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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Georgism for IQ would be hilarious to suggest just for making that sort of person think about the consequences.
"If you have the IQ to post about Rick and Morty on Reddit all day, you could easily afford your tax payments by working as an investment banker instead. Hurry up: Cleetus's UBI won't pay for itself"

Reminds me a bit of Mankiw's Optimal Taxation of Height parody paper. IQ is observable, inelastic, and correlated with income, and so the government should collect IQ measurements and tax those with high IQ more.

I hadn't thought of that one in years, thanks for reminding me!

Thanks for pointing to the Mankiw, that's a pretty funny idea.

Georgism for virtue, by contrast, is already widespread. The idiom is "ruining it for everyone".

"If you have enough self-control, intelligence, and/or temperance that restricting your freedom is an injury, you're obviously wise enough to find a way to be able to pay the taxes on the licenses and permission slips we deem necessary before you may exercise those freedoms. If it saves just one life taken by the most selfish, nasty person in society, it's worth it."