Horse, carriage, and ... taxation?

Back in the old country, I knew Frank Sinatra only as an actor!  In Von Ryan's Express that I recall watching in the cinema in Madras that screened English films.  How could a teenage boy not like World War II action movies!

It was only after coming to America that I knew how huge a star Sinatra was, and how the crooner made women swoon.  After all, there was nobody around me in the old country who listened to music from the US or Europe or anywhere else.

From the day I arrived here in my adopted land, I have been immersed in all things Americana.  And, thus, as I have often mentioned in this blog, one of my all time favorite songs is his signature song.  

The first time I heard another song of Sinatra's, Love and marriage, which I like but is not in any of my top listings, was in a sitcom that even back then was far from politically correct.  Sinatra sings:

Love and marriage, love and marriage, 

Go together like a horse and carriage. 

This I tell ya, brother,

you can't have one without the other.  

Love and marriage, love and marriage, 

It's an institute you can't disparage. 

Ask the local gentry and they will say it's elementary. 

 Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion.

Horse-and-carriage is practically history.  When was the last time that you rode one?  While marriage has not become extinct, yet, it certainly is not the institution that it once was.

Yet, we have government policies in place that favor marriage.  Married people have rights and privileges that the unmarried do not have.   I have argued many times that a government has no place in "marriage."  Until recently, governments didn't have any role in this. Marriages were the domain of families, villages, and religious authorities.

The government's interest was all because of taxation.  But, I don't want to rant about that in this post.

Instead, I want to highlight that it is time that we examined the role of government in marriage when adults are increasingly choosing to be unmarried.  As Charles Blow asks, is it "fair and right to continue to reward and encourage marriage through taxation and policy when fewer people — disproportionately Black ones — are choosing marriage or finding acceptable partnerships"?

Social structures and norms are changing, and changing rapidly.  Marriage is one of those:

Census data that shows low marriage rates among millennials and Gen Z-ers — only 29 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds were married in 2018, compared to 59 percent in 1978 — begets headlines bemoaning a “marriage crisis” or predicting “the end of marriage in America.”

Yet, as much as cooking shows are popular despite the fact that most kitchens are rarely used, reality shows about finding Mr. Right and Ms. Right are popular as ever:

In reality TV land, singlehood isn’t a newly desirable state, but rather a purgatory that people will exit as soon as their finances allow, or they meet the right partner, or an army of TV producers steps in to intervene. And these shows aren’t an anachronism as much as a cry for a roadmap — a shortcut to getting married once and for all.

There is a huge disconnect between reality TV and the real world, and the viewers seem to want to escape into the fantasy, similar to how Indian masala movies are all about falling in love when "love marriage" is rarely welcomed by many.

I suppose this kind of cognitive dissonance is also what makes us human.  Else, we will be automatons ;)