Friday, December 16, 2005
The Rich Are Undertaxed, Part CXLVI
by Tom Bozzo
The post's title, an occasional refrain here at Marginal Utility, formed the nucleus of a comment at Battlepanda, where I first caught the item. Needless to say, a follow-up comment from one "Cornelius van Vorst" sought to put me in my place:
Say, if you will, that it's the exception that proves the rule, but there's no way that the government couldn't make better use of $5,000 than someone who would use it to play pseudo-virgin for a day, even if it's just to stave off the unsustainability of the federal deficit by 0.75 second.
Is hymen reconstruction surgery "the ultimate gift for the man who has everything," as one Jeannette Yarborough — who'd spent $5,000 to give her husband an extra special surprise for their 17th anniversary — told the Wall Street Journal (via Battlepanda, Pandagon, and elsewhere)? Is it anything other than a Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (with extra hoofbeats!) that the answer isn't self-evidently "No"?
The post's title, an occasional refrain here at Marginal Utility, formed the nucleus of a comment at Battlepanda, where I first caught the item. Needless to say, a follow-up comment from one "Cornelius van Vorst" sought to put me in my place:
Yes. People who buy things you wouldn't should have the money taken away from them... What's the smiley for rolling your eyes?Hummers are things that people buy that I wouldn't. Ice sculptures of David peeing vodka are, by the slenderest margin, things that people buy that I wouldn't.
Say, if you will, that it's the exception that proves the rule, but there's no way that the government couldn't make better use of $5,000 than someone who would use it to play pseudo-virgin for a day, even if it's just to stave off the unsustainability of the federal deficit by 0.75 second.
