Posted by 79 at 5:19pm Nov 11 '11It's really easy to support a cause that benefits you directly - tax cuts, for example. especially when you're told that it's not just good for you, it's good for everyone. makes it even easier to rationalize or argue for, right? 'cause it's not about you, it's about everyone.
then there are other policies which don't affect you either way (a straight person voting for/against gay marriage, for example). still fairly easy to vote your conscience, yeah? even if your conscience tells you to vote in a way that doesn't affect you but harms people you don't like...
but what about voting your conscience even when your vote actually works directly against your personal best interests?
and i don't mean stuff like "of course it's in my best interests to vote against legislation which regulates industry, because we all benefit!"
i mean stuff like voting against any sort of increase in your local school's budget when your kid is a student there. or voting against a tax loophole that you could use very effectively to pay much less in taxes.
to me, that's the sort of thing that really says you believe in your standpoints. instead of finding a tricky way to explain why your point of view in general doesn't apply to this specific case, you bite the bullet and vote to take away something from yourself.
for me, the best example would be the death tax. i'm in favor of it. i'd like to see it start taking effect if the net worth of an estate is over, say, $500,000. anything over that taxed at X rate. say, anything over a million taxed at 2 or 3X rate. etc. by the time you get to a billion, it'd be like 90%.
of course, this would mean i'd sacrifice quite a lot of inheritance. i'll put it this way - my parents bought their current house for over $700,000 and paid cash. no mortgage.
so a death tax would definitely mean a lot of money going to the government, not me. but i favor a pretty high death tax anyway, and would vote for an increase in a second.
what about you guys? which policies do you support that directly take something away from you - money, a car, a goverment-provided service that you use regularly, that sort of thing.
then there are other policies which don't affect you either way (a straight person voting for/against gay marriage, for example). still fairly easy to vote your conscience, yeah? even if your conscience tells you to vote in a way that doesn't affect you but harms people you don't like...
but what about voting your conscience even when your vote actually works directly against your personal best interests?
and i don't mean stuff like "of course it's in my best interests to vote against legislation which regulates industry, because we all benefit!"
i mean stuff like voting against any sort of increase in your local school's budget when your kid is a student there. or voting against a tax loophole that you could use very effectively to pay much less in taxes.
to me, that's the sort of thing that really says you believe in your standpoints. instead of finding a tricky way to explain why your point of view in general doesn't apply to this specific case, you bite the bullet and vote to take away something from yourself.
for me, the best example would be the death tax. i'm in favor of it. i'd like to see it start taking effect if the net worth of an estate is over, say, $500,000. anything over that taxed at X rate. say, anything over a million taxed at 2 or 3X rate. etc. by the time you get to a billion, it'd be like 90%.
of course, this would mean i'd sacrifice quite a lot of inheritance. i'll put it this way - my parents bought their current house for over $700,000 and paid cash. no mortgage.
so a death tax would definitely mean a lot of money going to the government, not me. but i favor a pretty high death tax anyway, and would vote for an increase in a second.
what about you guys? which policies do you support that directly take something away from you - money, a car, a goverment-provided service that you use regularly, that sort of thing.
I support some things that aren't in my interest - 79