Freedom, Choice and Taxes

There’s a book by Amartya Sen entitled Development as Freedom which I would love to read but haven’t had the opportunity to do so.  I have a ton of books that I already own that I want to read first before I buy any new ones, much to my girlfriend’s chagrin as she has some books she wants me to buy.  Anyways, I was talking to another friend named Ryan in Myanmar about it and he was saying how in that book the author mentions how true development leads to freedom of choice for the individual in a society.

Freedom of choice is another thing we have to take into account when we consider universal health care.  Will people be free to choose their own doctors?  Will they be free to choose to make their own careers by still having health care if they choose to leave their current job situations?  These are all things that must be considered.

Many Americans have this false dichotomy between freedom and taxes.  They think lower taxes equal more freedom when that is anything but the case.  Freedom is how much a society cares for the least of their members.  Freedom is how much a society cares for all its members for that matter.  Higher taxes aren’t always the answer to be sure.  There has to be reform in all sectors of government.  It should concern us when we pay more for the military than a bunch of other social programs combined though, right?

There is a growing movement towards simplifying the tax code and I highly applaud this.  As I’ve found through random facebook posts and just straight up asking people though, no one wants to lose their tax credits and/or deductions.  Loopholes are seen as other people’s tax credits and deductions, not their own.  Their own credits and deductions are highly justifiable of course.  It’s that other person we need to go after. 

We would save over a trillion dollars if we nixed all the credits and deductions.  Did you catch that right there?  That is over $1,000,000,000 in today’s dollars.  That’s a bunch of money that we could save.  If we did that we could lower the rate on corporations and individuals.  Not to mention corporations would actually have to pay their taxes instead of using all the credits and deductions to get out of paying one red cent like many of them do.

Universal health care is a good idea that we should at the very least consider.  How much money would you save if you didn’t have to pay a high premium every month?  Yes, you would have to pay higher taxes, but if everyone had to pay higher taxes it wouldn’t be that much.  Health care shouldn’t be a for-profit business, just like education shouldn’t be a for profit business. 

I happen to strongly support business and business creation.  There are just certain fields that business principles don’t apply to; no matter how red in the face a Republican may get over the argument.  I even agree for lower corporate tax rates as a great way to incentivize starting more businesses.  Just keep the profit making out of the health care industry.