France: Strikes, Protests Mount vs. Austerity Measures

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Nov 27 11:06:03 PST 2002


budge wrote:


>Every time a hear a 40K/yr white male office worker call in
>to an AM radio show and denounce the injustice of the "death
>tax" (that they will NEVER be in danger of paying one dime
>of), I think about just how successful he was. And I
>despair of the left ever being able to compete with such
>thorough brain pollution.

I've just been reading through the latest NYT/CBS poll - the one published in yesterday's paper that showed Bush & the GOP (a phrase now banned at the WSJ as too obscure!) far more popular than their policies. The Reps tax policies are especially unpopular, with one stunning exception - the death tax! By a margin of 69% to 23%, people would have preferred spending the federal surplus on SS & Medicare rather than tax cuts. But on the estate tax:

Abolish tax altogether 41%

Tax only large estates 54

This even though repeal would benefit <1% of estates! It's as if they're lessning the sting of death itself via tax policy.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list