Taxes are inevitable, or so they say. How much we should tax our citizenry, however, is debatable. Tea party members think we tax too much, and many liberals think we don’t tax quite enough.
I’m not going to take a position on the overall tax burden right now. Instead, I’ll point out two things I hope any reasonable citizen would agree upon:
1. Taxes shouldn’t be nonexistent. The government does have some legitimate functions after all, and these functions require money.
2. Smart taxes are better than stupid ones.
So what would ever make a tax “smart”? Answer: If that tax better aligns the price of those goods with the true social costs of those same goods.
Consider how much a can of Coke really costs. To the consumer, Coke is a cheap source of empty calories. (Full disclosure — I love a cold Coke at lunch!) But over the past few decades, the cost per calorie of drinks like Coke have plunged almost 40%, after adjusting for inflation. Coke is not only delicious. It’s cheap!
Cheap for consumers, that is. But not for society as a whole, because the price of Coke doesn’t reflect the cost of medical care associated with our nation’s obesity epidemic, an epidemic fueled by the low cost of sugary beverages. Nor does it reflect the cost of diabetes care, of cardiology interventions, of joint replacements… of the many medical treatments that have grown in frequency in an attempt to counter the health consequences of our expanding waistlines.
Taxing sugary beverages is smart policy.
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Gossip and The New York Times
It was a confession, one that was perhaps more revealing than the confessor realized. Mark Leibovich, writing about Politico in The New York Times Magazine in April, felt the need to disclose that he had known Mike Allen, the subject of his essay, for a dozen or so years, and that he was a fan of Politico.
Then Leibovich went on to say, in an offhand manner, that he had even been a source for Allen: “after I ‘spotted’ treasury secretary Tim Geithner at an organic Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood last year–picking up kung pao chicken with brown rice (‘for Tim’)–I dutifully emailed Allen with the breaking news.”
Honestly. A reporter for the world’s greatest newspaper and he feels compelled to play kung pao paparazzi?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We humans are gossip mongers after all. We are enamored with fame. Even hardnosed reporters get stars in their eyes: Geithner! Kung pao chicken–organic even!
But as a citizen, desperate for a news media that will consistently cut through the spin and dig deep into the complex challenges our country faces, I experienced a painful sinking feeling when I came across Leibovich’s disclosure.
Is it too much to hope that the world’s best reporters will stay focused on the big picture, without being distracted by the daily undulations of minor gossip?
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