whyroots

"We must patiently explain why taxing or regulating noble things (like work, saving, and entrepreneurial risk-taking) means you’ll get less of what makes America great and why subsidizing other things (like idleness and single parenthood) means you’ll get more of the destructive behaviors that ultimately will drag us down."

— An excerpt from a piece in the National Review by the vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation.

Agh, what bullshit. While there’s a grain of truth in this quote -- that governments should incentivize productive behavior, such as work, saving, and entrepreneurship -- this is nothing more than the Right (capital “R”) using economic language to rationalize outmoded ideas about the traditional family and the familiar and still oversimplified notion of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps.” This is pure propaganda, based on a kind of false patriotism (“what makes America great”) aimed at taking certain options off the table. I will not equivocate: bullshit.

-- Sarah Dalglish

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