The Mocking Eye

I was thinking today that most political affiliation to parties and left/right wing, can be concisely encapsulated by looking at the top Fiscal Priority of an individual. This seems to be able to identify parties and lables that otherwise elude simple description, since they contain a variety of various other views.

For example, the US Democratic Party favors government spending maximized towards social programs. The US Republican Party favors–at least since Reagan–government spending maximized towards defense. The US Libertarian Party favors decreased fiscal spending in all categories, and the US Green Party of course favors maximal environmental spending. I’m not quite up to date on the Israeli party zeitgeist, but this same methodology can be applied to them as they were when I left in 2000.

People often complain of the blurring of distinction between parties and labels, as do I. Usually such an affiliation tells you little about the person identifying as something or other except who they will likely vote for. Now, however, you will be able to understand their fiscal priorities. Anecdotally (that is, as far as I can stretch this thought exercise without actual data and polls), this is the only policy preference that is tightly-coupled to labels.

Bypass the screen of parties and cumbursome ideology: just ask people for what the top spending priority should be for the gov’t, realistically*.

* This means that although a Republican may want to spend the most on, say, Education, their prefered foreign policy would require heavy military spending, thus in reality, they would maximize defense spending. People are not always honest with themselves about these things, so you have to present this caveat explicitely to attempt to ellicit accurate replies.

Popularity: 71% [?]

Taxes levied always lead to a deadweight loss. That is, unless you are taxing an inelastic good or activity. Otherwise, there can be no revenue.

So far so good. However, one should consider why some goods and activities are inelastic. This category tends to includes necessities; things that are relatively important to your survival and quality of life.

So, disregarding other arguments on taxes, the more effective a tax is the more coercive action is applied against an individual’s survival needs. This doesn’t strike me as an ethically justifiable action. Of course, one might take the position that the revenue gained will be redistributed in such a way as to maximize good. Nevertheless, there remains the ethical issue of providing services funded by revenue derived from attacking an individual’s unrelated survival needs—a government can’t tax healthcare if it provides it.

Services provided by governments are unarguably needed. But there must be more morally defensible ways of funding them.

Popularity: 74% [?]