David McElroy

Almost any time when governments have financial problems, many people think the obvious answer is to “tax the rich.” They believe that if government would just get those nasty rich people to pay “their fair share,” there would be plenty of money to let governments continue their spendthrift ways. It’s not true and it wouldn’t be fair to try.

I’ve been thinking about this because of a recent episode of public radio’s “This American Life” called “What Kind of Country.” (Hit the link to listen. It’s worth hearing, even though they’re coming from a position with some very mistaken assumptions, in my view.) The episode is about the continuing debate between people who want lower taxes and smaller government and people who want higher taxes and bigger government. It tries to take a look at why both sides of the mainstream want what they want.

A recurring theme in such debates is the issue of whether higher taxes is the way out of government budget woes. Some people say they would be happy to pay higher taxes in exchange for better police protection or better services of whatever kind they happen to want. But there are two issues with that. First, those people are typically happy to say they would favor higher taxes because the taxes would fall most heavily on people other than themselves. (Those with lower incomes almost always think taxes should be higher on high-income people, for instance.) Second, people who know that a tax would hit them say that they don’t trust government to get it right. Even if they’re willing to pay more, they don’t trust the people in power to spend the money wisely.

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Police in a Chicago suburb are crediting two teen-age girls with helping them arrest a man who is clearly a danger to public safety. This criminal had the audacity to offer a ride to a couple of teen-age girls who were walking home in a snowstorm with no coats.

That’s right. The “stranger danger” worry warts have scared children so much that even a reasonable offer is suspicious, so the teens called police and reported his tag number. What’s even crazier is that police and media are treating the girls as though they did the right thing and that the Good Samaritan was the troublemaker. Take a look at the lede on this story about the incident from a Chicago television station:

Two 13-year-old suburban girls are being credited with helping police catch a man who offered them a ride home.

Think about that for a second. These girls are being “credited” with helping police “catch” a man who … did what? … offered them a ride home.

There is no allegation that Rodney Peterson did anything other than offer a ride. There’s no allegation that he had any bad intent. He didn’t try to entice them into a car. He simply asked how far they had to walk and if they needed a ride. One of the girls said, “We’re OK,” and waved him on, so he left. And that — in the insane world where we live — is “disturbing the peace.”

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When I was younger, I thought constantly about the things I wanted to accomplish, because we live in a society that’s geared toward achievement. But when I was being encouraged to dream big back then, nobody ever warned me about tradeoffs. Nobody warned me that you give up some things in order to pursue other things. I was under the impression I could have it all.

I’ve thought a lot about choices in the past few years. For a long time, I tried to avoid making choices, because I looked at life as a buffet where you just kept adding to your plate. Maybe my metaphor wasn’t too far off, but I didn’t realize that the “plate” we have in life is of a limited size. If your plate is full, something has to come off as you add more to it.

If you devote yourself to pursuing a dream of some kind — wealth, fame, early retirement, whatever the carrot dangling in front of you is — you always give up something else. Only you can decide which tradeoffs are worth it — and nobody can spare you from the certainty of having to make the choices, whether they’re conscious or unconscious.

As I thought about this Monday night, I was reminded of a quote from investment guru Jim Rogers. In his book, “Investment Biker,” he discussed the tradeoffs involved in pursuing whatever it is you want:

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