On Monday I wrote about Bloomberg Politics lionizing the ISIS leader Baghdadi after he blew himself to hell during a Special Forces raid.
Now they publish this garbage:
Raising taxes on the wealthy could deliver something meaningful that millions of Americans would feel rather quickly: happiness https://t.co/nsgdxdMHq0
— Bloomberg Opinion (@opinion) October 29, 2019
From the article:
Tax-the-rich plans face doubts about the amount of money they could raise. But researchers say they dependably produce an emotional lift for society as a whole.
Recent research found that progressive taxes may make the average citizen happier and more content. In the course of their study, psychologists Shigehiro Oishi and Kostadin Kushlev of the University of Virginia and Ulrich Schimmack of the University of Toronto eschewed the usual debate about tax increases: Are they bad for economic growth? Instead, they focused on a more emotional one: Do Americans feel happier – and experience a greater sense of fairness – under more progressive taxation?
The researchers found a very strong correlation between progressive tax policies and how happy respondents rated themselves. This effect was most pronounced – and statistically significant – among taxpayers in the lowest 40% of incomes. The correlation steadily diminished among higher-income groups, disappearing altogether for the top 40%.
So poor people are happy at the idea of rich people having more of their money taken by the government.
Is anyone shocked by this?
The Soviet Union came to power by promising the poor that they will shoot the Kulaks or send them to gulags to be worked to death.
Convincing the poor to resent the rich and empower the government to hurt the rich only caused 100 million people to be murdered in the name of Socialism in the 20th century. Why not give it a go in the United States?
I’m not sure if promoting American dekulakizaton is worse than a terrorist hagiography, either way Bloomberg News is just as much a pile of shit as its namesake creator.
Socialism is the ideal political philosophy for people who dream of robbing banks, but are too frightened by the security guard with the aluminum badge and walkie-talkie to actually try it.
If we’re going to base policy on what brings the most happiness, I don’t think the left will care for the results.
Eating nothing but pizza and drinking nothing but beer will make me happy as well. For a short time.
Not exactly a winning strategy in the long run though.
Actually, on second thought….
This just confirms that jealousy is a major motivating factor. Acting on it makes you happy.
It’s not even jealousy in the right place. A person rich enough to afford tax advisors, lawyers, and accountants is not going pay any more taxes.
Instead let’s do something like get rid of ridiculous estate taxes which the rich don’t pay anyways so the average person who has no idea about how to structure their estate and who doesn’t have the money to pay accounants, lawyers, and tax advisors to avoid those taxes won’t pay them too.
Let’s also make elder care more affordable so grandma and grandpa don’t save their whole lives to leave something for the family just for the state to take it all or for it to be burned away for long term care.
A bit of a non sequitur but man, doing something like that to raise everyone’s boat rather than sinking other people’s down to your level will do more to narrow generational wealth “inequality” than anything else.
And I say “inequality” in quotes because in this context it is not prima facie a bad thing.