Okay, here's something I don't get. I understand that people dislike taxes in general (though most like the things they get for taxes, like roads and police and tanks and food that is mostly safe), and that some people vehemently dislike all taxes on principle. So that sad …
The SCOTUS decision seeing the penalty for not buying private insurance coverage as a tax seems to be drawing a hellacious amount of attention, not so much as a tax, but as some strange new power that (gasp) forces people to buy something. Next stop, forcing people to buy (as one Denver Post columnist put it, dismissively) a portable defibrillator, or else face a fine.
What I don't understand is the difference between:
a. The government taxing everyone an extra $50/year and then delivering to their doorstep a portable defibrillator.
b. The government taxing everyone an extra $50/year and then giving everyone a coupon to go out and buy the defibrillator of their choice.
c. The government requiring everyone to buy a defibrillator of their choice, and taxing (fining) folks $50/year for not having one and having them instead available for anyone who doesn't have one who suddenly needs one.
We'll elide over the concept of a "service" vs an "asset" and just ask, how is "c" significantly different "a" or "b"? It doesn't seem a stretch to me to see that as a reasonably similar power exercise by the government. We may argue about the end, or the amount, but the means seems pretty much the same to me.
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I think you meant to say:different means to the same end. And while I agree that it's not fundamentally different regardless of how it's done, it's an understandable concern since on questions of law and policy different means can have unintended and vast consequences.
Right, but I really don't see a significant difference in the means between the three scenarios.
Yes, certain ways of levying taxes (and tax breaks and tax refunds and tax discounts) have different effects on different populations and so need to be tuned carefully. But the idea that this is some strange, new, novel way of levying taxes that means that soon Obama will be able to command us to buy a certain brand of Kenyan Muslim Atheist UN toilet paper strikes me as, um, silly.
Well, obviously. The power to tax is not new. The manner of doing so is, and that bothers some people as it can easily be mistaken for an expansion of power. While I can sympathize with these people, I must admit I find it a bit odd to object to this rather than some other, newer, and much more sinister expansions of federal authority.
I concur, +Gary Roth — there are exercises of executive power re security and privacy that I find MUCH more disturbing than this setup.