Along the lines of today’s Paul Craig Roberts LRC column (The Wars We Can’t Afford to Lose), is this ridiculous story:
Swedish MPs Want “Man Tax”
05/10/2004 09:40 AM Reuters
A group of Swedish parliamentarians have proposed levying a “man tax” to cover the social cost of violence against women.
“It must be obvious to all of us that society has a huge problem with male violence against women and that has a cost,” Left Party deputy Gudrun Schyman told Swedish radio.
“We must have a discussion where men understand they as a group have a responsibility,” said Schyman, one of the party members to sign the motion for debate on the new tax.
Schyman said in a headline-hitting 2002 speech that discrimination in Sweden followed “the same pattern” as in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
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Must we laugh or despair ?
Must we laugh or despair ?
Apparently you can do either/or as long as you pony up the dough. That seems to be mission one.
The problem is since the ‘right’ has conceded to the left the battlegrounds of the 50′s, 60′s, and 70′s, they are now moving on to new, fertile, territories. I am of two schools of thought, that the center will recoil soon, see where such logics have gotten us, and we can finally move back rightward, or the slow death of individualism will continue and we will enter fully the darkness of superstition that the Age of Enlightenment got us out of. Something tells me it will be a little of both, a final recoiling after we have entered so very far, and the rejection of the ‘order’ will cause major upheavals/revolutions to destroy it.
Maybe in response to the new tax windfall, the state can fund a all male country club…errr, I mean *re-education camp*, where men can go to dicuss their blatant ‘maleness’…and of course play a little golf.
Brad
You first sentence made me laugh ! Cheers !
The Soviet Union took 7/8 units of time (if one unit is defined as a decade) to unravel. I fear we will have to wait awhile before we see the end of the tunnel.
Sweden has for a long time been a radical leftist country in all areas. Both in the fact that it has the biggest welfare state and the highest taxes in the world but also regarding the most far reaching “hate speech” laws outlawing negative comments about non-white minorities and homosexuals (Yes it is illegal to quote the Bible’s view on homosexuality if you do not at the same time express disapproval of it) and
in the fact that there are gender quotas in more and more areas. A law requiring all companies to have at least 40% women in their board of directors will be enacted soon. And there is strong pressure from feminists that the government should use its parental leave benefits to force fathers to spend equal time with their children as the mother do. So this proposal about a special “man tax” should come as no surprise given the radicalism of Swedish feminism.
Since they’re being asked to pay for male violence against women, don’t be surprised when Swedish men decide to get their money’s worth.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that this tax will not dent on the alleged “violence against women” rate.
The second thing that comes to my mind is that many men will probably choose to migrate than stay and face such subsidy on their women. Better to marry a German and subsidize her than stay and subsidize all Swedish women.
The third thing that comes to mind is that even if the Swedish goverment levies any money out of this at all, it will not be used for the alleged purpose of alleviating the supposed “cost” of voilence against women but will be funneled directly to the pockets of state bureaucrats.
It’s time for those swedish men to turn into Viking Barbairans and carry out mad raids against socialists, communist and bureacrats.
LR… LR…
Is that you, Lew??
Pel, that’s hilarious.
I think that the cause of the problem should be addressed rather than the symptom. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to tax Swedish women who produce male children?
So now you can get taxed for having a penis. Which of course raises the question, is it a progressive tax?
Who pays for violence in lesbian relationships?
(full disclosure: poster is a straight woman)
…which will be grounds for the state to further increase the male tax.
By the way, do gays get a rebate?
The Swedes seem to have a constant affinity for totalitarian ideolgies: during WW2 they allowed German troop trains to transit their territory and supplied NS Germany with crucial war materials as late as March 1945. They also had a sterilization program for the “unfit” and those of mixed-race that began in the 1930′s and lasted until 1976-and this under the now fanatically multicultist Social Democrats.
Fascism is simply a willingness to coerce people by any means necessary — a willingness to use the bundled axe blade to draw the blood of anyone who dares to challenge pretense of authority.
Trash won’t pile up. Not everyone will be an obese, obediant puppet of the government on a ship some thousands of light years off, but this movie is not protesting that society will turn into the exact model that it displays.
People make the mistake of separating politics into this neat and tidy “left” and “right” categories when the explanations are a lot more complex.
After 9/11 fear gripped people worldwide. Since “women’s rights” is already a major part of Swedish politics and culture, more than the US or even the rest of Europe the aspect of the terrorists being extremely sexist and oppressive of women was more shocking to them there than anywhere else. Growing rates of Muslim immigration throughout Europe has lead to a lot of talk, mostly identified with the right about Muslims “threatening their values”, so Swedes started worrying that society was changing to become more sexist. This just shows people on the “Left” are not immune to fear-mongering.
The same thing that underlied calls by some big-name right-wingers for “interning” Arab-Americans and Muslims underlies the call in Sweden for a name tax, fear.
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