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...
Via Gerard. You can figure out the logic for yourself just fine, right? Americans eat way too much processed junk, so their/our behavior has to be brought back into line by means of a special tax that will effectively force us to eat tofu, hummus, carrots and arugula.
Enter Prof. Boudreaux with some save-people-from-themselves powers of his own.
Dear Prof. Popkin:
A segment on WJLA-TV’s 11:00pm newscast yesterday featured you endorsing a tax on pizza. You justified such a tax on grounds that Americans today eat too much “junk food.”
Believing Americans to be too dimwitted or lacking in self-control to choose for themselves what to eat, you obviously also believe that college professors possess the moral authority to propose that government dictate the contents of other people’s diets.
So the rules of civil society, as you see them, are apparently these: If Professor divines that Person isn’t acting in Person’s own best interests, government should obstruct Person’s efforts to live as he or she wishes and prod Person to live instead according to how Professor wants Person to live.
I, too, can play by these rules.
I propose that all articles and books advocating that government intrude into people’s private choices be taxed at very high rates. Socially irresponsible producers of such “junk” scholarship churn out far too much of it. As a result, unsuspecting Americans consume harmfully large quantities of this scholarship – scholarship made appealing only because its producers cram it with sweet and superficially gratifying expressions of noble goals. These empty intellectual ‘calories’ trick our brains – which evolved in an environment that lacked today’s superabundant access to junk scholarship – into craving larger and larger, even super-sized, portions of such junk.
The tax I propose would reduce Americans’ consumption of this mentally debilitating, university-processed junk that serves only to inflate its producers’ egos and consulting fees while it makes the rest of us intellectually flabby and clogs our neural pathways with notions that are toxic to each individual who reads it and to the entire body-politic.
As a nation, we have a duty to prevent our fellow citizens from mindlessly ruining their minds – for when any one mind is damaged by the consumption of junk scholarship, the rest of us are harmed by the resulting obesity of the state.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
I shall have to update the House of Eratosthenes Glossary with a new term, “Pizza Tax Thinking.” You cannot effectively attack something without giving it a name, and this thing has needed a name for awhile.
But I like Prof. Boudreaux’s approach as well. Let’s tax liberalism. Tax it progressively, so that moderate liberals are only mildly penalized, and wild-eyed “Bush Caused 9/11” zealots take it up the chute. They can afford it. They need to pay their fair share.
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[…] Read it. You can figure out the logic for yourself just fine, right? Americans eat way too much processed junk, so their/our behavior has to be brought back into line by means of a special tax that will effectively force us to eat tofu, hummus, carrots and arugula. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Pizza Tax | 05/11/2010 @ 11:19