Fairness and Theft (NPR and Taxes)

Brooklyn Young Republican Club ^ | April 20, 2012 | Gerard Perry

[OddLane]

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

This apothegm, like many nuggets of wisdom you might have stumbled across whilst skimming your conservative friend’s Facebook page or Twitter feed, is a quote from Dr. Thomas Sowell, historian, economist, professor, and one of the shrewdest observers of human nature of the late 20th and early 21st Century. It popped into my head a few weeks ago while listening to This American Life, an extremely popular radio program broadcast on NPR, which usually devotes an hour to examining a topic of either topical or broad philosophical importance.

In this case, the subject matter was a fusion of the two, as Ira Glass introduced three segments that purported to explore the question of what happens when the public’s demand for services from the state outstripped the state’s ability to bankroll such programs. In other words, What Happens When You Run Out Of Other People’s Money, to paraphrase Baroness Streep.

This episode was bookended by segments about the parlous economic straits of two very different American cities. In Trenton, New Jersey the overwhelming debt burden-somewhere on the order of thirty million dollars, the last time I checked-as well as our prolonged recession has compelled the municipality to make deep cuts to local law enforcement. Consequently, the number of home invasions, robberies, rapes, and homicides has skyrocketed. Leaving aside the question of whether some of these crimes might have been prevented through defensive firearms ownership-perhaps the only thing urban politicos hate more than fiscal restraint is the Second Amendment-the producers of This American Life decided to explore how raising taxes could have prevented this calamitous situation from developing.

[OddLane]

American Rattlesnake

[OddLane]

ping

[OddLane]

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[Tax-chick]

bump!

[OddLane]

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