The Deserving (and Undeserving) Poor

A childhood neighbor and friend posted a doctor's letter to President Obama on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. The doctor told the story of treating an emergency room patient who claimed Medicaid but who had a gold tooth, several tattoos, and was talking on a cell phone during treatment. The thrust of the letter was that this person needed a lesson in personal responsibility which the president might provide. The letter strongly implied that the patient had neglected to buy health insurance in favor of frivolous purchases and now was relying on the taxpayers for medical care.

Of course, we don't know the whole story. She (I'll call the patient female just to give her a personal pronoun.) cannot return the tattoos, and only the most heartless person would suggest she have the gold tooth yanked out to raise money for her doctor's bill. The cell phone might well have been on prepaid minutes and been non-refundable. Telling people in her life that she was in the emergency room doesn't sound frivolous to me.

Perhaps she had just been laid off a job and had lost her health coverage, or been turned down for coverage for some reason. (She was in the emergency room after all.) Perhaps health coverage was simply out of her price range.

I'm not saying this as an excuse if indeed the woman was continually making a choice of luxuries over necessities, and counting on the rest of us to pay for what she requires. What does strike me is the sense of outrage my childhood neighbor and other Facebook "friends" exhibited over the story. Even if the worst interpretation is placed on her actions, this woman took advantage of the system to the tune of a couple of hundred dollars. We're entitled to be angry over any such abuse of our better instincts, but a simple sense of proportion tends to elude us. We should be a million times more outraged over someone who bilks us out of several hundred million dollars as we are over a hospital patient who cheats us of a few hundred dollars. Think Haliburton, just for a start.

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes, Where's It All Gonna End?

This was the cry of a neighbor some fifty years ago, and it's as pertinent now as it was half a century ago. I mention it just to remind us all that complaints about taxes are nothing new. In fact, complaints about taxes and tax dodging are only slightly less old than taxes themselves.

A few months ago, Fareed Zacharia, a noted columnist, wrote a piece in Newsweek magazine suggesting that all federal income taxes in the United States have a zero percentage rate for persons making less than $100,000 per year. Incomes above that figure would still pay income tax on a graduated scale, actual percentages to be determined, but probably not above about ten percent. Almost all deductions would be eliminated. State income taxes would assumedly fall in line with national tax laws.

Before anyone begins applauding, Mr. Zacharia couples this plan with a national sales tax of about sixteen percent. (He calls it a value added tax.) He claims the revenues generated by this scheme would be sufficient to reduce the annual deficit substantially and would be fairer to all concerned. Money made by investment or savings would be taxed at the same rate as money made by work.

I thought the idea had some merit. Most people would no longer need to file federal tax returns, would not have any payroll deductions, money presently held by FICA would be put into circulation, and people could be sure the tax code was not being manipulated by the few to the detriment of the many.

Then it occurred to me that everything I buy would instantly become much more expensive. Consider: the farmer sells grain to a miller, who pays a tax; the miller sells flour to the baker, who pays a tax; the baker sells bread to the grocer, who pays a tax; and the grocer sells bread to me, and I pay a tax. Five transactions, all taxed at sixteen percent amount to a tax of eighty percent when all is said and done. (Actually even that figure is low, because value is added and prices go up with each sale.)

We also have the matter of exemptions. The example I just used is for food. A compelling case can be made, and many state legislatures have made it, that food must not be taxed because it is a necessity of life. In the same way, medicines are not taxed, doctor's visits are not taxed, charities do not pay tax on donations, even though money is changing hands.

So, I'm skeptical about a national sales tax. It seems to me that it would fall most heavily on the bottom rungs of our economic ladder.

My own thought concerning federal taxes is really very simple. Taxes in the lowest bracket should be zero percent. How much income would be exempt is a matter for discussion, but there would be a definite minimum income below which there would be no tax. To make up for the revenues lost by this plan, we would eliminate deductions for many business expenses and make the capital gains tax rate the same as the one for ordinary earned income. It's absurd that the current tax code is so arcane and full of special provisions that only a dedicated few can make sense of it and gain from it.

And lest anyone shout, "Income redistribution!" as the John McCain presidential campaign did two years ago, I'd just answer that every change in the tax code is income redistribution. For once, those of us of modest means should change the tax scheme to our own advantage.

Burn the Quran?

The flap this week concerning the pastor of a tiny Florida church's intention to burn copies of the Quran is headline news right now. Muslims express outrage, the President has weighed in on the issue, and CNN is covering the event 24/7.

What we're missing is a teaching opportunity here. The glory of democracy is our defense of free speech rights. Even the President of the United States is not empowered to stop this yahoo from expressing himself in the way he - nobody else - thinks is appropriate. Lets explain that to people who are furious about the Quran burning.

Book burning generally should horrify and outrage us all. It's one of the things that puts us on a slippery slope. Once it gets started, who knows where it will end? But if we defend free speech, including free symbolic speech, then we are obligated to support the reverend's right to burn Qurans while at the same time deploring the act itself.

As usual, there is a lesson here for Americans as well as foreigners. I can't help but wonder if Americans who support the Quran burning are the same people who would muzzle free expression in our own country. Anyone who supports and defends the minister's right to burn Qurans would logically also have to support the freedom to, say, burn the American flag.

One last thought: what is the proper way to dispose of a Quran that is worn out? If, as with the American flag, burning is the appropriate method of disposal, there is at least an irony involved in all of this.

Wing Nuts

This morning while driving I tuned in to one of talk stations I refer to as "right wing radio." The host today was a man named Bob Beauprez who two years ago was the Republican candidate for governor here in Colorado. I was deeply disappointed when he agreed with a caller who claimed the Obama campaign deliberately brought about the economic downturn of 2008 in order to win the election!

Here was a supposedly responsible politician accusing a member of the other party of wrecking the nation's economy on purpose, putting millions of people out of work, causing massive defaults on home loans and subsequent foreclosures, probably shortening many lives, to win an election. And all this, according to the caller, with the connivance of the (Republican) Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen.

I bring it up as one more example of the insanity, the paranoid hatred that parts of our American population are exhibiting. The credulous are being driven by hate mongers who, for reasons known only to themselves, have adopted the old Bolshevik strategy for gaining political power: "The worse things are, the better they are for us." They are pursuing a deliberate course aimed not merely at defeating a president and his party but at dividing the nation into two warring camps. They will have a heavy reckoning before the bar of history.