Taxpayer Burden of Wowsers: The High Cost of Good Health.

Over October of last year Gareth Morgan was tweeting on his distaste of paying the health bills of the hedonistic unhealthy, and thus of his divine right to lecture and coerce all of us on how we choose to live; advocating taxes on sugar, fat, higher excises on alcohol and tobacco ... the whole wowser routine – he even took time out from his cat killing pogrom to inform us of this. He does actually have a point in that when we have a tax system forced on us then saving taxpayer money is a valid goal, and thus, in this case, seemingly a lever to use to bully individuals on their lifestyle choices  – indeed, this is part of my objection to the tax state. My reply to him at that time was that he was definitely wrong on a philosophical basis:

… but the mathematics of food fascism and alcohol wowserism, let’s call it fascowerism is interesting.

My argument against food taxes and alcohol excises will always be the philosophical one of … a tax on food choice is a tax on choice, period; it's an attaxk on freedom.

Then regarding his cost complaint, I employed a completely unstudied, therefore unevidenced, logic hypothesising that it was the healthy who were in fact the drain on our healthcare dollar, for lardarses and big drinkers like yours truly may conceivably be doing the taxpayer a favour by generally dying earlier:

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?

Ahem, if you could see my face as I type this, you would note the overwhelming feature would be a huge smile. For given the above, you’ll understand how chuffed I must be to now find evidence that I am right, not the All-Knowing Fascowerist Morgan.  From the New York Times:

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

[Snip].

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

"This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas and changing science.

So, given there is no justification in terms of saving taxpayer dollars for telling me what to eat and what to drink, and I include in this every academic wanting to tax sugar, fat and thus living, we necessarily fall back onto the philosophical argument which for me - a free man - is leave me alone; I take the consequences of how I choose to live, so it’s none of your damned business. Gareth go back to bullying cats, and academics go find a job that doesn’t include you living on my tax dollars, you patronising fascowerists.

GCSB & Fat Tax Redux: Both Sux. Plus I Mention The War.

Here’s the problem.

Two of the current main players in the privacy debate in New Zealand are the man who's single vote is going to put the GCSB Bill into law, Peter Dunne, and leading the inquiry into the leak of Rebecca Kitteridge’s report, the man who has just jackbooted all over the freedom of the fourth estate, David Henry.

Look at the careers of these two men:

Dunne is the ex-Minister of Revenue: Henry the ex-Commissioner of Inland Revenue. Both men have dedicated some great deal of their career to ensuring their tax department is so powerful we have no right to be left alone, no right to privacy, in order the state can take our property and our effort to fund a planned society some few of us have no philosophical agreement with. A state so powerful that in the tax field it can enact and apply retrospective legislation to re-write a taxpayer's history at the whim of bureaucrats - it's not a Godwin to say the same as the Soviets did, it's merely fact: indeed a practice so prevalent there are now professional continuing education courses in how to survive retrospective tax enactment. Neither man could possibly understand what the concept of privacy entails. Of course Henry asked for Vance’s phone records: given his tax department background he would have simply thought this normal and routine; that's the culture of IRD, that there is no private part of you free from their purview, they own you. And as for Dunne: well he’s just contemptible. After being destroyed via the invasion of his privacy, he is still going to vote for every Kiwi to be spied on by GCSB. This man is living through a mid-life crisis that has turned him into the definition of contradiction, and unfortunately we are paying the price for this with our liberty, as will beagles in laboratories.

If there had been a Libertarianz member in Parliament in place of Mr Dunne, and a libertarian minded person who understood the principle tenets of classical liberalism running the enquiry of Mr Henry, the GCSB Bill would not be about to become law, nor would  Andrea Vance, and via her our fourth estate, have been compromised. We could’ve all – if we took enough drugs to pretend IRD can’t frog march every single one of us to interview room 101 whenever they want with no legal recourse – pretended this was the free society millions of men and women died fighting a major world war for. Why was Henry put up to head that inquiry when he had no philosophical qualifications (academic or experience-based) for that post?

It’s a travesty. But I knew that, because as the byline of this blog states, civilisation is the movement toward privacy, the police state the opposite, and tax legislation, particularly tax administration, has become the legislation and administration of the surveillance state.

And while I’m looking into this boiled egg before me, well-salted teaspoon in hand – I write these posts over breakfast - regarding the fat tax promotion, yet again. The free society’s perspective simply stated:

A fat tax is a tax on food choice.

A tax on food choice is a tax on choice, period.

A tax on choice is a tax on our freedom.

The topic of fat taxes does not take place in the health vote, it’s a philosophical issue.

. ... I'm getting sick of writing this entire post over and over. Hopefully next post I’ll have time to finish my take-take on the Clifford Bay ferry terminal. The bureaucrats are mucking up that one also.

But lastly, as I’ve mentioned the war, what those men and women were fighting for.

Danish Abolish Fat Tax – Mayor Bloomberg Takes Food from the Homeless.

Every single classical liberal / libertarian and Austrian school economist could have told the Danish government this would have been exactly the result from a fat tax:

The Danish government has said it intends to abolish a tax on foods which are high in saturated fats. … authorities said the tax had inflated food prices and put Danish jobs at risk. … The ministry said one of the effects of the fat tax was that some Danes had begun crossing the border into Germany to stock up on food there.

What does it say about politicians who think they are somehow qualified to run our lives for us that they still can’t figure this basic stuff out. Quite apart from the philosophical fascism it connotes, anathema to Western classical liberalism.

Every politician please take note: you have no right to interfere in the lifestyle choices of individuals. You have no right to put the iron fist of state into the voluntary market transactions of consenting adults. None. We make our own choices far better than you can. And if you are justifying a fat tax like this to save taxpayer money in the public health system, then that is actually the justification of a private health system where we take the responsibility of our own lives. The moment you turned your attention from the only rightful role of state, protecting individuals from each other, to protecting individuals from themselves, you turned our social democracies into social(alist) democracies, that now careen us down the road to our serfdom.

We are not children.

Please.  Please. Just. Go. Away.

… And in other hilarious news, as economist Don Boudreaux points out, in a measure impossible to spoof, Czar Bloomberg of New York has banned food donations to the homeless, because the City officials haven’t the resources ‘to inspect donated foods to ensure that the fat, salt, and fiber contents of these foods meet the Mayor’s exacting standards.  So no donating food to hungry New Yorkers!’

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Right, thank God it’s Sunday, where’s that bottle, before the excise tax puts vineyards out as well …