Imagine that you are standing at a bus stop, minding your own business, when someone starts running at you from across the street. "Alex!" he yells repeatedly as he runs towards you, "I haven't seen you in years!" Considering the fact that you've never seen this guy in your life and are not named Alex, you are somewhat wary, but he seems mostly harmless, if a little confused. Then he hands you a thick stack of what appears to be large-denomination bills. "I feel so bad for not paying you back all this time. I hope we're even now," he says.
Is it ethical to accept this man's money since he was mistaken in thinking he owed it to you? Of course it is. Perhaps it isn't more unethical than seeking out the man and convincing him that you are indeed Alex, but it's still wrong.
Let's transfer this situation to national politics. For years, Republicans have been whining about the estate tax, or as they call it, the "death tax," even though the tax is on the transfer of wealth, not death itself. Although the estate tax was supposedly phased out in the 2001 tax cut bill, it will automatically come back in 2010. It is for this reason that congressional Republicans want to make it permanent and are trying to do so now.
In addition to the economic package being debated on Capitol Hill, the estate tax is of interest once again because of a new poll on tax policy released by National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government.
This poll is fascinating because it shows how much opponents of the estate tax in particular benefit from public misconceptions about the tax. Fifty-four percent of respondents are opposed to the estate tax, a number which rises to 60 percent if the phrase "death tax" is mentioned. Even though fewer than one in 50 people will have estates subject to the tax upon death, 69 percent of respondents who oppose the estate tax think it will affect them personally. Either most people think they will die obscenely rich or conservatives have used the "death tax" moniker to distort the effects of the tax. Let's set that statistic aside for the moment, since it implicitly asks for people to make projections about their own lives. Around here, almost nobody thinks they will die penniless and alone, but some inevitably will - that's life.
Shockingly, 49 percent of those surveyed think that most families have to pay the estate tax. There are no personal predictions here - the American public is off by 47 percent. This is not a rounding error; it is a wholesale misrepresentation of the situation, a misrepresentation that is easily identifiable as such. Surprisingly, you don't see President Bush reminding the American people that the estate tax isn't widespread - that's a lie he can live with.
Still, most people aren't necessarily ideologically opposed to the estate tax in general. The poll asks if people would look more favorably on the estate tax if it exempted the first $1 million. Ten percent of those polled switched sides to opposing estate tax elimination. That talented tenth was never told that the current exemption (for the 2002 taxes we just filed) is $1 million. The so-called "liberal media" didn't get the message through.
We weren't lied to, per se. The public was given the impression that the tax impacted more people than it did, which impacted its opinions on the subject. Although this survey did not ask people if they still favored repeal of the estate tax if they knew that 5000 estates pay the majority of the taxes, I suspect that estate tax supporters would be fewer and farther between.
The uncorrected misperception is used by the Administration in foreign policy as well. Polls say that half of the public thinks one or more of the Sept. 11 hijackers were from Iraq when none were. Aside from that error, most of the Iraq-Al Qeada connection rests on a British report, which was found to be mostly forged. No wonder Donald Rumsfeld never corrected the public on the nationality of the Sept. 11 hijackers - it worked in his favor, even if it wasn't true.
After all, it was soldiers' lives at stake, not anything really important, like oral sex.
Charles Donefer can be reached at cdonefer@jhu.edu.
