I used to post in the Rockridge forum... here's an old post from 05
Reframing: Income Tax = Opportunity Tax
Sorry for the repost. Perhaps this is the more appropriate forum.
Maybe someone's already suggested this.
Reading the section here about reframing the tax issue I was reminded of how a few years ago in debates with people on the Right I began replace the term income tax with opportunity tax. It better frames the moral basis for progressive taxation. It calls into question the myth promulgated by the Right that every individual earns their wealth completely by their own initiative. The truth is no one's good idea or skills alone will make them wealthy in the American sense of the word in an impoverished third world nation. They need a nation with an extensively developed infrastructure... from an educated workforce to highways to public health.... and such things are largely the result of PUBLIC investments.
No one discounts the value of creativity and hard work to society but by taxing "opportunity" the wealthy help repay the public for use of that infrastructure in proportion to how much they take advantage of it... as reflected in income, or course!
Oh hell... here's another
Reframing Is NOT Enough if Core Values Have Been Compromised
While I certainly agree with Lakoff that reframing what Progressives stand for is crucial to advancing a Progressive agenda... we have to ask just what is being reframed? Does it represent a Progressive vision of where we want to take America? Or does it represent what's left of a Progressive vision after it's been compromised by the dysfunctional dynamics of our two party system? This has reached such absurdity that most who consider themselves in favor of democracy live an Orwellian contradiction unaware that what they support is actually a system that's both undemocratic and often anti-democratic.
We see those thick ideological blinders even here where Lakoff's taxonomy of Progressive cognitive modes seems to be describing the left-wing of the Democratic Party... not the full spectrum of Progressive thought. More on that here: http://forum.rockridgeinstitute.org/?q=node/595
I believe Progressives occasionally need to revisit and rethink our core values. What's needed is a form of political psychoanalysis.... a values clarification process upon which we can then reconstruct a logically coherent paradigm upon which to base that vision.
Here's a possible web model for such a project: http://forum.rockridgeinstitute.org/?q=node/577
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