, however the practical matter is that courts only award the father sole physical custody in 11% of the cases. So what looks good on paper, doesn't pan out in reality unless courts and society adjusts its bias. I would agree there should be a minimium value. That would imply that despite the income or wealth of the non-custodial parent there should be an amount they are obligated to pay. I disagree with you that there should be no maximium. After a point there is no correlation between how much you spend on a child and how that child turns out. I would even argue that there is a negative correlation, in that many kids who are over-indulged turn out to be spoilt brats. Even the courts recognize that there needs to be a limit in assigning child support by formula. That is why the guidelines do not apply for incomes over $150,000.

Depends, if the spouses remarry, the child can have a much better lifestyle, because the lost family income is replaced.

While I don't agree that someone who willingly gives up their rights is being "robbed of all their rights", I won't belabour the point in this thread. I'm not sure what you mean. The constitution specificly mentions "without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability. " My interpretation is that minorities which are grouped by the above named attributes are specificly named in the constitution. Exactly my point. Your point was that the constitution was intended to protect the minority from transgressions by the majority. I have shown that as far as taxation is concerned the constitution provides no protection whatsoever. So given that, why should those who's funds are being forcibly extorted believe that there is justification in our taxation scheme? I've already shown that the majority's standard of fairness cannot always be judged as "right" by an impartial party. You have agreed that the majority's standards need to be counterbalanced or gross inequities can occur. The point is that with taxation there is no counterbalance, and inequites ARE occuring. Given this, I think that it is valid to call taxation (at least the system as it now is) wrong.