Skip to main content

The role of the tanning salon tax II

 




Final thoughts on the material we discussed yesterday. 

I no longer identify as an anarcho-capitalist, or even as a libertarian, so I will not affect outrage over the very existence of an excise tax on tanning services. 

I will say, though, perhaps with the old instincts kicking in, that there seems to have been an underlying notion when the tax was conceived that the transaction is a suspect one, for public health reasons, and that if some of it is deterred in this way ... well and good. And I still dislike that sort of attitude. 

I suspect the general public is well aware that tanning -- at a beach or in a salon -- carries risk of skin cancer.  An adult patronizing a salon is making an informed choice, "yes I am somewhat increasing the risk of cancer, but I'm gonna look really good!"  One is or ought to be free to make that choice. One is or ought to be free to sell services to people who have made that choice. So ... I can see value in Senator Rand Paul's oft repeated view that there ought not to be such a tax. 

In the case of some Republicans, the taxing-is-bad thing combines with the association of this particular tax with Barack Obama and the signal achievement of his Presidency. 

The motive of the keep-the-tax view on the other part of the Republican split is symbolic deficit hawkishness. The revenue involved is not a lot. But it does let some of the 'hawks' say "we ARE doing something to address the deficit."  Also it is my impression that tanners in such salons are relatively upscale folks -- the working class gets its tans and its cancer on good beach days -- no point doing that indoors! So perhaps deficit hawkishness here is a symbolic way of saying "yes, we CAN bring ourselves to tax the rich -- so long as they buy tanning services." 

That said ... the more important point is that one of the greatest imperatives of this moment is a weakening of the political power of Trump and Trumpism.  I am willing to countenance a wide range of non-violent means to that end. And it may well be that as the budget process moves forward, the issue of tax-free tanning salons may prove a sore spot for the Trumpeting coalition, serving that great imperative by exacerbating its that coalition's internal tension.

So I cheer on whichever deficit hawks in the House pressed to drop from the bill finally voted on the language that would have repealed repeal of this tax, before it got to the floor.  I also cheer on Rand Paul and any Senator who believes that this is an issue out of the many issues in that one big sloppy bill that is worth making a fight over -- go put that repeal back in there, guys.  Go to the conference committee to fight over it. Yea you!  

Keep fighting, you guys.  You owe it to all you hold dear. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
22 comments
Read more

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
10 comments
Read more

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable a...
Post a Comment
Read more