So despite what a lot of tax protesters would like to argue, there really is no situation in which it's ever possible to increase your salary but lose net income. Even if your higher salary pushes you into a new tax bracket, you're only taxed more on the additional income. You're still taking home more cash.

So when a politician wants to raise taxes on the rich and your friend at the office is screaming about how this actually discourages surgeons and engineers from working, calmly pull out your special edition IRS Tax Code, signed by Rosa Guamataotao Rios herself, and explain the hip new trend of understanding taxes. Maybe do it with a cheesy educational rap song, like "You think that you know taxes, well I'll give you the facts-es."

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Alternatively, you can just crush your friend to death with it.

But Actually ...

It's true that the winner of an election is usually the one who attracted and spent more donor money, but that's correlation, not causation. Freakonomics authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steve Levitt looked into this and found a couple of surprising facts, one of which is that having more money doesn't automatically win you the election -- being popular with voters just gets you more money. Not just because regular folks like them more, but because donors throw money at candidates who are more likely to win (and thus, be in a position to do more favors for all of those contributors). Supporters of the less attractive opponent sit on their money until someone electable comes along -- there's no reason to throw money at a losing campaign.

In other words, if the voters hate you, all the money in the world won't help. But if the voters love you, you'll soon have all the money in the world.

"Where the hell am I going to break this?"

Now obviously, campaign contributions matter -- those bumper stickers won't print themselves, and there's a reason that every president comes from one of the major parties, even though your eccentric neighbor runs as an independent every year. There is a minimum amount of money a person needs just to get in the game, and at the national level that number is in the millions.

But Levitt did a study of congressional elections and found that once you're in the race, if a candidate doubled their spending, it would still only swing the vote by one percent. So yes, a candidate in a dead-even race could maybe shake down their donors enough to double spending and move the needle that one percent required to put themselves over the top (which could just as quickly be erased with one gaffe or drunken, pants-less speech). But for the vast, vast majority of races, a candidate can't simply "buy" an election if their views make voters want to punch them in the face.

"Just like you wanted, sir!"

No matter what your opinion is of the moral side of the death-penalty debate, many people who argue on the topic will defer to the economic consideration -- namely, it's so costly for us to keep murderers in prison for the rest of their lives that it'd be a lot cheaper just to strap them to the electric chair and get it over with. If they're never going to see the light of day again anyway, what difference does it make?

But Actually ...

It turns out keeping someone on death row and eventually killing them isn't as cheap as you thought. To pull out some real numbers, the annual cost of the death row system is $137 million. So a system where life in prison is the maximum sentence logically has to be more expensive, right? Nope ... screw logic! That only comes in at an estimated $11.5 million annually. That's the difference between the budget of a Michael Bay blockbuster and a documentary about Katy Perry.

Funding either of these should be a life sentence in and of itself.

What the hell is going on? Does a lethal injection cost $100 million or something? No, but it does all make sense. Given the American concept of "innocent until proven guilty" (or at least "guilty because Nancy Grace said so"), death-row inmates are afforded a much more expensive trial, and multiple appeals.

See, no one on a jury wants to be responsible for putting an innocent man to death, so the attorneys in those cases get more expensive expert witnesses, and more lawyers are needed in general to prove absolutely the defendant's guilt. And when death-row inmates whine about "possible new evidence" and "DNA testing" and "It has been 100 percent proven that I am innocent 20 years after my conviction," the appeals process inflates the bill by millions of dollars. As a society, it's the type of thing you can't let yourself get wrong.

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"We find the defendant possibly guilty, within a reasonable doubt ... Can we just, like, put him in a coma?"

The result is that keeping one inmate on death row costs an additional $90,000 or so a year compared to just letting him live his life in a maximum-security prison and supplying him with free food, clothes and tattoo ink. It's enough that, back in 2009, several states introduced measures that would eliminate the death penalty because they literally couldn't afford it anymore. So for all the reasons you might argue that the death penalty is a good idea, cost-cutting isn't really one of them.

And while a whole lot of you were already against the death penalty, you won't be so quick to agree with this next one ...

But what about all the organized crime that suddenly appeared along with Prohibition? Well actually, it didn't. Organized crime existed at pretty much the same level as before, during and after Prohibition. Scarface may have started selling whiskey as well as cocaine, but the gangster employment rate didn't exactly skyrocket. Nor can it be said to have been a more violent time -- the murder rate actually leveled off during Prohibition.

When people talk about what an embarrassing mistake Prohibition was, they usually cite the fact that it's the only time in American history that a constitutional amendment has been repealed, like we just sort of awkwardly swept it under the living room rug and asked everyone not to stare at the bulge. But really, the repeal had little to do with any perception that Prohibition had failed. It had much more to do with the fact that we simply changed our mind. You know, like in a democracy.

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Nice job, Founding Fathers.

But even if we concede that Prohibition worked the way it was expected to, we still have Portugal to look up to, right? In 2001, they decriminalized all drugs, and the Portuguese people have responded like rational adults to this new Valhalla of illicit substances.

Sorry again. "Decriminalization" of drugs isn't the same as legalizing them. So before you buy a one-way plane ticket, understand that making, selling or having more than a few days' supply of drugs on you can still get you a prison sentence. The only real difference is that if you get caught doing drugs, they won't send you to jail; but you'll still have to face a panel of psychologists, social workers and legal advisers. Presumably your mother will be there too, and she'll be very disappointed in you.

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"I'm just glad your real father's not here to see this."
"Yeah! Wait, what?"

So, Portugal's drug abuse rates didn't go down because drugs are as readily available as liquor, but because addicts are referred to a treatment facility. Such policies may work in America, but don't expect the full-frontal-nudity version of drug legalization to hit here any time soon. The best you can hope for is Cinemax After Dark.