Megan McArdle on Taxes

Here, Megan McArdle notes that most people don’t like to pay taxes, which she takes to mean:

This is what economists call “revealed preference”. What most of us are really in favor of is higher taxes on other people. If we wanted higher taxes on ourselves, we’d give the money to charity.

Actually, considering that if given the option, most people would prefer not to pay any taxes at all, she could simply by cross out two words (or rather, one word, twice):

This is what economists call “revealed preference”. What most of us are really in favor of is higher taxes on other people. If we wanted higher taxes on ourselves, we’d give the money to charity.

Of course, the best case scenario that follows within a couple of years is that we’d be over-run by the Canadian hordes and forced to labor in their underground maple syrup mines.

Or, as Matthew Yglesias puts it:

I would have thought this is what economists call a “collective action problem” that illustrates the necessity of taxation to finance public projects.