Obamacare, Compassion, and Taxes/Penalties on Inactivity
Ari Kohen (a poli-philosophy professor at the U of Nebraska) has been writing a bit about the Supreme Court's support of "Obamacare" (approvingly, of course--y'all know my slant).
I know that term--"Obamacare"-- is meant as a smear, and that we're supposed to call it the ACA ("Affordable Care Act"), but I *love* the term "Obamacare." We should *all* love it. Among normal, compassionate human beings, it should be among our central life-goals to do something that causes average folks to irrevocably link our names to the word "care." It's like being a fully ordained Mensch. I feel like we live in a pretty whack country when we seek to smear someone's reputation by closely associating him or her with the Christian notion of mutual caretakership. Seriously, what up with that, America? Are we a nation of poorly supervised middle school boys teasing the kid who points out it might be wrong to set fire to the cat?
At any rate, Kohen is a much clearer thinker than I am, more concise, and eager to take hyperbole ("This is a tax on *doing nothing*! This is the end of freedom! Worse than Hitler!") back to the brass tacks of *what the actual SCotUS judges actually said.*
His point? Obamacare fits comfortably within the traditional role of government: To incentivize behaviors that are in the best interest of the country and its citizenry. To wit:
Running Chicken: Health Care, Taxation, and the Constitution
Think back to when the blogger was aghast at the notion that there might be a tax on having children. We actually have precisely the opposite — a tax credit for having them! And that means, of course, that there’s a tax penalty for not having them. I have a child; I get a credit and thus pay less. You choose not to have a child; you don’t get a credit and thus pay more. Your inactivity results in a higher tax burden. Just like the inactivity with regard to purchasing health care.
The same is true, as Chief Justice Roberts writes, of home ownership and professional education.
My point? That Obamacare is just that: Our nation writing into law the *fact* that we all should make the well-being of our fellow citizens our personal business, that we should take a personal stake in being sure that our friends and neighbors don't suffer needlessly. You know, like that Jesus guy said. Now, the Jesus guy's pretty popular in America, so you'd think this would go over pretty well.
Bizarrely, this enormous freakout seems to largely be coming from segments of the pundit universe where Jesus is *HUGE* and taxes are *despised.* That leaves one to wonder what's at the heart of the hyperbolic freakout about what is, in essence, an enormous, Sermon-on-the-Mount-compliant middle-class tax cut?
In my humble, it's the growing pains of a young child getting a new sibling. When mom and dad come home with baby sister, even a toddler can do the math: The denominator in the fraction of the Family's Love they are to receive has just gotten bumped up by one. There is less love to go around. The human loss aversion terror kicks in, and bizarre tantrums ensue.
Of course, over time, we grow and we realize that the magic(k) of Love is that every additional slice doled out *increases* the size of the pie, 'cause Love isn't a goddamn pie we divvy up; Love is a brain made wiser and faster and more wonderful with each additional synapse. More neurons, more connections, more Love.
Right now, as a country, were throwing some crazy tantrums because we just suddenly realized we have an extra 16 million siblings, and haven't yet realized that those extra 16 million brothers and sisters have us, too.
Hey, America, I still love you, because we are each others'.
