{"id":49261,"date":"2019-06-27T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T09:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=49261"},"modified":"2019-06-26T15:18:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T19:18:16","slug":"raise-our-taxes-cried-the-hypocritical-virtue-signallers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/06\/27\/raise-our-taxes-cried-the-hypocritical-virtue-signallers\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Raise our taxes!&#8221; cried the hypocritical virtue signallers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve been <a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/07\/11\/norways-experiment-with-inviting-people-to-pay-more-tax-than-they-owed\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">over<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/23\/on-the-most-recent-figures-people-do-want-to-pay-more-tax-just-not-many-of-em-and-not-very-much\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/if-you-think-your-taxes-are-too-low-you-can-easily-give-the-government-more-of-your-money\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ground<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/01\/18\/live-in-toronto-feel-undertaxed-heres-your-easy-solution-to-give-the-city-more-of-your-money\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">before<\/a>. Some very rich people are getting fawning media coverage for their &#8220;selfless&#8221;, &#8220;virtuous&#8221; demand that the government raise their taxes. Except they&#8217;re far from selfless: they&#8217;re demanding that <em>other people<\/em> be forced to pay more tax, but they&#8217;re very much not putting their own money where their bleating mouths are. Most governments are happy to accept more money from you than your formal tax liabilities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cra-arc.gc.ca\/chrts-gvng\/qlfd-dns\/hrmjsty-ntdntns-eng.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Canadian federal government<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The British government<\/li>\n<li>The US federal government<\/li>\n<li>The province of Ontario<\/li>\n<li>The City of Toronto<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230; are all very eager to accept your contributions. But most people don&#8217;t take advantage of this mechanism, especially the ones garnering headlines for their &#8220;altruism&#8221;. Because they&#8217;re virtue signalling, and almost certainly don&#8217;t actually want to be taxed more. Don&#8217;t believe what people merely <em>say<\/em> they want, watch what they actually <em>do<\/em> (economists call this &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Revealed_preference\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">revealed preference<\/a>&#8220;). Hypocrites, the lot of them.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/US-Federal-voluntary-extra-tax-form.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/US-Federal-voluntary-extra-tax-form.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"595\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40987\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/US-Federal-voluntary-extra-tax-form.jpg 600w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/US-Federal-voluntary-extra-tax-form-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/US-Federal-voluntary-extra-tax-form-480x476.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/US-Federal-voluntary-extra-tax-form-50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve been over this ground before. Some very rich people are getting fawning media coverage for their &#8220;selfless&#8221;, &#8220;virtuous&#8221; demand that the government raise their taxes. Except they&#8217;re far from selfless: they&#8217;re demanding that other people be forced to pay more tax, but they&#8217;re very much not putting their own money where their bleating mouths [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,28,53,13],"tags":[480,118,1238],"class_list":["post-49261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-hypocrisy","tag-taxes","tag-virtuesignalling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cOx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49261"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49263,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49261\/revisions\/49263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}