The Trunka tumblelog

The Mandate

mikehudack:

That’s astonishingly unfair. I’m not a fan of the mandate either (I’m not a fan of guaranteed issue, for that matter) but we need to acknowledge where this comes from. “The Democrats” (as if they’re a Borg Collective) generally supported an individual mandate as a compromise short of single payer. During the Presidential campaign Obama was the only one not to support a mandate. This is him compromising to match the will of the rest of his party, nothing else.

I’m not buying this.  When Obama campaigned against Clinton, the issue of the mandate was the single biggest policy difference between them.  He campaigned as if this difference mattered.  He campaigned as if this were an issue of principle.  For him to jettison this in his first year in office is atrocious.  This isn’t a compromise he needed to make with the rest of his party—it’s a compromise he chose to make with the insurance companies that donated lots of money to his party.

The debate over health care has been raging for decades.  This imposed mandate is something relatively new and absolutely awful.  It’s also, most likely, unconstitutional.  But we shouldn’t have to resort to the courts to protect our rights … we should be able to turn to our leaders.  Obama failed us in this regard.

posted 16 hours ago

When EVERYONE Benefits

robot-heart-politics:

Everyone benefits from this service. As I said before (repeatedly), cutting a break for pet owners creates the immediate benefit of pet owners being more able to keep their pets and care for them, which keeps animals off the street. It also helps city shelters from further driving up their costs. But these are by no means the only beneficiaries.

This should be a short-term or emergency addition to this year’s tax code, in order to help alleviate problems created by the recession, but then expire that in a year or two, when the issue of pet abandonment and shelter overflow is less of a problem, so that it doesn’t become a permanent tax hike on everyone. But in the short-term, I do think it’s a good short-term fix for a short-term problem.

This is the problem (or, rather, one of the many problems) that arises when you design programs without figuring out how to pay for them.  You assume the people who will eventually pay the costs are less deserving than the people receiving the benefit.

Again, everyone benefits.

And with respect to the pet tax deduction—is there one other person reading this who thinks this is a good idea?  Or that pet owners are inherently more deserving of this break than the people who will ultimately pay for it.

Again, everyone benefits. Keeping stray dogs off the street isn’t just about making pet owners happy. The fact that you seem completely incapable of acknowledging that failing to provide adequate animal control services will have more negative effects than a few sad pet owners either shows that you know that this is a flaw in your argument and are avoiding confronting it, or you are so accustomed to this service being provided, you seem to think it will take care of itself in the absence of the government doing it.

The flaw in the libertarian argument is that while, yes, it might make more sense in terms of balancing a budget to cut almost all public services, it doesn’t make any sense at all when you start talking about actually removing services that, though we take those services for granted because they’ve been around for as long as any of us can remember, actually do necessary and useful things for us as a society. This isn’t an issue of pet owners being more deserving than non-pet owners. This is an issue of a public service to all people being delivered or not.

I think I know where you went wrong.

I’m a libertarian, and that means that a lot of my beliefs seem crazy to most people.  You assumed that I was expressing crazy libertarian beliefs in my post.  But I wasn’t making a libertarian argument at all—I was making a common sense one.  I was making an argument that ought to appeal to reasonable, mainstream people in both parties.  But you didn’t expect this from me, and so, by mistake, you adopted a wholly unreasonable position.

You’re saying, I guess, that it doesn’t matter who pays the cost of your tax break for pet owners because everyone benefits from this break.  This makes no sense.  Even if everyone benefits from something, you still need to know who pays the cost of it in order to assess it.  Suppose the Government gave everyone a penny, and they paid for this program by taxing people over the age of 75.  Would you defend this program because EVERYONE benefits?  Maybe this is right if EVERYONE has a NET benefit—but without assessing who bears the cost, you can’t decide this.

But let’s consider whether EVERYONE really benefits from making petcare deductible.  You say that it will reduce animal abandonment.  I highly doubt that many people savvy enough to keep track of pet car receipts for tax time are the kind of people who would otherwise kick their animals to the curb.  You yourself said that you’d like the benefit of the pet care tax deduction because you incurred significant pet expenses.  But you didn’t kick your animal to the curb, right?  So why should we give you the deduction?  You want the deduction because it’s money in your pocket.  Fine.  I get that.  But it’s just a selfish wealth transfer.  If you wanted a policy that actually targeted abandoned animals, you’d spend the money on a service that rescues them.  But no, that way you wouldn’t get your precious tax break.

At the end of the day, you want us to subsidize your pet ownership, but that sounds crude and wrong, so you pretend it’s for a policy that benefits EVERYONE.  Sure, the money stays in your pocket, but its better for EVERYONE that way.  And this is how EVERYONE loots money from each other, right?  We all pretend that our own pet causes are noble—that they help the greater good.  We’ll bail out GM because EVERYONE benefits from the American car industry.  We’ll save AIG and the big banks because EVERYONE benefits from a sound financial industry.  Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a wealth transfer from one person to another that can’t be justified by an EVERYONE BENEFITS argument.

This is not a serious way to look at policy.

posted 1 week ago

The Other Side of the Scale

robot-heart-politics:

“At the core of Robot-Heart’s thinking is the notion that tax credits (and indeed, any policies) are free.  The idea that someone else will have to pay for them (whether now or later) seems like a complete fantasy to her.  You might think that’s absurd, but her view is the popular one.”

—

Jeff Miller

I did not say that tax credits were free, and in fact acknowledged that in my argument (See: “Yes. The tax break will have to be paid for somehow.”) What I argued is that when faced with a problem, you have a variety of solutions with a variety of positive and negative outcomes. The object, for all of us, is to pick the best solution.

The problem is that we (and by “we” I mean both you and I, and people in general) have completely different ways of determining what is the best solution. You, for instance, reject any solution outright that involves more spending or unequal tax burden. (Side note: I think you base your opinion on the idea that the free market is inherently equal to begin with—or at the very least that the inequality is “natural,” and therefore okay—and that all money gained or lost is gained or lost on a more or less equal playing field. I do not agree, which is why it’s not as important to me if the wealthy carry a slightly heavier tax burden. It’s not that I think they “don’t deserve their money.” It’s that I think the system is inequitable to begin with, and even in a system where there is unequal tax burden, on the whole the wealthy still overwhelmingly have the upper hand.)  I am more concerned with the service rendered: how useful or necessary is this service, and is it worth the total cost? Then, if the service is worth supporting, what’s the best way to implement that service?

It’s not that I’m bad at math. It’s just that I have a different set of priorities when I do the math.

With all due respect, just how are you supposed to perform your cost benefit analysis when you have no idea who will pay the cost?  With your pet example, you clearly weigh the fate of pet-owners (or, at least, their pets) heavily.  What precisely are you putting on the other side of the scale?

This is the problem (or, rather, one of the many problems) that arises when you design programs without figuring out how to pay for them.  You assume the people who will eventually pay the costs are less deserving than the people receiving the benefit.  Putting aside issues regarding the morality of the transfer, there is no good reason for you to believe that less deserving people will actually pay.  Rather, the evidence suggests that the people who will pay for this are those least politically connected or influential.

And with respect to the pet tax deduction—is there one other person reading this who thinks this is a good idea?  Or that pet owners (or pets) are inherently more deserving of this break than the people who will ultimately pay for it.

posted 1 week ago