Confused About Taxes

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The Wall Street Journal has a piece tonight on the federal deficit, and it comes to the unsurprising conclusion that although most people say they’re strongly in favor of reducing the deficit, when it comes to nuts and bolts they’re only in favor of raising taxes on other people and cutting programs they themselves don’t use. What’s more, you also get responses like these:

So 32% of respondents favor a VAT that would raise taxes on all Americans, but only 20% favor increasing taxes on all Americans. It looks like 12% of the country is mighty confused.