QotD: Robbing Peter to pay Paul

[. . .] this brings me back to the recurring theme of people (on the "right" as much as the "left") who ignore empirical evidence of many decades, even centuries, that government is not our friend. It is seldom that any one entity, person or corporation gets to be "Paul" all the time. Sooner or later, you are forced to be "Peter." And sometimes you get Petered good and hard, if you catch my drift.

However, through the magic of tax withholding, most people seem to have no idea how much the government is Petering them. Nor do they understand how much the hundreds of thousands of government regulations bleed them almost as much. And most of them think that corporate income taxes are a good idea, making sure they "pay their fair share." This is another of the great mysteries of our current condition: how can people be so ignorant of economics and the world around them that they don't realize that if the government places a more-or-less uniform burden upon businesses, said businesses will pass that cost along to the consumers! We all know that shit flows downhill, and that money talks. This point is easily as obvious, so why is it that people seem oblivious to it?

Chris Claypoole, "Taking from Peter to pay Paul", Libertarian Enterprise, 2006-11-26