Largesse
By Mitch Berg
It’s hard to find solid attribution for the quote “Democracy can only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”. PJ O’Rourke in Parliament of Whores attributed it to De Tocqueville, if memory serves…
…but it really doesn’t matter. Whomever said it – or even if it was entirely manufactured by the Libertarian Party back in the seventies, for that matter – the old, utterly true saying is getting a whole new chapter, nationwide and according to the new Minnesota Poll, amongst ourselves.
Minnesotans oppose new taxes – on themselves. They do support more for that amorphous “The Rich” that seems to have all the money:
When it comes to a broader increase — income tax hikes for most Minnesotans — nearly 60 percent said that would be unacceptable.Half of the poll respondents said they think the state should use a combination of unspecified tax increases and spending cuts to help erase the state’s $4.6 billion deficit, while another 40 percent said the balancing should be achieved primarily through spending cuts alone. Only 4 percent favored squaring the books primarily with tax increases.
Most respondents favored tax increases on “The Rich” rather than “Me”, according to the poll results.
Given that the MNPoll routinely grossly oversamples DFLers – the party built on Robbing From “The Rich” And Giving To Government – this makes perfect sense; in the DFL’s world, there’s always someone else with money to take.
Let’s see how many leftybloggers try to use this “poll” has justification for a spending orgy, shall we?
April 30th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Maybe people are confused, like RickDFL, and think something is “moral” if it “works for them”. *shrug*
April 30th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Strike the word “maybe”.
Obama says it isn’t a sin if you don’t consider it a sin.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
The closest thing in DeT is Dem in Am v.2 Chap. 20 “To increase their comfort at the expense of the public treasury strikes them as being, if not the only way, at least the easiest and most expeditious to escape from a condition which they no longer find satisfying.”
April 30th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I believe it was Maggie Thatcher who said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”