Monday, January 30, 2017

Be Careful of Government Snapshots

[A] snapshot of a successful lawyer photographed a year before she graduates law school may well show someone apparently in need of government assistance. The snapshot will show a young woman working (well, okay, studying) all day without being paid a penny. She may live in just one room that she shares with another student. She may subsist on macaroni and cheese. The snapshot demands a compassionate response from anyone seeing it, but it fails to show that this woman is only months away from earning an enviable income and in absolutely no need of help from anyone. Least of all should she extract assistance from middle-income families whose total income is considerably less than she will earn in her first year with a prestigious law firm.

Yet government policies use misleading snapshots such as these to convince hard-working and big-hearted Americans that higher taxes are necessary to help the poor.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.250-251

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