Fun with Health and Taxes

Many have already discussed the relationship between taxes and services, but with the health care debate turning near-mindless, it seems like a good thing to revisit.

There is a reality in the American political system. It is that high taxes will, more often than not, yield a high amount of public services. Conversely, low taxes lead to low-serivce locales. People tend to have a preference for one or the other, and vote accordingly. Residents of Bozeman, Montana, pay fewer taxes for taking out the garbage themselves, while those of Clayton, Missouri pay more to have theirs picked up from behind the house.

And a macro level, it works the same way. Americans pay certain federal taxes for a certain amount of services. Every day—generally speaking—politicians fight to for their chance to control this system of tax determination and service provision in the way they see fit.

So then a provisional health care bill comes up and elected officials begin to use the words “socialism” and citizens complain they do not want the government “running” big institutions (not assuming that is actually what the bill is about). That’s fine, and the scenario should be considered: no public health care option, understandably. No Medicare. No Medicaid. Tangentially, laws requiring businesses to provide maternity leave should be overturned, since this constitutes involvement in a health-related condition. Further, we should close the Postal system and especially the educational system, which lots of people claim is broken anyway. All public universities, funded by state and by default federal monies, should be closed as well. Finally, especially, ABSOLUTELY no more Social Security checks should be issued.

And actually, such a scenario fits perfectly into the high-tax high-service/low-tax low-service reality of the American political system. So if a person is going to argue that government involvement in health care is the wrong way to go, they should think about how a repeal of federal funding for institutions would actually play out. And vote accordingly.