Kicking. Squealing.
I’m fond of the ‘Big Salad’ argument of income redistribution. You may remember the scene from Seinfeld in which George becomes angry that his girlfriend at the time takes credit for the Big Salad that he purchases for Elaine. To analogize the entire taxation mechanism in this country, George is the taxpayer (imagine that he’s a 1%-er in this scenario – lots of lettuce) while his girlfriend is the evil bureaucrat taking credit for George’s gift. As Costanza says elsewhere, “George is gettin’ angry!”
Tyler Cowen points to a post by economist Miles Kimball who laments the fact that people who pay lots of money in taxes don’t receive recognition for it:
I find it remarkable that I have yet to receive a thank you note for paying my taxes. When I fill out my taxes, I notice that even receipts for $25 donations have thank you notes attached. But for the tens of thousands of dollars I give each year to help keep our wonderful Republic afloat, nothing. Can’t we do a little more as a nation to honor our taxpayers individually?
Cowen may have forgotten his colleague Bryan Caplan’s similar argument:
Imagine the following scenario: Recipients of food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and student loans suddenly start expressing daily heartfelt gratitude to the taxpayers who provide for them. The eager proponents of these programs stop angrily demanding more. Instead, they spend their days proclaiming their appreciation for everyone who forks over their hard-earned dollars to help those in need. When asked, “Should we spend more?,” proponents coyly reply, “You’re doing so much already. Can you really can afford it?”
I added my own flair:
Think of it like this: if you’re a man, say you took a date out to dinner and a movie and even bought her gifts and flowers (talk about a Ponzi scheme). How would you feel if she complained that you didn’t take her to a better restaurant or didn’t buy her a nice enough purse or brought lilies instead of roses? And what if she called you cheap afterwards? And even if she wasn’t so hostile, what if she never said “Thank you”?
…
So if I were in the business of trying to get rich people to pay more in taxes, I’d behave more like any good fundraiser (or gold digger or stripper). I’d beef up my target’s ego; tell them they’re the best; thank them profusely for their contribution. And a smart one doesn’t screw the pooch by getting huffy and puffy if the whale doesn’t come through on the initial visit. The expert procurer wears a smile and says “thank you”. It’s good for business.
But liberal-progressives aren’t in a rhetorical position to say ‘thank you’. They speak of taxes in terms of duty. They remind me of the restaurant patron who refuses to be friendly to waitstaff because “it’s their job”. And in other contexts, some people adopt the theory that being nice and thankful to someone for a service performed will weaken the pressure on that person to perform the service. That’s how it seems to be in this tax scheme. If we thank large taxpayers then we’re sending them the message that they aren’t doing their duty; that their contribution is gratuitous.
I think you are on to something. If I were a Republican President and had to raise income taxes for whatever reason I would give out medals to tax payers based on the amount of tax money they paid. It sounds a little corny but it would have an enormous effect. Not only would net revenue payers like rich people finally get the individual credit they deserve and could show it publically but it would shame the other 49% of the populace that is perpetually pissing and moaning about how unfair everything is while not paying a nickel into the public coffers. Perhaps there could be gewgaws handed out for being a surplus mouth.
Indeed. Not long ago we suffered the loss of our barn and its contents in a terrible fire. It was big enough to garner some heavy news coverage in both TV and print. Within hours trucks carrying hay and feed were coming up the driveway, driven by farmers I didn’t even know. People from our community I barely knew provided meals and showed up to help us clear away the charred wreckage for days afterward.
Guess who we never heard from?
Any State office we had paid our fees to for the privilege of farming. The Farm Bureau we paid annually to belong to because they look after farmers. Any single human being working for any local, State of federal agency we have fed with our hard earned dollars over the course of entire adult lives who may have happened to have seen it in the paper or on the news.
It was as if we didn’t exist.
So the people we barely knew who had the least to give gave the most while the ones who depend on our hard work and tax dollars and memberships and fees treated us like it was an Amish shunning.
I have no complaint about the fortunes of life- we bounced back and continue to farm. We have each other and the land and everything on it. We still pay the taxes and fees as required, but we no longer belong to any type of voluntary organization that exists to “help us” farm from the safety and risk free environment of their climate controlled cubicles. When I hear about a fire, I simply hop in the pickup and head on down to see what I can do to pay it forward, so to speak because so many others did it for us.
We need government like a fish needs a bicycle.
Duty doesn’t necessarily preclude gratitude, that’s a progressive bug. For example, yard maintenance is my primary household duty, but the wife expresses gratitude and compliments every single time I mow.
One way to thank net taxpayers is to give only them the right to vote. Also, the more you pay, the more your vote is weighted.
Americans, especially productive ones, like to do things the right way and play by the rules. But I can see tax evasion starting to take off.
hardscrabble farmer – Good for you! Forget the leeches.
white people suck
Think about it. White America ruins everything. I mean, how many fundamentalist, gun-toting, flag-waving, aggresively ignorant jerks do you know who aren’t white. White Americans blow up abortion clinics, protest war-veteran funerals, sit in isolated cabins making bombs, chop up people and put said people in freezers for winter stews. White Americans revile soccer, are solely responsible for gentrification projects, and have pretty much ruined music and film by exploiting stereotypes of other races. Without white people, America might just be an alright place to live, but so long as we have a white majority, you can forget about improving a crippled education system or lessening environmental rape because, hell, white people love shitty education and raping the land – they practically invented both.
I mean, think about some of the biggest douchebags in the good ol’ US of A: Glenn Beck, white. Michael Moore, white. Nancy Pelosi, white. Sean Hannity, white. Jeffrey Dahmer, white. Bill O’Reilly, white. Rush Linbaugh, white. Ben Rothlisberger, white. Granted, there are some major douchebags of color out there, but I’m pretty sure that if I think hard enough I can attribute their douchey-ness to white America (you know, would Jesse Jackson be such a douche if it weren’t for white people? I don’t think so).
That brings me to the real reason Americans – white Americans – suck so hard: their very real, albeit ridiculous, fear of brown people. Since the beginning of the European discovery of America, white folks on this continent have been incredibly fearful of anyone who isn’t white. First, they brought diseases with them that wiped out 95% of indigenous peoples in the Americas- wiped them out in a span of about 100 years (1492-1608). Then, to really screw them over, the ancestors of future white Americans began a 300-year campaign of cheating, slaughtering and generally giving the shaft to the remainder of those indigenous groups. F’n A. But, destroying the cultures that were already here wasn’t enough for these jack-offs. Nope. They went to another continent, rounded up hundreds of thousands of brown people living there, brought them over to America and THEN proceeded to shaft those people for about 300 years.
Finally, in the 1950s and 60s, some white folks (mostly Jews and Catholics, so they technically don’t count as “white America”), realized that what was happening to black people in America really sucked and so decided to join up with some pretty-damn-awesome black folks and do something about the 300-year-long oppression. Thank God. Though, their efforts didn’t go forward without major opposition from a large population of white Americans – assholes who finally decided to take their efforts underground so as not to come off as real jerks in the global eye. However, they’re coming out from under their rocks to, yet again, express their open disdain for another group of brown folks … Hispanics.
Seriously, if it were, say, a bunch of French-Canadians … wait, no, because white Americans despise all things French as well. Okay, let’s say a bunch of regular Canadians were coming into the US to work landscaping jobs or harvest fruit and veggies – a bunch of regular white Canadians – do you think there’d be such a fuss about building a wall to keep out the Canadians? Nope. All the whiteys would be happy as pigs in poo to have their northern brethren coming down to cut grass and pick fruit. But that’s not the case with the Mexicans. Nope. Mexicans are brown and therefore evil.
I didn’t even mention the internment camps for Japanese Americans – some of whom had been in the US for generations … some of whom were the families of Japanese Americans serving in the armed forces in WW II. Jesus, white Americans suck so hard.
The list goes on and on and on. I mean, sometimes I really hate being white because I’m immediately associated with one of the most dominant groups of ducktards the world has ever known. Yep, white Americans even make things crappy for other white Americans. Jesus.
How can you be anti-racist when your first sentence is “White people suck”?
There is no lack of irony from that side of the fence.
the funny thing is the real richy riches pay the least taxes with offshore accounts and all the loopholes in the tax codes….
it’s probably upper middle class-say doctors and lawyers who pay the most in relation to their income…..
@anti-racist
[ ] Trolled
[x] Not Trolled
The only privilege the USA gives you for being a taxpayer is being able to vote.
I wouldn’t want to be known for funding some of the vibrant and flamboyant policies that perpetuate today. And i guarantee that those vibrant and flamboyant policies are exactly what keeps taxpayers mouths’ shut. If you demand gratitude for your taxpaying, doesn’t that clash with freely contributing so that everyone can get universal healthcare? Shouldn’t you be freely contributing so women can get access to the birth control that they need? You get the point
Now what would be interesting is demanding no “taxation without representation” in that few representatives dare to represent alternative stances on HBD, feminism, multiculturalism, sexual morality, etc.
If the Chinese takeover it’s going to be hilarious how quickly black people miss evil oppressive whitey.
I understand that anti-racist is a troll, but here is an extreme example of the kinds of things that happen to white girls who love black men. More commonly, such women get killed, beaten, abandoned with Mulatto children, financially ruined, and ostricized from both white and black communities.
Warning: not for weak if stomach:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/023110.html
I understand that the anti-racist troll is trolling, but this is an extreme example of what happens to white women who live black men. More commonly, they are killed, beaten, get acid thrown in their face, abandoned with Mulatto children, financially ruined, and ostricized by both white and black communities. And they are always washed up and fat in the end.
This is not for the weak of stomach:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/023110.html
Anti-Racist, if you’re going to troll here at least put some effort into it. You’re boring us to tears at this point.
translation: You cannot refute my Crystal Logic so must resort to namecalling.
Anti-racist is a jobless fool who thinks he’s clever by pretending to be white.
Helping out your fellow man is a noble and good deed.
Forcing people to help others at gunpoint is cruel and foul.
@anti-racist / rudeboi / someguy
Haha you should be thanking us every day, you were thisclose to getting wiped out by AIDS and guess who rode to your rescue just in the nick of time with those medicines you were crying out for? “Racist” “evil” white scientists subsidized by “racist” “evil” white taxpayer dollars. But if our money and science are too dirty for your pure, virtuous self, just let us know.
I’m going to speculate most one percenters aren’t loser betas like George. It is really hard to feel sorry for them.
The problem is how the salad is distributed. The big salad isn’t fueling the right people.
Even if compliance is expected, being told “thank you” when you do what needs done is still a nice gesture. I don’t know if it weakens the premise that certain behaviors are expected, but I would think that a little gratuity now and then, even for expected compliance, would be a net positive.
In Japan, lists are made of the people who paid the most taxes each year. There’s usually a newspaper article or two extolling the person — often an entertainer or athlete — for having earned so much and thus paid so much. I like it; instead of inciting class envy among the regular folks, the average person sees that huge contribution and thinks “I can pay less thanks to that person paying in a lot”.
Pingback: Linkage Is Good For You 8.26.12 | Society of Amateur Gentlemen