The Real "Opiate of the Masses"
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Nowadays, it's cutting the gasoline tax:
The gasoline tax is either meant to be an enlightened Pigou tax or a backdoor revenue raiser. If the former, then high prices be damned -- collect it and deploy it to correct whatever "externality" you have convinced yourself needs correcting (global warming, falling bridges, whatever rationalization you care to concoct). If the latter, then scrap it permanently and apologize for having imposed such an abomination in the first place.
So too with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (which McCain wants to freeze). If it is, um, "strategic," then treat it as such. If it is instead a tool to manipulate oil markets and propagandize, then admit as much. You can't have your oil and eat it too.
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Meanwhile:
Of course, the 800-pound contradiction in the room is that it is precisely the rich who have already paid for their Medicare benefits through their taxes. The idea that the rich elderly, who paid a lifetime of uncapped Medicare taxes, are somehow now "mooching" off younger taxpayers is an insolent fraud.
But then again, so is McCain.
Senator John McCain ... called on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent a gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day. Mr. McCain said that doing so would provide "an immediate economic stimulus," but some environmentalists said that the change might encourage more people to use their cars, while Mr. McCain has made combating global warming central to his campaign.We must fight global warming -- unless it gets too expensive for the soccer moms and NASCAR dads. Real "maverick" thinking, eh?
The gasoline tax is either meant to be an enlightened Pigou tax or a backdoor revenue raiser. If the former, then high prices be damned -- collect it and deploy it to correct whatever "externality" you have convinced yourself needs correcting (global warming, falling bridges, whatever rationalization you care to concoct). If the latter, then scrap it permanently and apologize for having imposed such an abomination in the first place.
So too with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (which McCain wants to freeze). If it is, um, "strategic," then treat it as such. If it is instead a tool to manipulate oil markets and propagandize, then admit as much. You can't have your oil and eat it too.
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Meanwhile:
"People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet don't need their prescriptions underwritten by taxpayers," he said. "Those who can afford to buy their own prescription drugs should be expected to do so. This reform alone will save billions of dollars that could be returned to taxpayers or put to better use."(The definition of "Bill Gates," incidentally, is "single people earning more than $82,000 a year and married couples earning more than $164,000." Who knew becoming a billionaire was so inexpensive?)
Of course, the 800-pound contradiction in the room is that it is precisely the rich who have already paid for their Medicare benefits through their taxes. The idea that the rich elderly, who paid a lifetime of uncapped Medicare taxes, are somehow now "mooching" off younger taxpayers is an insolent fraud.
But then again, so is McCain.
Posted by Kip on
15 April 2008
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