Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Boortz is on a roll this morning:
Why do we have deficits?
:
Two political scientists, Jody W. Lipford and Bruce Yandle, did a study on taxation in America. The results of their study led them to the conclusion that our progressive tax system where high-income earners sustain a high tax burden is simply unsustainable. The reason is simple: the number of moochers are growing, while the number of producers are shrinking. That’s a fact. “The share of total federal taxes paid by the bottom 40 percent of households has fallen from 9.3 percent in 1979 to 5.2 percent in 2007, while the shares of the tax burden borne by the top 10 percent and one percent, respectively, have risen steadily,” according to their research. This acts as nothing but an incentive for people to vote for government services that they don’t have to pay for.Voting is the lazy-man’s work. Going to the voting booth once a year or so and voting for Democrats is much easier than waking up at 4am, working three jobs, earning paychecks, and driving home in the dark. Our progressive income tax system has enabled the moochers. In fact, “during the period 1979-2007, the increasing progressivity of the federal tax code is associated with greater government debt and entitlement spending.” Coincidence? I think not.
Our forefathers predicted this. In 1810, political theorist John C. Calhoun foresaw this problem:
“The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is, to divide the community into two great classes; one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes, and, of course, bear exclusively the burthen of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers.”
We were warned, but then along came the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax. These political scientists Lipford and Yandle believe that the Sixteenth Amendment “nullified the prior constitutional restraint on the size of government and enabled one group of citizens to vote themselves benefits at the expense of another.”
There’s a woman in Michigan named Amanda Clayton. You can read about this lovely little moocher right here. Last fall Amanda won $1,000,000 in the state lottery. Today she’s still on welfare and using food stamps? Why? She needs the help to pay her bills. This is mooching raised to an art form. Care to guess how she would probably vote in November?
He continues:
More research from a team at Cornell University found that “incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas.” An example they provide is on tax reform. “They found that if people lack knowledge of tax reforms, it was incredibly unlikely voters would be able to identify the candidates who are actual experts.”
Considering that research, is it any reason why Americans vote for politicians like Barack Obama and shun tax reform ideas like the FairTax? They wouldn’t know a decent tax reform or a tax expert if it literally bit them in the ass!
In one of the studies, researchers asked participants to grade grammar quizzes. “We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students.” In other words, incompetent people can’t even recognize the correct answers when they saw them.
Yeah, he’s engaging the same libertarian whining about the Fair Tax that we saw indulged in by the good leftists after John Kerry lost the election, Americans are too stupid for a democracy. Well, maybe there’s something to it. Did you see the clip about the lottery winner using her bridge card? That’s an example of it playing out right in front of your eyes, when you think of it. Here she is, confronted with how inappropriate it is for her to be buying groceries subsidized by people who simply are not as financially solvent as she is now that she’s won her half million dollars. And her answer is: I don’t have an income and I’ve got bills to pay. Recipient of $500,000 saying this. And she’s completely ernest about it.
Some people are simply incapable of working through a paradigm shift. They’re like mental cannonballs, heading in one direction, not gonna change to a different one, no matter what. Blah blah blah, got it tough, life gave me a bum hand, need help, blah blah blah.
So they do what must be done, just like animals in a cage, to get hold of…well, things that are on some list that doesn’t change much, whatever the list happens to say. Laundry detergent, Little Debbies, cigarettes, hair coloring kids, tattoos, and oh yes don’t forget more lottery tickets. The welfare grocery card? It’s just another procedure. Like voting. A tax reform plan comes along, they hear by the grapevine they should oppose it, from some leftist hack outfit…and repeat it as if it’s their own opinion. And then strut around feeling like they’ve done some “research,” then of course vote that way. Even with a million dollars in the bank, nothing changes. It’s very sad.
And what Boortz is really complaining about here, specifically, is Dunning-Kruger Effect. When you don’t know something, you tend to not know that you don’t know it — your incompetence perpetuates a camaflouging effect upon itself, an inability in you to recognize your own incompetence. Yes, there certainly is some of that going on.
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PJ O’Rourke once said that if we restricted political participation to a certain minimum IQ threshold, there’d be no Republican politicians or Democrat voters.
Sounds about right.
Isn’t it about time we revisited the property qualification for the franchise?
- Severian | 03/07/2012 @ 11:11The Tragedy of the Commons rules when free government money is all too common.
- wch | 03/07/2012 @ 11:23When you don’t know something, you tend to not know that you don’t know it — your incompetence perpetuates a camaflouging effect upon itself, an inability in you to recognize your own incompetence.
Sounds like my colleague who is always mouthing off about some damn thing, repeating whatever Jon Stewart says.
He doesn’t know, that he doesn’t know….and lacks the intellectual curiosity or humility to find out.
- cylarz | 03/07/2012 @ 13:29