Random Nuclear Strikes

Would be an understatement. But everyone makes mistakes.

Last week Roger L. Simon made one, in my book at least, when he said “Sign Me Up” to the idea of a National ID Card.

And you are uneasy again. The government is incompetent, you say. So what? Who said the government should do the work itself? Outsource it to Oracle, Sun Microsystems, some Silicon Valley wizards. The technology of this sort of thing is advancing at a breakneck clip. The side benefit of this is that an advanced high tech card can replace, or at least displace, all those green cards and driver’s licenses we have been using as de facto ID cards and that are so easily counterfeited or stolen. Sure some super-hacker will figure out how to put my fingerprints on your card and vice-versa, but those cases will be nowhere near as common as the shenanigans we deal with now.

As anyone who has kept up with Joe Huffman’s posts on ID cards can attest, the counterfeitors will most likely have their cards done and in circulation before the feds.

That they’d better take up smoking to show their support for those programs.

Thank you for smoking

There are some differences in detail between the Senate and House bills authorizing massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), yet the competing plans have this much in common: Some states will be winners, others will be losers, but they’re all going to have to recruit millions of new smokers. This is because both plans depend on an increase in the federal tax on cigarettes, with the House version upping the levy 45 cents and the Senate 61 cents. Unfortunately, economic reality makes clear just how imprudent it is to take such a course.

There are two ways in which this is true. First, raising the federal tax on smokes will decrease sales. Even congressmen know that a higher price for a commodity reduces the number of consumers able to purchase it. The hitch here for SCHIP and the states is that the latter also tax cigarettes, which means they will lose revenue as a result of the federal increase.

Add a higher federal tax to those factors, and it is impossible to envision sufficient revenues to finance SCHIP as Congress intends. So Congress will need millions of new tobacco customers to replace those who quit, die or reduce consumption. At least 9 million new smokers will be needed during the next five years to ensure sufficient revenues to pay for the expanded SCHIP program. And that illustrates yet another law of economic reality — government actions almost always have unintended consequences, and they are usually bad.

Light em if ya got em, single payer advocates.