POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Lazy post: Reprinting a Letter to the Editor

I have long been writing letters to the editor at the Wall Street Journal. I've had a pretty good success rate in getting printed I think. I can't find the letter I wrote when I was drunk making fun of English majors, but I always found it very funny. Evidently the editors liked it, too. [Anybody able to find it.... please let me know!]

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has been regularly writing for the Weekend WSJ, and last weekend he wrote a [trying-to-be-funny] piece on making higher taxes more palatable for rich people.

Here's my response:

Alas, the problem isn't convincing the rich to allow higher taxes on themselves; it's convincing the rich to not change their behavior if higher taxes are imposed on them. It's a lot easier to stop making income than to make more. And the richer one is, the more people you've got helping you maximize your after-tax situation. We've seen time and again that raising taxes on people who are actually rich makes for good politics but it doesn't net much in government revenue.

In any case, it's moot. There aren't enough rich people, and they don't have enough wealth to plug the hole in our government finances at state and federal levels. There are, however, a lot more people—and total income and wealth—in the middle range.

So I think Mr. Adams had better get cracking on convincing those of median income that they should pay higher taxes and get fewer government services and benefits. Might as well work on it, as that's what's going to happen. Maybe we can make it like a video game. I know that when I "play" TurboTax, the numbers going up and down seem like a game to me.

And yeah, I need to go buy TurboTax. As I expect to be writing a large check this year, I'm in no hurry to play that game this year.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

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