"tax" or "penalty"?

[Dan Goncharoff]

It seems to me that, since penalties are unconstitutional and taxes are
constitutional, it's a distinction with a difference, and something worthy
of getting hung up on.

DanG


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 8:22 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "tax" or "penalty"?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Every commentator I've seen on TV (and I watch a hell of a lot),  whether
> right or left, pol or journo, expert or otherwise, is passionately hung up
> on the question of whether the inidividual mandate is a "tax" or a
> "penalty."
>
> What's remarkable is that *nobody* has been able to utter the simple truth
> that "It's like a penalty in some ways and like a tax in others."
>
> Is this a political, a journalistic, a semantic, or a brain problem? Or all
> of the above?
>
> OK, don't answer that.  But the point is, in media journalism, don't
> address the issue if you can address the label instead.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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