What do you get when you cross Milton Friedman's 'negative income tax' welfare streamlining scheme,
'compassionate' conservative and liberal political sentimentalism, an
idiotic sense of 'consistency' and a blind obsession with it, an inane
grasping for additional sources of income by politicians, and, perhaps
the most stupid policy ever enacted by any government, anywhere, for all
time -- self-reported income taxation?
Answer: welfare and tax fraud on a massive scale.
I might be tempted to get angry if I weren't already in a state of
complete exhaustion with this kind of thing. But really, what can you
say? What kind of place instates policies where people self-report
their own taxable possessions, and then is surprised when people report
fraudulently?
A place that is doomed. Even public
schoolteachers know better than to let students grade their own papers.
People like to say that the establishment of the income tax was a
critical turning point in the ruining of America. There is some truth
in that, but I think that with respect to such ideas, the actual turning
point comes when the idea begins to sound reasonable to enough people.
Socialism never actually ruined a place, I suspect. But ruined people find appeal in ideas like socialism.
Truer words have scarce been said.
ReplyDelete'Socialism never actually ruined a place, I suspect. But ruined people find appeal in ideas like socialism.'