My right-wing Palin loving Obama hating sister sent this to me today with the subject line: Must Read, Profound Statement
“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”*
Adrian Rogers, 1931*
I’d like to reply with a good rebuttal and thought maybe someone here would like to craft one.
Any takers?
This is dated 1931, but is it from Adrian Rogers (1931-2005), who was president of the Southern Baptist Convention? The Adrian Rogers who, when asked about the Bible’s endorsement of slavery, reportedly replied, “I believe slavery is a much maligned institution; if we had slavery today, we would not have this welfare mess” (cite)? That Adrian Rogers? I’m not sure I’d want to look to him for analysis of tax policy.
You know, I don’t see anything to object to in the quoted statement. It may not represent a rebuttal to anything that anyone is actually proposing, but in and of itself, it seems to me to be pretty much self-evidently true.
In a sense, the quoted statement is kind of a straw man argument. No-one is proposing to support half the population at the expense of the other half. But the proportion doesn’t need to be half-and-half to make the principle work. I won’t say any more than that, to avoid sending this into GD territory.
Roddy
“When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end”
I don’t believe that if you take away from the “haves” that they’re simply going to stop working. Would rich people really give up being rich just so they could stay out of a higher tax bracket?
And it also implies that the “have nots” will simply sit on their collective asses and do nothing because it’s easier to take handouts.
It’s a strawman. Liberals don’t want to give people money for free. I personally feel that people will be more inclined to work harder when they are paid what their work is worth. The disagreement comes in trying to determine what someones work is worth.
Are you wanting to really have an honest dialogue with your sister, or are you looking for something that will keep her from sending you any more of these e-mails (at the risk of offending her)?
If you just want to be snarky, you could ask her if that means she thinks the minimum wage should be raised. After all, if being paid more means people will always work more and harder, raising the minimum wage should dramatically increase overall productivity.
My uncle (who is actually a really good guy) has absolutely no filter and forwards 90% of the bullshit that hits his inbox. Most of it is cute/funny/sappy and I’ll read and grin. Every now and again, though, he’ll send out something that’s so blatantly wrong and so easily checked by Snopes that I’ll do a reply-all with a link or two - after which my aunt will send me a thank you from her personal email. I used to do that once a week; now it’s down to once every couple of months.
You’ve posted about your sister sending racist shit before, Hampshire, haven’t you? How do you want to handle this, really? Is she sending you this stuff just because you’re on your mailing list, or is she intending to wind you up? You might thing about writing a short bio of Rogers, include the quote from Bayard and a few choice others you can likely dig up on the web (bonus points if you can include links to crazy racist websites), end your missive with “So, yeah, pardon me if I choose not to take ecnomic advice from someone who’s batshit insane…”, and reply all.
Or you could just ignore it and hope she goes away.
If you’re wondering what I would do…well. There’s another aunt who doesn’t email me any more.
It’s not quite a snappy comeback, but the problem with the quote is that it assumes that the economy is a zero-sum game, in which tax policy is merely the redistribution of a fixed quantity of dollars. Instead, the idea should be to develop tax and economic policy which leads to the most efficient economic growth and an increase in the overall welfare of the population. There can certainly be disagreements as to what is best the best way to achieve the optimum results, but I don’t think any reasonable person can claim that it is good for a country’s economy to have the poor starving in the streets, spreading communicable diseases, and rioting when they have the energy.
And is she a person who will actually consider an opposing argument, or just someone who blindly believes anything that Bill O’Reily says? That’s what should be determined before bothering with it.
You get blanket email “jokes” that are actually funny? What universe do you live in? Maybe I’ll move there.
Or try this:
Send the same thing back (whether it be some splurge, or a cutsy, sappy, unfunny “joke” or a picture that amuses only the mentally challenged) to everyone, but precede it with this boilerplate bogus embedding:
=== BOILER PLATE (change “sister” to “coworker,” ect. as necessary) =====
===(Insert original splurge/sappy joke at end============
So you believe that justifies taking what is earned through hard work? What happened in the Soviet Union was near 100% employment but extremely low productivity by western standards becasue there was little or no incentive to excel.
As for what would happen, the “haves” find ways to keep their money and if they own businesses may cut back on the workforce making those who still have jobs work harder without making more money.
I always tell the kids we’re rich lazy Americans, so I’m going to answer the question asked. In short “Yes.” My wife & I have decided more than once not to pursue X, Y, or Z because it would probably push us into a higher tax bracket.
Just to clarify, tax brackets generally only affect the additional money you earn: e.g., the higher tax rate is only applied to the income you earn over and above what you were earning before. If you were earning 80,000 and paying a 25% tax rate, and you started earning 100,000, you would be taxed 25% on the first 80,000 and 28% only on the next 20,000* (some subtlities here if you’re subject to the AMT, but in general this is correct).
*Tax rate wouldn’t really be 25% on the full 80,000, only on a portion of that amount, but this is the general idea.
