This quote from The West Wing (Season 2, before Sorkin left)
comes from one of the White House senior staff, explaining why
a certain line (Tax cutsto the rich fund faster private jets
and bigger swimming pools) won't appear in a speech.
"Henry, last fall, every time your boss got on the stump and said,
"It's time for the rich to pay their fair share," I hid under a couch
and changed my name. I left Gage Whitney making $400,000 a year,
which means I paid twenty-seven times the national average in
income tax. I paid my fair share, and the fair share of twenty-six other
people. And I'm happy to 'cause that's the only way it's gonna
work, and it's in my best interest that everybody be able to go to
schools and drive on roads, but I don't get twenty-seven votes on
Election Day. The fire department doesn't come to my house twenty-
seven times faster and the water doesn't come out of my faucet
twenty-seven times hotter. The top one percent of wage earners
in this country pay for twenty-two percent of this country. Let's
not call them names while they're doing it, is all I'm saying."
Just some food for thought.
EDIT: Yeah, the formatting's weird. Whatever.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
West Wing Quote
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2 comments:
Okay, how can I not comment when you offer something from The West Wing?
Your citing of this is right on with our conversation. The very nature of our tax system is not about getting X for giving X. As Rob Lowe's character "Sam Seaborn" indicates, one does not get proportionally more in terms of services from the country for the amount of taxes paid. There is clearly an ethical system of some stripe underlying our tax system that says to whom much is given, much is expected.
Now I ask you, or anyone else...what is that ethical system?
One ethical principle that might lead to the conclusion that "to whom much is given, much is expected." Is the idea that wealth belongs some higher power than the individual, or that the higher power at least has some claim on wealth. In the bible, where "to whom much is given, much is expected." is found, this higher power is often God, but in other ethical systems it may be society.
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