Liberals think they can tell people how to live. To micromanage individual lives they invent macro reasons like saying that one person’s health decisions effects the financial health of all. Keep in mind, of course, that with the advance of a socialistic economy the government will have increased opportunity to tax out of existence any proclivities you have which the government deems to be harmful to the financial well being of society.
Liberals have instituted heavy punishing taxes on cigarettes because the medical costs necessary to keep smokers alive is prohibitive.
Liberals are attempting to tax fatty foods because heavier people often have health issues which we all end up paying for.
So if the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and financial considerations are paramount, why aren’t we taxing abortions at a high rate? Let’s face it the death of an unborn baby effects us all financially. One less baby equals one less grownup paying taxes to pay off our skyrocketing deficit. One less baby means one less working person supporting three or four seniors on social security.
Right now, as the baby boomer generation crawls into retirement, the government requires more revenue for Social Security and Medicare. How do we get more tax revenue? More people.
So the death of the unborn could be a looming financial crisis to all those old, fat and smoking baby boomers. So this voluntary procedure is effecting the financial health of us all in a negative way, shouldn’t the same logic be applied here?
Shouldn’t we be taxing abortion? Maybe we could even label it a “sin tax” or would that be too obvious?
February 4, 2010 at 4:39 am
It's punishment to charge a higher price for abortion, just like it's wrong to punish a teenager with a baby.
Except that the argument above reminds us that ALL TAXATION IS PUNISHMENT.
February 4, 2010 at 4:47 am
Do you know how unChristian your comments toward older people sound? I know they are supposed to be funny but they betray an underlying hostility towards older people that is not deserved but I believe is felt by many/most young people. It will be of crisis proportion when euthanasia becomes the thing expected of those over a certain age. Most of us old fogies have spent our lives paying into social security with the idea that it would be there for all of us–including you. It is not our fault that the government has stolen and misused the funds that were meant to be in a social security "trust".
February 4, 2010 at 6:32 am
Do you have any idea how old the author is? Let's just say, he think's "Hip" is a "neato" word to still use.
Matt
February 4, 2010 at 7:32 am
a modest proposal!
February 4, 2010 at 2:47 pm
This is the best thing I've heard of in a long time! Who wants to help me write the bill? We can send it to our Senators and Congressmen and see who wants to present it!
February 4, 2010 at 2:56 pm
1. "AFFECTING the financial health of all of us"
2. if we had a private medical system people's personal choices would affect no one but themselves and their loved ones. The effect would be more freedom for all of us.
February 4, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I propose the tax on abortion should be the average amount of taxes that a person pays over the average lifetime.
"Most of us old fogies have spent our lives paying into social security with the idea that it would be there for all of us–including you. It is not our fault that the government has stolen and misused the funds that were meant to be in a social security "trust"."
But it is your (collective, not necessarily individual) fault that a whole generation stopped making new tax payers to support the system.
February 4, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Well, heck, if we're going to have tax-payer funded abortions now, there has to be a mechanism to pay for them. So tax away!
February 4, 2010 at 4:44 pm
This post displays such a shocking lack of understanding of basic public policy principles—not to mention simple common sense and sound judgment—that it is causing me to delete this blog from my aggregator.
Despite their names, "vice taxes" are not levied on things that the government would prefer nobody do. They, like all taxes, are levied on things that the government expects us to do as a matter of course. Creating a tax associated with an activity makes that activity itself an integral part of the state's financial arrangement. The modern state expends vast sums and relies heavily on a diverse array of income-generating mechanisms to pay for these outlays, or at least those outlays not covered by borrowing. This is why tax cuts are rare and devices for serruptiously increasing tax liabilities (things like child-tax-credit phaseouts) are frequent.
The easiest way to guarantee that a particular activity or item will remain legal is to levy a tax on it. The funds generated by the particular tax form the part of a budget supporting particular components of the government, which themselves have substantial resources with which to oppose funding and spending cuts. Once you feed the monster, you have to continue feeding it, and the easiest way to do that is simply to maintain the status quo.
Finally, does the term blood money mean anything to you? You can't seriously want your roads, schools, police forces, and other government services paid for by taxes generated by murder. If you look up perverse incentives, you'll find a scenario described that closely parallels what would occur under such a proposal.
February 4, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Titus,
You obviously don't see the tongue-in-cheek nature of this.
February 4, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Thank you Charlotte. I thought it was obvious but I guess not.
February 4, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I actually liked Titus' comments. We should be careful what we ask for – we might get it. However this article is written in the truest form of "Gallows Humor". At NASA there is a lot of gallows humor going around because of the recent cancellation of the Orion project. If we don't laugh, we'll all cry. So continue the laughs. Your humor keeps us all going.
February 4, 2010 at 11:52 pm
This comment has been removed by the author.
February 4, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Sadly, if you read the Health Care bill's financial analysis they consider only the cost of the first 5 years of the child's life, not the contributions he or she will make when grown up. By that twisted math, abortion saves money.
February 5, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I offer that this country needs less people to be paid by taxes colelcted on those of us with jobs. Unemployment of +10%, a prison system that affirms that crime DOES INDEED PAY, when it costs $35k or more to incarcerate per year.
The fact that crime is down from the 1970s is a direct testament to "retro-active" birth control. Refereence a book called: Freakanomics.
It is a regretable "choice" that people make but until we, as human beings, can consider the full consequences of our actions…