The ‘Bad Version’ and How to Tax the Rich

A ‘bad version’ is a technique used by television writers to inspire creativity when experiencing a creative block. The technique involves writing a purposefully awful section of plot as a way of helping the writer find creativity and, eventually, the ideal solution: it’s a way of “nudging your imagination to someplace better”.

In The Wall Street Journal, Scott Adams offers some “imagined solutions for the government’s fiscal dilemma” — bad versions of ways to incentivising the rich to willfully pay more tax. Those incentives:

• Time: Anyone who pays taxes at a rate above some set amount gets to use the car pool lane without a passenger. Or perhaps the rich are allowed to park in handicapped-only spaces.
• Gratitude: The government makes it a condition that anyone applying for social services has to write a personal thank-you note to a nearby rich person […] It’s easy to hate the generic overspending of the government. It’s harder to begrudge medical care to someone who thanks you personally.
• Incentives: Suppose the tax code is redesigned so that the rich only pay taxes to fund social services, such as health care and social security. This gives the rich an incentive to find ways to reduce the need for those services.
  Meanwhile, the middle class would be in charge of funding the military. That feels right. The country generally doesn’t go to war unless the middle-class majority is on board.
• Shared Pain: I doubt that the rich will agree to higher taxes until some serious budget cutting is happening at the same time. That makes the sacrifice seem shared. […] Change the debate from arguing about which programs and how much to cut, and instead to do what the private sector has been doing for decades: Pull a random yet round number out of your ear, let’s say a 10% cut, just for argument’s sake, and apply it across the board. No exceptions.
• Power: Give the rich two votes apiece in any election. That’s double the power of other citizens. But don’t worry that it will distort election results. There aren’t that many rich people, and they are somewhat divided in their opinions, just like the rest of the world.