Watch this political ad (below) promoting Washington State’s Initiative 1098, which seeks to dedicate $2 billion per year to fund education and healthcare for children. It’s always for the children! It’s not about soaking the rich! even though this other Yeson1098 video makes a point of demonizing the greedy rich. The slogan is “the wealthy pay more, the rest of us pay less.” Bill Gates, Sr., is presented as a grandfatherly figure sacrificing his comfort for the sake of childrens’ enjoyment while he explains the reasonableness of this new scheme to legally plunder the rich.
His son could donate $2 billion of his own money each year for a couple decades and still have plenty left over, thereby funding this initiative all by himself for a good long while, and yet wealthy progressives like the Gates’ eagerly volunteer the money of others.
You can’t really be generous or charitable with other peoples’ money. Taking from them against their will or volunteering them to be targets of theft is immoral and unjust.
Anyone who is in favor of funding this initiative can simply devise a voluntary payment scheme and put up their own money. Then we’ll see how much progressives really care about the children.
Instead, they waste creativity, time, and money manipulating the statist-democratic process and promoting majoritarian-populist initiatives with clever, emotional, yet substanceless propaganda.
Hypocrites.
~*~
Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.
Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Liberal political philosopher, an adjunct instructor for Buena Vista University, the founder and executive editor of Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature, and the webmaster of The Libertarian Standard. His work has appeared in Libertarian Papers, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, the Journal of Value Inquiry, and Transformers and Philosophy. He lives in Edgewood, KY with his wife and two children.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
The anti-1098 ads make the obvious political point that, after two years, it’s more than just the rich who get soaked. The state legislature could expand the tax to cover “even” middle class people. True, but – once again – the beggar-thy-neighbor/soak-the-rich ethos remains foundational in this state’s politics.
Still, I haven’t seen any of the ads make the historical case from the federal income tax, which started out, also, only taxing “the rich,” but which soon swung low and nabbed even the lowly worker.
I do hate all these ads. I hope the voters of my state continue their sense and vote against ANY introduction of the income tax. If they put it in, I won’t stay here much longer.
{ 7 trackbacks }
RT @libstandard: New post: The Libertarian Standard » Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 | http://bit.ly/b1vEJr
October 28, 2010Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 http://ff.im/-sOHSe
October 28, 2010RT @LibertarianMind: Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 http://ff.im/-sOHSe
October 29, 2010RT @LibertarianMind: Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 http://ff.im/-sOHSe
October 29, 2010Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 http://bit.ly/aVGGUX BILL GATES SR Has gall
November 1, 2010RT @ConserValidity: Wealthy Progressive Hypocrites Say Yes on Initiative 1098 http://bit.ly/aVGGUX BILL GATES SR Has gall
November 1, 2010GREAT FORWARD TO ALL! Voter Guide for Congress member's vote on Stimulus, Obamacare,cap-n-trade&Pelosi for speaker http://bit.ly/aVGGUX
November 1, 2010