I love taxes and regulations!

Printed in the Reader Weekly, 2013-10-31 and found at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2013/10/31/2364_party_of_one-3.

I submitted it as follows; I did remove from this copy the missing section in last week's Reader Weekly.

Well, not all that much.  What I like is all the benefits that taxes and regulations bring me and many other people.

Like many, I find paying taxes a chore.  I have to set aside money twice a year for property taxes.  I have to keep lots of records and fill out detailed forms to calculate how much federal and state income tax I owe.  And because I don’t have withholding on all of my income, I have to estimate these taxes quarterly and pay a portion of the presumed shortfall.

A few years ago I had a sore chest, extreme sweating, and nausea.  Was this a heart attack?  Don’t hesitate; call 9-1-1!  Within five minutes a fire truck with four fire fighters/emergency medical technicians arrived.  Without going into all the details, I was hospitalized but it was determined that I did not have a heart attack.  My taxes, your taxes, and the taxes of many others paid for this quick response.

Was this an entitlement?

One of the ER doctors I saw lived in our house a few years before we bought it.  He was a graduate of the UMD medical school.  State taxes paid some of the cost of operating UMD.  Would there be as many doctors and nurses if they or their parents had to pay the full cost of their education, starting with elementary school?

Is this an entitlement?

Keep in mind George Washington’s farewell address, which contained among much other ignored advice:

“[I]t is essential that you should practically bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue; that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant…”

Most of us drive regularly on streets and our commerce depends on the roads.  They cost a lot more than the streets of George Washington’s time.  And city streets like George Washington rode his horse on still existed in my lifetime.  See “11 Traveled Dirt Streets to Be Hard Surfaced at No Cost to Property”, Kansas City Star, 1944-04-06.

Are hard-surfaced streets an entitlement?

Red lights are a bothersome regulation.  Why should I wait while somebody comes by on the cross street?  Well, when I’m driving on the cross street, I appreciate that the other traffic will stop periodically so that I may drive into the intersection safely.

Requiring auto insurance is a bothersome regulation.  But it sure is nice when another person is at fault for banging my car that their insurance will pay for the damage.  I think it was in Michigan that a driver came out from a parking lot and put a dent in the side of our car.  He didn’t stop, and so I made a U-turn and followed him a block or two before he stopped.  We pleasantly exchanged information and we went on our way.  But after a few blocks we saw his insurance agency.  We stopped in and related the incident.  Oh, but he buys the insurance and cancels within a week or so.  Off we went to the police station and told our story again.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everybody followed these “burdensome” regulations?

Among my allergies is quaternium-15, an ingredient in many lotions.  Imagine my surprise when a hypoallergenic lotion contained quaternium-15.  If regulations didn’t require a list of ingredients, would I wind up having an allergic reaction and not know why?

My wife has to stay away from soy lecithin.  Dark chocolate is a healthy treat.  Many dark chocolate bars contain soy lecithin.  If regulations didn’t require the labeling of ingredients, what would happen to her if she ingested soy lecithin unknowingly?

When all the nutrition information was mandated on foods, I pooh poohed it.  Come on, you know a candy bar has lots of calories; so stay away from candy bars if you have a weight problem.  I recently had a colonoscopy and was told not to take iron before the procedure.  Chocolate was one of the OK foods.  But, dark chocolate contains 6 to 35 percent of the daily value of iron.  If I had that much iron would it have changed the diagnosis?  I stayed away from chocolate and I had a negative result.  Without the regulated nutritional information I might have had a false positive result.

Many corporations regard regulations against air and water pollution as burdensome and anti-free market.  Many studies have shown that many of the chemicals in our environment are causing brain impairment in children and that they don’t perform well in school.  Oh, poor school performance is not caused by pollution, it’s the “greedy teachers’ unions”!

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. supposedly said he liked taxes, “They buy civilization.”  I would add without regulation, we would not have civilization.

"Free marketers" rail against free markets again

"Think Those Chemicals Have Been Tested?" Ian Urbina, New York Times, 2013-04-13

Think again!  "[T]he overwhelming majority of chemicals in use today have never been independently tested for safety."

The American Chemistry Council "has also argued that the bill risks raising costs, squelching innovation and putting American companies at a competitive disadvantage."  Raising whose costs?  The industry's costs or those of individuals and health insurance companies?

So much for the full information of a free market and once again "this order of men" seeks to "deceive and oppress the public".

See"Humpty Dumpty and Free Markets" and "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Hospitals are not healthy places

In addition to the old bromide that people die in hospitals and to the fact that one can pick up an infection easily, there are a few other unhealthy aspects of hospitals. Many don't support the healthy life style I mentioned in yesterday's post.

My wife is in a hospital now after surgery. She found the food not to our idea of healthy - the bouillon was too salty, the juice too sweet with added white grape juice, and the gelatin tasted of non-food chemicals.

Roommates can cause stress. They often have the TV sound too loud or their guests talk too loudly. Of course, listening to the complaints of an uncooperative patient can be a big distraction.

My wife's current roommate is generally quiet but she wanted to watch the Vikings-Packers game. My wife has as much interest in professional sports as I have in ironing clothes, as well as in professional sports. I made sure I was back at home during the game with the TV off. My wife heard it even from other rooms, but she was still so fatigued from her surgery that she slept through most of it. Neither of us knew the score until this morning.

Another unhealthy aspect of hospitals is the number of overweight staff, not a good example. Besides the amount of carbonated beverages they drink, some have too many treats around. On one stay, we saw a whole box of donuts. And the cafeterias are often only a step above fast food restaurants.