Liberals don't just cheat on taxes more ... it's a (lack of) character trait:
Liberals and tax cheating
++Addition++The Inductivist did a similar analysis with similar findings a month ago based on voting patterns in the 1996 Presidential election.
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With the embarrassing number of hopeful Obama appointments running into tax cheating problems (the latest being Ron Kirk), it's natural to wonder if evasion by high profile leftists is illustrative of a real world trend, or just a string of unfortunate anecdotes.
[Rangel, Geithner, Franken, Bill Richardson - all tax cheat ]
The GSS provides some relief for that wonder. It provides the results for 2,418 people queried on whether or not cheating on taxes is wrong, by political orientation. The first graphic from the GSS shows the distribution of responses. The second graph shows the mean tax compliance score, computed by designating "not wrong" as 1, "a bit wrong" as 2, "wrong" as 3, and "seriously wrong" as 4, and then averaging the responses for each of the seven categories of political orientation (click for higher resolution).
Politics Compliance
Strong Lib 2.70
Liberal 3.05
Weak Lib 3.00
Moderate 3.07
Weak Con 3.14
Conservative 3.35
Strong Con 3.27
The standard deviation for the dataset is .76, so the difference between self-described conservatives and extreme liberals is nearly one full SD. Amalgamating the responses into three categories yields one-third a SD between liberals and conservatives:
Politics Compliance
Liberal 3.00
Moderate 3.07
Conservative 3.25
Liberals do not consider cheating on taxes to be as morally problematic as conservatives do. This presents an obvious moral quandary of its own, as, putatively less surprisingly, liberals are more likely than conservatives are to favor greater amounts of taxation and wealth redistribution.
The purest question the GSS asks with regard to a respondent's philosophical position on taxation is, "If the government had a choice between reducing taxes or spending more on social programs like health care, social security, and unemployment benefits, which do you think it should do?" The GSS provides results for 970 respondents to this question by political orientation:
Politics Spend more
Strong Lib 86.5%
Liberal 81.1%
Weak Lib 62.8%
Moderate 66.7%
Weak Con 49.1%
Conservative 41.6%
Strong Con 41.4%
There is a full standard deviation difference between extreme liberals and extreme conservatives on this most standard of political issues*. Combining the shades of liberalism and conservatism into a single category, more than half a SD still separates those on the left from those on the right:
Politics Spend more
Liberal 72.1%
Moderate 66.7%
Conservative 44.8%
Attitude is not behavior, and I am unaware of any studies on the political persuasions of convicted tax cheats**, but as a self-described empirical paleoconservative, it is difficult not to find parodiable humor mixed with irritation in discovering that those most likely to favor increased taxation and redistributive economics are also the most likely to approve of illegally acting to avoid having to suffer on the contributive side of the equation.
GSS variables used: POLVIEWS, TAXCHEAT, TAXSPEND
* Parenthetically, this shows the presumption that the liberal-conservative spectrum as represented in the GSS is a gauge of positions on social issues rather than economic ones is a stretch at best. Optimally, the GSS will ask a couple of questions on political orientation in the future in place of the one now asked. Cliched though it may be, separately inquiring about both a respondent's social and economic liberalism or conservatism would accomplish this.
Notice, too, that the graph's parameters are set from 40% to 90%--even among self-described conservatives, nearly half of people favor more spending by government over the reduction of tax rates. Too many people have faith in Leviathan.
** However, in Freedonomics, John Lott shows that Republican criminals are as elusive as leprechauns (p184):
[Based on a Public Opinion Strategies survey] I found that felons were 36% more likely than non-felons to have voted for Kerry over Bush and 37% more likely to be registered Democratic [after controlling for socio-cultural factors like race, gender, educational attainment, etc]. ...
While not all felons may be as Democratic as those in Washington State, the survey indicates that the previous estimates understated how frequently felons vote Democratic. Remarkably, it looks as if virtually all felons are Democrats. Felons are not just like everyone else. And the fact that felons are even more likely to vote Democratic than previously believed surely guarantees that some Democratic operatives will continue their efforts to get them to the polls.
anepigone.blogspot.com
....
In the moral relativism that rules liberal Democrats, cheating on your taxes does not disqualify you from being put in charge of the Internal Revenue Service.
The tax cheats, along with Gov. Bill Richardson's withdrawal from consideration as Commerce secretary under a cloud of corruption, is mounting evidence that the ethical bar has been lowered by Obama.
Obama is a product of the Chicago Democratic political machine, where corruption is part of doing business.
Daschle and Geithner will fit right in under the culture of corruption that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have set up in Washington, D.C., since Democrats took over Congress in 2006.
In his best-selling book, "Makers and Takers," Peter Schweitzer says liberals hold different values that most Americans. Cheating on your taxes is not considered a drawback for left-wing politicians.
Schweizer poured through tax records, scholarly research, opinion surveys and private records to develop a profile of the typical liberal
Liberals, Schweizer writes, are, in the aggregate:
... less honest. Liberals are more likely to believe that it's okay to be dishonest or deceptive, cheat on their taxes (and their spouse), keep money that doesn't belong to them, and sell a used car with a faulty transmission to a family member.
... more selfish. Liberals are much more likely to think about themselves first and less willing to make sacrifices for others. They are less interested in caring for a physically ill or elderly family member, and more concerned with ensuring that their own needs are met.
... more focused on money. Liberals are much more likely to report that money is important to them, that they don't earn enough money, and that money is what matters in a job. They are also more likely to be envious of others.
... less knowledgeable about civic affairs and economics. Despite claims that conservatives are ignorant, studies and surveys show that conservatives and Republicans tend to know more about public affairs, have a better understanding of economics, and do better on word association tests.
If that doesn't sound like the new Obama administration, I don't know what does.
redcounty.com
.....
Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those who are “very conservative.” When Pew Research asked whether it was “morally wrong” to cheat Uncle Sam, 86 percent of conservatives agreed, compared with only 68 percent of liberals.
....
When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.
The World Values Survey found that those on the left were also much more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that you know are stolen. Studies have also found that those on the left were more likely to say it was OK to drink a can of soda in a store without paying for it and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.
..
sayanythingblog.com |
