Academic

McCluskey on Economic Inequality & Marrriage Tax Reform

By Lawrence Solum

Martha T. McCluskey (University at Buffalo - Law School) has posted Razing the Citizen: Economic Inequality, Gender and Marriage Tax Reform (Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This chapter links the failure of U.S. social citizenship ideals to a broader weakness in U.S. ideas citizenship. To better advance policies of economic equality, U.S. law and politics needs a stronger vision not just of economic equality, but of gender equality and of democracy in general. Feminist scholars have analyzed how ideas about gender help shape the common assumption that the costs of raising and sustaining capable, productive citizens are largely private family responsibilities. But ideas about gender also help to undermine egalitarian economic policy by subtly shaping a vision where civic virtue ironically includes the project of razing citizens: turning democratic citizens into pre-modern subordinates dependent on private power. I use the example of recent tax policy reforms focused on reducing the so-called marriage penalty to show how problematic ideas of gender, anti-citizenship, and economic inequality have become entangled and how these must be reconsidered together to promote a meaningful vision of equal citizenship.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).