Fight?
So. I was reading a post on the Dilbert Blog. Here's a little taste:
What if the government could give something of value to the rich in return for paying higher taxes? It would have to be something that didn’t cost the government or its citizens any real money. How about extra rights?As I read it I'm like "Man. That's brilliant." It's an interesting question because it probably hurts the rich more than it helps them; nonetheless, separating them into a higher class of citizen would probably not go over so well with the less rational minds in the nation.
In fact, it would probably also not go well with the more strongly opinionated somewhat idealistic minds either. That's a common type of person at Olin. Then again, we also have people on the other extreme who would see this, not as unfair, but as obvious and right.
So I'm not sure who my audience is exactly, but I'm hoping for enough strongly opinionated people for a comments fight like Scott Adams always gets:
Go!
4 comments:
Umm the rich already have extra rights. The right to speed. Yeah eventually you can accumulate too many points on your license and not be able to drive anymore. But the rich have the "right" to speed because if they get caught the ticket won't be a big deal to them.
Then there is the hiring of $500/hr lawyers to get out of their messes. Or how a certain someone told in all seriousness that the only reason they got into a certain law school is b/c of her dad's financial contributions to that university. I could go on...
Valid. But the neat thing about the article's suggestion is the explicitness of it. Imagine if the law was that you didn't even have to go get slapped on the wrist. In other words, if there was an absolute difference in addition to a relative difference that came at a large premium, would the rich be up for it. And would everyone else be OK with that?
It seems like there might even be old money new money tensions somewhere in there...
Extra "rights" necessarily come at someone else's expense. (see also: Russia, where being rich means you don't have to play by the rule of law.) This would further disadvantage the impoverished and accrue no obvious benefit to anyone.
Also: you are not always right. I see no justification for claiming that an American caste system would only be repugnant to 'the less rational minds' of the general population.
I think I mean rational here as in analytical; ie holding a good robot as an ideal for rationalism. I do not mean chill smart thinking peeps. I apologize if this was misconstrued.
My point was that humans are human and won't simply run numbers to decide what is better.
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