{"id":3788,"date":"2007-10-29T07:35:01","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T14:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/29\/does-megan-think-liberals-dont-pay-taxes\/"},"modified":"2012-10-02T10:12:31","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T17:12:31","slug":"does-megan-think-liberals-dont-pay-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3788","title":{"rendered":"Does Megan Think Liberals Don’t Pay Taxes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

I don’t know why Matt <\/a>should find this remarkable:<\/p>\n

Still, the main psychological point remains that there’s a remarkable tendency to equate advocating that others engage in risky acts of physical violence with the idea of possessing courage and strength as personal characteristics.<\/em><\/p>\n

After all, we’ve already internalized the notion that advocating taxing other people in order to give their money to someone else is somehow morally akin to charity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find the “taxing other people” argument — which conservatives and libertarians use frequently — bewildering. “I think people, but not me<\/u>, should go to Iraq and risk death,” just ain’t analogous to “I think all taxpayers, me included<\/u>, should pay for a generous safety net.”<\/p>\n

In a followup post<\/a>, Megan implies that liberals only favor using wealthy people’s money to pay for social programs. Poppycock. ((The word “poppycock” “is actually<\/a> American in origin, first turning up there about 1865. The OED is silent on its origin, but most modern dictionaries know well where it comes from: the Dutch word pappekak for soft faeces.”)) I’m hardly high-income, but I pay taxes. So do most liberals and leftists. And although liberals and leftists ((“L&L” — the newest sequel to Dungeons & Dragons!)) favor raising taxes on the wealthy, not all rich people are republican. ((Incidentally, the overall tax structure in the US is flattish — the vast majority of Americans pay about 16% of their income in taxes<\/a>, give or take a couple of percent.))<\/p>\n

Note also that SCHIPP, which is paid for from cigarette taxes, has received enthusiastic support from lefties — even though smokers are not an especially wealthy group.<\/p>\n

Yet the idiotic “liberals want to spend other people’s money” idea is commonplace <\/a>among <\/a>conservatives <\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle writes: I don’t know why Matt should find this remarkable: Still, the main psychological point remains that there’s a remarkable tendency to equate advocating that others engage in risky acts of physical violence with the idea of possessing … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like","category-libertarianism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15893,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions\/15893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}