Lakoff: Progressive Frames for Taxes (learn how to frame issues)

[jean]

Progressive Frames for Taxes

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It is critical for progressives to reframe the tax debate—to demonstrate the logic of how taxes support and extend the basic American values of protection, freedom, opportunity, fairness, and community

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Taxes Are Investments
Fairness: Everyone Pays Their Fair Share
Patriotism: Patriotic Americans Pay Their Taxes
Taxes Are Our Dues

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These ideas need to be turned into frames that are commonplace in the minds of most Americans - so commonplace that they define our common sense about what taxation is. Once that happens, we will be able to use two-word phrases like tax investments and tax dividends and everyone will know what we are talking about.

[JeebusB]

1. Wishful thinking

people aren't quite that gullable. And by that, I mean that you can't simply tell them that the words mean something different that what they used to mean and expect the debate to win itself. If someone believes you have no right to take their money and distribute it to others then they're not going to accept your new definition of fairness.

[noamnety]

2. not wishful thinking

If there's one thing we should have learned from the last four years, it's that people ARE that gullible. Clean skies, No Child Left Behind, people are morons.

[ClassWarrior]

5. They're not morons...

...but you are right, they're succeptible to having their definitions of things challenged. When we call them morons, we play right into the Radical Rightwing frame that we're smarty-pants elitists. At any rate, I agree with the gist of your post.

And to the poster above you, it doesn't happen overnight. But language IS a virus, and we can use it to start shifting the way people think.

NGU.

[noamnety]

7. point taken

That was a poor choice of words, influenced by my black mood today.

[rndmprsn]

3. thanks for the link

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. "Taxes are our dues"

I've used that argument in talking with the uninformed who are not hardcore rightwingers.

I use the analogy of a health club. The club needs my dues and the dues of other members to lease space, buy and maintain equipment, keep the facility clean and safe, and hire instructors. I may take only one or two of the classes that are offered to members at no additional charge, but because I pay dues, other members are able to take other classes at no additional charge. I never take step classes, but someone who takes step classes may not use the swimming pool, which I do use. However, circumstances may change, and that member who does not now use the pool may need to use it in the future if an injury prevents her from taking step aerobics.

The explanation seems to work, especially with people who are into fitness.

[ClassWarrior]

6. That's a good one. The other one Lakoff offers is...

..."taxes are an investment." You're investing in the greatest nation on Earth, and your investment will pay you returns.

Choose one or the other, based on your audience.

NGU.