http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/175230.ctl

My old history prof Robin Einhorn wrote it, and I’m reading it slowly. Neat stuff.

Most Christian denominations say no, based on Matt. 22: 23-32

The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.

Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Most Christian denominations say no, based on Matt. 22: 23-32

The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him,

24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:

26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.

27 And last of all the woman died also.

28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,

32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Are married people still married in Heaven?

I have heard it said that tax law is fairly unique in that it more or less doesn’t have a spirit. Loopholes/Deductions are created in almost direct proportion to the political power of the beneficiaries, rather than out of any sense of the social good, and what’s the moral problem in pretending to be more politically powerful than you are?

Being forced to buy an annuity also seems pretty silly; if you don’t want people to build large tax-advantage estates, one could surely require a “withdrawal” of the pension funds with whatever tax consequences are appropriate before transfer to the heir. Simple, hard/impossible to work around.

(Dragging this back on-topic). When you say, a lot of people’s normal intuitions about legal principles break down in the context of tax policy, what do you mean? (1)That people don’t have those intuitions in tax policy? (2)That they aren’t good rules for tax policy? (3) Or that taxing bodies ignore them, annoying people who think of them as basic rules?

It seems to me that those rules are good rules for the law in general; that they are also good for tax policy; but that taxing bodies ignore them because they can get away with it (just as the rest of government would if it could get away with it.)

Do you have a cite? I’m familiar with Wisconsin vs Yoder, of course—but the state was the plaintiff in that case, not the defendant. I’m unfamiliar with any case where the Amish or Mennonites brought a suit on free exercise grounds.

The Amish, at least (I know nothing about Mennonites), and at least initially, sued (or individual Amish sued), to be relieved from legal compulsions which conflicted with their faith under the “free exercise” clause of the first amendment. After a while, legislators and regulators wrote in exemptions, to save having to defend such suits.

So they’re not such a good parallel:

• The UK doesn’t have a free exercise clause

• The previous tax policy didn’t conflict with PB faith.

@15,

I’m cynical enough to distrust an explanation that says asking politely enough will get you favours from Government. I’d prefer an explanation that says there was a financial services firm, with some influence on the Department, looking to expand its market. But I don’t know how one would identify it.

On the not voting, some Brethren are very into the ‘peculiar people’ line (1 Peter 2:9, KJV: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people”). What this means is that those who are chosen by God should have nothing to do with anyone else – and certainly nothing to do with the institutions of this world. (Strict PBs also don’t hold with cinema, dancing etc.)

The thing about betting on the day of one’s death relates, almost certainly, to another central PB tenet, which is that the Second Coming is due any day now. At PB weddings, so I was told, they don’t say “till death do you part”; they say “till death do you part or until the Lord do come”.

If some of this is sounding familiar to USAn readers, it’s no coincidence: the PBs were one of the few British successes of the C19 Great Revival, which was hugely influential on American Christianity.

This is an interesting question, as the PB look on the face of it to be an unlikely lobbying organisation. There is a bit of organisation AFAICT (although it is administrative rather than doctrinal), but not so much, and lots of PB sects don’t even vote in elections for theological reasons I do not pretend to understand. Nevertheless, they have an amount of influence out of all proportion to their size and have quite a lot of exemptions from all sorts of other legislation (I think they have a lot of get-outs from EU trade union laws). It looks to me to be an indication of the sheer power of being for the most part middle-class and polite, not causing trouble and asking nicely (and also being thin enough on the ground that it doesn’t cost too much to be a special case).

Jack,

Part of the charm of Daniel’s post is that it evokes different gripes in different jurisdictions. He’s thinking in sterling, I’m thinking in euros and you (I presume) are thinking in dollars. But more importantly, tax laws are a mess everywhere.

Is this what you mean by “the politics of tax policy?”