NIU sociologist Jeffrey Kidder leads new study that finds everyday tax talk is ‘morally charged’

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.niutoday.info/2012/05/23/niu-sociologist-jeffrey-kidder-leads-new-study-that-finds-everyday-tax-talk-is-morally-charged/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]NIU sociologist Jeffrey Kidder leads new study that finds everyday tax talk is ‘morally charged’[/font]

[font size=3]As U.S. presidential election campaigns heat up, candidates can expect an earful of complaints over taxes. Now a new study led by a Northern Illinois University sociologist argues that American middle-class hostilities toward the federal income tax follow a common discourse rooted in moral beliefs.

“We propose that everyday tax talk among the middle class is not simply about economics or free markets. Tax talk is morally charged,” NIU sociologist Jeffrey Kidder said.

“In this study, we demonstrate how people associate the income tax with a violation of the moral principle that hard work should be rewarded,” he added. “Our research has implications for how policymakers should frame fiscal issues. Because people intertwine fiscal issues with morality, approaches to tax policy that only emphasize economic benefits for the working and middle classes do not resonate with everyday understandings about what taxes mean to people.”

Kidder co-authored the study with sociologist Isaac William Martin of the University of California, San Diego. Their findings are published in the current online issue of the journal, Symbolic Interaction.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/symb.10

[nashville_brook]

1. if ppl are morally interested in work being rewarded, then they need to focus

on equal pay, on overtime abuses, on our inability to use vacation, and a whole mess of issues that actually have to do with workers being ripped off.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. From the press release

[font face=Serif][font size=3]…

“Although we did not ask our respondents to propose an alternative tax, most of them did so spontaneously, and they generally proposed a flat-rate tax on consumption as an improvement over the existing graduated personal income tax,” Martin added. “They favored consumption taxes because they saw a tax on consumption – as opposed to a tax on earnings – as a tax that did not punish virtue. They also favored a ‘flat tax’ because they thought its simplicity would not reward sophisticated cheaters. Such talk is not about individual self-interest, but about our respondents’ sense of the proper relations among groups.”

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[Sushi_lover]

5. The morality of a consumption tax

But framing it like that ignores the likelihood we'll be turned into another Nigeria, a "democracy" that gets harvested and the loot is spent elsewhere.

[Demeter]

3. This "People" is interested in ending the ripoffs of the People

and that includes WAR and military spending beyond the National Guard, bailing out banksters, paid-off politicians, lobbyists of any corporation, bribery, corruption, spying on people in violation of the Constitution, assassination at home and abroad, white collar get-out-of-jail-free cards, etc. And TSA ("Homeland" security, aka fascism).

I want tax money to go to education, infrastructure, health care (not health "insurance&quot and the remediation of the environment. People uses, as in of the People, by the People FOR THE PEOPLE.

I hope I have been sufficiently clear and comprehensive.

[mbperrin]

4. Good heavens, PEOPLE benefiting rather than their "betters"?

Careful with that talk, Gitmo ain't closed yet.