

There is no slippery slope - gronkie
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/leveling-the-slippery-slope/

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jdp23
Seems like a stretch. The argument he's making is that "A is on the slippery
slope to B" is equivalent to "A and B are both motivated and caused by common
factors and influences", so B could just as easily have proceeded A. That's
true for some A's and B's, but not always.

After the kittens on top of HN yesterday, I guess we'll find out just how
slippery that particular slope is ...

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splat
Color me unconvinced, too. He brings up the example of the income tax as why
the slippery slope argument fails, but it's actually a pretty convincing case
study of the merits of the slippery slope argument. The income tax was
originally pushed through in 1894 with the argument that a small income tax
(only on the very richest, of course) would allow for tariff reductions.
Several years later, tariffs were increased again with no corresponding
decrease in the income tax. When the sixteenth amendment was being debated,
arguments were made for a clause that would limit the tax to at most 10% of
income, but the clause was abandoned because no one thought the income tax
could or should get that high.

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Schultzy
One place where Koppelman (and presumably Frakt) is mistaken:

"...any slippery slope argument depends on a prediction that doing the right
thing in the instant case will in fact increase the likelihood of doing the
wrong thing..."

For the person arguing against doing A by invoking the slippery slope, A is
NOT the "right thing" to do. The point of a slippery slope argument is to warn
against making a concession. The person who is opposed to an income tax in
principle would likely use the slippery slope to sway those who tend to agree
with them, but are willing abandon the principle for the sake of compromise.
If A was simply the "right thing" from the start, it would not likely face
argument, slippery slope or otherwise.

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ctdonath
"For instance, the federal taxing power theoretically empowers the government
to tax incomes at 100%, thereby wrecking the economy. But there’s no slippery
slope, because there is no incentive to do this, so it won’t happen."

Through the history of the income tax, top rates reached 94% in 1944, exceeded
90% for 16 years, and exceeded 50% for 54 years. It's still over 30%, and
you'll notice our economy isn't doing too well.

[http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213)

Just because the bottom of the slope wasn't hit doesn't mean it wasn't
slippery.

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khafra
Please also notice that the economy was growing at a fantastic rate for most
of the period that the top marginal tax rates were over 90%; and the last time
they dropped as low as Reagan-to-now was the period directly leading to the
Great Depression.

The slope may not tilt in the direction you think it does.

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j_baker
This annoys me as well.

"Let's not do perfectly reasonable action A because it could lead to
completely irrational event B."

How about we just do A, _but not B_?

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timwiseman
If it were that easy, we would.

The problem is that in a lot of "slippery slope" type activities doing A will
make it much more likely that you won't be able to avoid B, or that someone
else will use the fact that you did A to do B.

Purely anecdotally, I have a very hard time limiting portions for foods I
like, especially cookies. If there are cookies available, I find it very hard
not to take 3 or even more if I take the first one. it is easier to never take
the first one.

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CamperBob
_Frederick Schauer [link] showed over 25 years ago that any slippery slope
argument depends on a prediction that doing the right thing in the instant
case will in fact increase the likelihood of doing the wrong thing in the
danger case. If there is in fact no danger, then the fact that there logically
could be has no weight. For instance, the federal taxing power theoretically
empowers the government to tax incomes at 100%, thereby wrecking the economy.
But there’s no slippery slope, because there is no incentive to do this, so it
won’t happen._

Oh, so that explains why we stopped at 91%, during the Eisenhower
administration.

The slippery slope argument may be a logical fallacy, but humans are not
logical creatures. Hence the author is guilty of illogic, himself.

