Taxing Our Way to Virtue

What do liquor, cigarettes, prostitution, and marijuana have in common?

Well, yes, they do each offer profound and unique satisfactions. Or so I’m told. Or read in a book.

What I was going for, however, is that their primary consumers are adults. The former two generate substantial amounts of tax revenue. The latter two would were it not for the successful efforts of priggish, overbearing guardians of public morality and welfare. If morality is defined exclusively by their private concepts of morality. And if welfare is understood as that which they dictate for your own good.

I was stirred to these musings by a television commercial that has been ubiquitous on my cable provider. At least during programs shown on CNN and HGTV. This commercial is sponsored by a group identified as Americans Against Food Taxes and features a tense young woman whining in adenoidal tones about the burden “a few cents” in tax on sugary soft drinks would place on her family and similar Caucasian families across our great land.

I am not sympathetic to her plight.

As I have argued previously, I believe in taxation. I believe taxes are on the whole a good thing. I believe that government at every level provides services that could not be rendered by any other entity. Road and highway construction (Those who whine about taxes can often be heard to advocate for private toll roads. Hello? These will take less money out of your pocket? And what commercial entity is going to build a toll road from your driveway to your church or to the mall?), public safety, national defense, education (even charter schools rely on tax dollars), Medicare, Social Security (How’s your private pension looking? Your 401K? Your investment portfolio?).

Take the socialist jackboot from the neck of private initiative and you get … 44 cent postage stamps and $25 luggage fees. Leave it to the socialists and you get electric power delivered to rural communities and voting rights.

But I digress.

I am not sympathetic to the arguments of Americans Against Food Taxes because they are against taxes.
If their argument was against using taxation as an instrument of social engineering, then I would be enthusiastically in their camp. Soft drinks aren’t really a food in any nutritional sense, but unlike the four pleasures cited above, their primary consumers are children and adolescents.

“Ah ha! Just so!” cry the social engineering crowd. And these sugary poisons contribute to the scourge of childhood and adult obesity and a wide range of resultant conditions. This is true. I am not suggesting that childhood obesity is not a serious problem. I am only objecting to the use of tax policy to effect behavior change.

Research also points quite strongly to lack of exercise as a significant determining factor in childhood and adult obesity. Is the answer to tax video games, romance novels, Fox Sports or sofa manufacturers?

Now, and here I may be accused of sophistry, I do not object to taxing liquor, cigarettes, prostitution, marijuana, soft drinks, ice cream, video games, romance novels, Fox Sports, sofas or any other discretionary consumable. So long as the tax is premised solely upon raising funds to support the functions of government.

Key word for me: discretionary. If it is something that one chooses to purchase rather than needs to purchase it should be fair game for taxation. I would argue that food, clothing and utilities should be exempt from taxation, but that’s a battle I’m willing to lose to allow most goods and services to be taxed.

A commercial which airs as frequently as the grocery shopping mamma features a smarmy attorney in a Stetson looming Godzilla-like before a photo of Bank of America Plaza offering his firm’s services in pursuing Social Security Disability claims.

I will address the scourge of mercenary aged cripples attempting to rip-off the struggling tax payer in a later entry.

More David

I heard from David yesterday. What a relief after that misunderstanding about our phone call. He’s a busy man, y’know. Or maybe I just got something wrong. That’s probably it. It was probably me. (Damn. I thought I smothered that voice years ago. So much for therapy.)

Anyway, it was another note. This one was addressed “Dear Friend.” When it was his people, it was “Dear Paul.” Now we’re just friends. Or am I being too sensitive?

I’ll let you judge for yourself. He said to forward the whole email, but I like to leave a little mystery. (Please don’t tell him I didn’t do exactly like he said. He’s a great guy. Really, really great. But he has anger management issues. Who wouldn’t? He had parents as a child.)

8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage
--Ends Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
--Ends Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
--Ends Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
--Ends Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
--Ends Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
--Ends Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
--Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
--Guarantees Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.

Okay now. And this isn’t about the “Dear Friend” thing. Although that is starting to frost me just a little. But see, these are all great ideas. Really great. They’re things that we shouldn’t still be talking about in 2009. But I didn’t see anything in David’s whole note or hear anything in any of Mr. Obama’s speeches or the parts of his press conferences where he sticks to talking about Heath whatever Reform that tell us how any of these eight things will be accomplished.

I want to know how. By what mechanisms? And I’m not even talking about how they will be paid for. How will they be done? I want all 8 of those things and lots more, but I won’t believe in a single one of them until someone explains how they will be accomplished. So far I haven’t heard anything more credible than “Glinda will wave her magic wand …”

I’m actually less anxious about how these reforms will be paid for. I like taxes. People who don’t should stay off my nice paved roads and stop complaining about the quality of public education and keep their parents from the socialist quagmire of Medicare and take the “support our troops” ribbon off their SUV. You’ll “support” them, but you won’t pay for them? I bow to no one in patriotism and admiration for our troops. These are people making sacrifices I don’t have it in me to imagine, but each and every one is a government employee. Their (wholly inadequate) salaries aren't funded by bake sales outside the base gate or those damn magnetic ribbons sold in convenience stores.

And I know that his failure to tell the truth thus far, either as a candidate or as a sitting president, limits Mr. Obama’s options. Can’t raise any taxes now, promised not to. But the American people will never catch on if we call them “user fees.” No, we’re not raising your income tax, that’s an income user fee. No, no, no, that’s not a charge for your ER visit, that’s a gurney user fee.

There are things that are necessary and that must be paid for. If you can’t step up to that plate, Mr. Obama, why did you run for President?