Monday, September 24, 2012

Asking versus forcing folks to pay a little bit more

Asking versus forcing folks to pay a little bit more!

Tibor R. Machan

President Obama raised the issue of why anyone would object to asking the very rich “to give some more.”  As he put the matter, "What is wrong with ‘asking’ those who make more to pay a little more?"

As it has been pointed out by all too few people, of course what Obama & Co. advocate isn’t to ask anyone to give.  It is about confiscating from them what Mr. Obama & Co. want to have available for the redistribution of wealth just as they see fit.  (For, of course, you and I and other citizens are all doing some serious redistribution of our wealth already, with no need for help with this from Obama & Co.)  Yet hardly anyone in the mainstream media raises this objection.

Millions of Americans, including wealthy ones like Mitt Romney, are asked to give, mostly by organizations like the American Red Cross, and they come forth with generous contributions in response to the request.  I know I often do, though I am hardly what one would consider wealthy.  But millions and millions send contributions to victims of tsunamis or hurricanes or other disasters.  

The media is giving Obama & Co. a pass on so many fronts one wonders if they are sound asleep at the wheel. A point like the one about "asking them versus coercing them” is never raised even on the Fox TV talk programs. As if there were a kind of code of silence in place!

But maybe it is because so many folks, even those opposed to Obama's massive forced redistributions, support some such policies and know that if they raise the issue, then the case for taxing us all for their own pet projects--e.g., the war on drugs, aggressive wars fought abroad, etc.--paid for from such redistribution would get undermined.  

The slippery slope may account for this silence.  Talk of asking people gets mixed up with talk of coercing people and no one in the public forums objects. But competent journalists are supposed discern the difference between asking and making people pay!  (One can only speculate what sorts of questions are being rehearsed in schools of journalism.  It doesn’t seem like the students are enlightened about the difference between forcing and asking people for support.)

I am by no means being original in pointing out these matters but few if any prominent journalists, pundits, commentators, et al., make it a point to raise the issue.  Why?

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