What is fairness?
As we go along toward the new fiscal year and the development of a 2013 national budget, it seems to me that the country needs to do a whole lot of soul searching.
If we do not agree on policies and actions, we at least should settle on set definitions for the terms used by all. Because we have gotten ourselves to a point where our resources are perpetually limited distribution is a major problem.
Regardless of ideology we badly need to define fairness, whether it be in the health area, subsistence support, Social Security, necessary expenses to keep the country operating, and of course the tax system that provides the revenue that provides the country”s funding.
With medical services, fairness has to do with the limiting and/or rationing of care, procedures, body parts, and such.
I suspect that what will be settled on as fair for the country is going to upset a lot of people who want, perhaps need, care, but whose treatment is just plain not economic in terms of the country”s funding limitations. Perhaps a good illustration is the common statistic that medicare patients spend 30 percent of their total lifetime funding in the last year of life. And of that 30 percent in the last month when, I suspect, life extension, not improved or maintained productivity, is the main consideration.
At some point we are likely to figure that value to the community and age are major necessary considerations in determining resource distribution.
At my age of 84, I cannot conceive of a situation where giving me care and denying the same care to a productive, valuable “40i-sh” person is imaginable from a government-funded standpoint. If you can self-fund, or have individual insurance, perhaps a different outcome. And, yes, the country is going to be forced to reconsider the “equality” of people and the value of life.
Much the same can be said for the vast “welfare” problem. “Fairness” in the receipt of benefits should not exclude responsibility on the part of recipients, it is the only way we can survive. Recipients should have to prove that their lives are worth maintaining at any level, and provide some compensatory services for the assistance they receive. Here again the value of life issue is going to rear its ugly head.
The issue of fairness is a major concern with respect to any revised tax system designed to provide revenue for the country.
This is a tough one as it must consider both responsibility and ability to pay. Ability to pay is a function of wealth and income, and it may be “fair” to ask high income people to pay a far higher rate the lower incomes.
Is it fair to tax people”s income earned by actually working more than unearned income generated by one”s wealth while one sits in a comfortable chair. Or should pain and discomfort be considered? 10 percent hurts a $50,000 taxpayer a whole lot more than a $500,000 one.
Or is the fairest way to go by asking each taxpayer to simply provide a P and L statement and a Balance Sheet each year and tax at a fixed rate of 50 percent of the increase in assets generated by the prior year”s activities of all types?
One thing we do know, we simply cannot reduce the deficits simply by continually decreasing the lifestyle and hopes of the people.
Increased revenue is absolutely necessary, and it had better be fair.
In my opinion the fairness issue includes distribution of national resources.
Personally, I don”t think it is “fair” to give defense priority over education, infrastructure, and federally funded jobs to reduce unemployment, and such.
But, I suspect, anything that would provide a return for some amount of unemployment and welfare expenses would be considered socialist and to hell with the fact that the country might benefit.
Guthrie “Guff” Worth
Lakeport
