In today’s Day appears the second in a series of investigative articles. The first, which examined reaction in the boating industry to a proposed tax on boats, has now been followed by an equally hard hitting piece on the reaction among the folks who play with planes to a proposed tax on airplanes.
The results of the Day’s investigation are so surprising that I am still somewhat in a state of shock. It turns out that if you ask the people directly affected by a proposed tax whether it’s a good idea, they will tell you it isn’t, and they will have all kinds of facially reasonable explanations for their position. It’s even true that if you go out of your way to contact people who don’t really care, but would probably rather not pay the tax, they will express displeasure. For example, if you call some joker at Electric Boat, he’ll tell you that they will be “watching” the situation, even though such corporations would never really think of inconveniencing their corporate executives by making them drive a long distance to get on their private plane just to save a few bucks in taxes, which come out of the shareholder’s hide anyway. I, for one, could never have predicted any of this, so I must thank the Day for turning up this surprising bit of news.
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