Thursday, January 26, 2012
Paying One's Fair Share For A Piece Of Something You Barely Use Or Want
Analogies are not statistics -- not that statistics offer air tight cases for anything -- but I like them.
Perhaps you're familiar with the scenario I'm about to describe. You or someone else goes to a party at a restaurant. You've already eaten or you're not feeling well so you don't want anything to drink. Or, you arrive late after having been to another party. You eat one slice of pizza and have one beer while most at said event have downed several appetizers, several slices of pizza, and at least a pitcher of beer. When you're all about to leave and people are getting their wallets out, you offer to pay the same as everyone else but sane people recognize that you've had a mere fraction of the party's food and drink and tell you, "Just give us ten bucks and we'll call it even." You make one more polite offer to pay a full portion and others insist that you don't. After the etiquette dance you end up paying "ten bucks" and no one feels you've somehow cheated them or somehow been greedy or sinister. Of course, on rare occasions you'll be dealing with some clown who fully expects you to pay what they consider to be you're "fair share." It's doubtful that anyone would actually say, "you know, you ate and drank a fraction of what we did but you're richer than us so you should pay more."
Only in the bizarre world of "progressive" politics is it seen as an affront to decency that a person who is part of the group that pays 40% of all federal income taxes is somehow "not paying their fair share." The argument that "you should pay [an arbitrary amount] more" because you have more wealth doesn't even address the issue of what the money is being spent for. Imagine being at a restaurant where they've ordered sardine flavored ice cream with pickles and chocolate sauce and insisted that since you're comparatively rich you should pay more than the already large amount you were going to pay (for something you didn't want).
It's probably an instinctual reaction among most people to want the guy with "all the stuff" to pay for everyone's [the state's and politicians] everything but, come on! There's fairness and there's stupid.
You know we've entered surreal times when the state is full of sardine flavored projects and it's considered a testament to fairness that those who pay the most be forced to pay more. It's even more pathetic that a good portion of our population have been so easily swayed by demagogues to believe that one is selfish, "greedy," or even evil for not wanting to fill the state's ever growing list of pathetic Vote buying schemes and dependency traps.
When we freely choose the goods and services we want and pay for them at a mutually agreed price we are "paying our fair share.". When we submit to the commands of politicians and bureaucrats and fork over large percentages of our earned wealth we are "On the road to Serfdom," as Friedrich Hayek put it. "Fair" isn't fair...no matter how good someone thinks the sardine flavored ice cream is.
