Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Food Taxes: The Mathematics of Health and Tyranny. Gareth Morgan - Fascowerist.









I won’t bore you with the rest of the exchange, but the mathematics of food fascism and alcohol wowserism, let’s call it fascowerism – not to be confused with radshitzyism - is interesting.

My argument against food taxes and alcohol excises will always be the philosophical one of my first tweet: a tax on food choice is a tax on choice, period; it's an attaxk on freedom. But it appears Gareth is arguing his case from cost considerations: he doesn’t want to pay for bludgers, thus will restrict the freedom of a whole society to achieve what he sees as the worthy miserly benevolence of fascowerism. And by the bye, because he is incapable of seeing beyond his own importance, the irony will be lost on Gareth that I will be able to afford to eat and drink what I want, despite his tax lust.

A free man knows that the answer is not to tax all of us, but to make individuals responsible for their choices via the burden of their own health costs, but statists have an innate belief in their own superiority and your stupidity, thus will never be able to resist the patronising answer that puts them in your house, in this case every meal time, sitting around your table to lecture you from chick pea entrée (*) to fresh fruit salad dessert. That Gareth is convinced of his own superiority is evidenced by the arrogance in his posting to me - whom he doesn’t know from Kim Jong-un - assuming me a bludger, because Gareth is the only one working, right?

So let’s look at the underlying case for costs Gareth is making. I don’t have to research and answer any of the below questions. But Gareth who wants to raise the cost of living for all of us, including, I suspect disproportionately, a large grouping of society who can least afford the higher cost of food, has to answer these if he wants to make his case for fascowerism on grounds of savings to the taxpayer.

Surmise that by taxing food society ends up with healthier, longer living individuals. Okay, but what is the actual change in health costs? Is it a saving?

People who die earlier of obesity related diseases may well impact on health costs for a much lesser period of time than longer living healthier people who are still going to die of something, as well as being around longer to incur injury or disease, the latter of which with their healthier immune systems they might keep surviving from to be admitted into the health system with something else. Amateur prognosticating, yes, but I think the logic unavoidable surely.

Also, some of the obesity related diseases such as diabetes are no doubt expensive because their duration is extended, however, some of the related diseases such as coronary, which without any facts I’m going to assume to be the bigger ailment from inappropriate eating and drinking, oftentimes will have very quick outcomes. Perhaps just the cost of the ambulance to Accident and Emergency. Whereas aren’t healthier, lingering people more likely to die from longer, lingering diseases such as cancer meaning more public health bedtime, drugs and salaries?

So, cognisant of the trade-offs, are there any studies that indicate what the likely change in the cost of healthcare is from people eating healthier and living longer? It may not be that significant, or even savings at all?

And if that is not problematic enough, then the same ethic that leads a society to universal healthcare, also leads to universal superannuation, such as we have in New Zealand. People living longer means a higher superannuation cost. Indeed, a much higher superannuation cost,  remembering it is the cost of superannuation that is in big part responsible for collapsing the economies, thus societies of Europe and the US currently and into the future.

Given this, the algebra becomes:

Taxpayer savings in healthcare of healthier eating = savings in health costs (this could be negative) - increased cost of superannuation.

I can easily envisage this equation ending up a negative number, thus a cost on the taxpayer.

I love a drink or four, but I eat healthy. It would be over a year since we’ve had fish and chips or a take-away, plus I walk twice a day, and kayak when we’re in the Sounds, so I recommend healthy eating and exercise for a good life, but I’m not so arrogant as to impose my values or a joyless fascowerism on anyone else. So on the level of taxpayer savings that Gareth has cast his net, does anyone have any figures to slot into my equation above? Is he even correct on the brutal but necessarily dispassionate level of cost?

If he is wrong in even this, that would be the sugar laden icing on the cake, and I’ll drink copiously to that.


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(*) This comment was said for effect, not in honesty. Funnily enough, I love chick peas. With my Friday night bottle/s of wine I eat a can of chick peas rather than a packet of crisps. Stunningly, I did that without a tax on crisps. Albeit I eat my chick peas in the knowledge that like soy beans they’re probably genetically modified, thus will kill me.

9 comments:

  1. "A free man knows that the answer is not to tax all of us, but to make individuals responsible for their choices via the burden of their own health costs."

    Unfortunately, a society kept in a permanent state of adolescence by outsourcing all their major choices surrounding education, health care and retirement planning to the State cannot be relied upon to act responsibly.

    Gareth has correctly intuited this.

    But rather than stop the outsourcing, he would prefer we outsource the decisions surrounding our food choice as well.

    In Gareth's world, what ever the problem, more State intervention is the answer.

    The disconnect here is so large, that it's all but impossible to engage in a rational exchange of ideas with him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yet ten years ago I would have called him almost a classical liberal.

      Delete
  2. http://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg

    The equation is irrelevant.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gareth thinks the healthcare system is a generosity of society (himself included) but he actually resents people getting "free" health care at his expense. He wants to force them to be healthy so that he doesn't have to contribute to them.

    He's not generous. He's resentful.

    He should leave the giving to the truly generous.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Resentful, spiteful, dreadful.

      Will have to look at your youtube later as to why my equation is wrong.

      Cheers for commenting Reed.

      Delete
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