{"id":809,"date":"2004-04-21T03:06:21","date_gmt":"2004-04-21T11:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/04\/21\/the-taxpaying-prisoners-dilemma\/"},"modified":"2004-04-21T03:06:21","modified_gmt":"2004-04-21T11:06:21","slug":"the-taxpaying-prisoners-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=809","title":{"rendered":"The Taxpaying Prisoner's Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fifty Minute Hour <\/a>approvingly quotes from this New York Post <\/i>columnist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

On the issue of affluent Americans paying more income taxes, John Kerry is, as always, consistent in his inconsistency.<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail, he’s in favor of raising taxes on everybody who makes over $200,000 a year. Unless, of course, he’s the one being asked to pay more, in which case, forget about it.<\/p>\n

We know this because of a little whoopee cushion recently inserted into the income tax forms of his home state of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Weary of liberals always clamoring for higher taxes on other people, an anti-tax group managed to place a line on the tax form giving Bay Staters the option of paying at the old, since-repealed 5.85 percent rate, rather than at the current 5.3 percent rate.<\/p>\n

For two years now, John Kerry has had the opportunity to pay his ‘fair share.’ But like some Benedict Arnold CEO, the Democratic Party candidate for president has taken the money and ran.<\/p><\/div>\n

Really, though, what’s happening is a version of the prisoner’s dilemma.<\/p>\n

It’s not that Kerry, as a rich person, is unwilling to pay high taxes. It’s that he’s unwilling to pay high taxes unless all the other rich people pay high taxes, too<\/i>.<\/p>\n

This is a perfectly consistant position on Kerry’s part. He doesn’t want to pay higher taxes for their own sake; he wants to pay higher taxes for the sake of having more and better government services. If every <\/i>rich person in Massachusetts paid higher taxes, then Massachusetts would be able to afford more and better services. So raising taxes on everyone in Kerry’s bracket makes sense – and Kerry is willing to pay a higher tax in that circumstance.<\/p>\n

However, it doesn’t make sense for an individual rich person to voluntarily pay a higher tax rate, when it’s clear that almost no one else (not even other rich people) will do the same. For Kerry and a handful of other wealthy folks to pay 5.85 percent rather than 5.3 percent just won’t make enough of a difference to be worthwhile.<\/p>\n

What The Fifty Minute Hour is saying is that because Kerry is willing to raise taxes on all rich folks (himself included) in exchange for a gain in services, he’s a hypocrite because he’s not willing to personally pay more in exchange for no significant gain in services. Could there be a more ridiculous critique of Kerry?.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fifty Minute Hour approvingly quotes from this New York Post columnist: On the issue of affluent Americans paying more income taxes, John Kerry is, as always, consistent in his inconsistency. On the campaign trail, he’s in favor of raising … 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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","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=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}