Covid contradictions and the welfare state

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to stir up ruminations on Covid contradictions and the "welfare state," from the September 30, 2021 Wall Street Journal.

What Science Knows Now About the Risk of Covid-19 Transmission on Planes

“The study, published in the Journal of Travel Medicine this spring, modeled aerosol dispersion in an aircraft cabin. It found that if all passengers wear masks throughout a 12-hour flight, the average infection probability can be reduced by 73% with high-efficiency masks and 32% for low-efficiency masks.

The problem comes if everyone removes their masks at the same time. The researchers’ suggested remedy to the food issue: Stagger meal delivery so only half of passengers eat at once and adjacent passengers remain masked.”

After NYC trip, one can't help but notice the contradictions of NYC's policy for indoor eating in restaurants, where masks are scrapped during mass indoor dining while to fly to NYC one must wear a mask constantly and meals are not allowed.

More irony in that NYC restaurants require vaccination proof and an ID, while Airlines require n vaccine information. Worse, while liberal New York politicians think that asking for an ID to vote is racist voter suppression, demanding a picture ID to eat run a restaurant is a great idea, if only to protect others!

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Next, let's look at an opinion piece posing as news in the same issue of the Wall Street Journal, from Greg Ip:

Democrats Pursue Europe’s Welfare State on American-Style Taxes

“The $3.5 trillion fiscal package Democrats hope to pass soon represents an ambitious expansion of the social safety net, offering regular child allowances, paid sick and parental leave, universal preschool and free college.

What would most Americans pay for all these new benefits? Nothing.

Led by President Biden, Democrats seek to emulate the comprehensive welfare states common in Western Europe, without the high taxes Europeans routinely pay. Under the Democrats’ proposal, 90% of American households would either pay less or the same taxes, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Tax Policy Center. The richest 1% would pay all of the net new taxes levied next year.

The U.S. welfare state was never intended to be “user-pay.” Benefits are supposed to be more generous for the poor, and taxes higher on the rich. Nonetheless, the division between who receives benefits and who pays for them has become exceptionally stark under Mr. Biden. This is the logical result of two overriding priorities: filling longstanding gaps in the social safety net for the majority of Americans, while reversing widening income inequality that has benefited the wealthiest.”

I added my response in the comments section:

"Wealth taxes destroy the wealth that has created the richest, most sustained global economy over the past two hundred years. Taxing Jeff Bezos' wealth not only destroys/consumes that wealth, it also will likely reduce the value of his stock along with the stock owned by tens of thousands if not millions of others who have invested in Amazon and include it as part of their retirement savings. This becomes effectively a tax on every owner of Amazon stock. Ip and Blinder fail to present the whole picture, trying to bless this wealth-destroying bill. This is not up to Wall Street standards and Ip is opining, not presenting news."

Taxing wealth is a lose-lose proposition in the short run to pay for some short-term virtue signaling and a trivial amount of tax revenue. Politicians never raise or cut taxes; they raise or cut tax rates. If the corpus on which the rate is based, an increase in the tax rate can lead to a "cut" in tax revenue. Taxes have a dynamic effect and although Warren Buffet may claim that taxes were not an issue in his investments and that he feels bad that he pays a lower tax rate than does his assistant, a static analysis or a billionaire's anecdote are not the way to do taxes.

Let me add this: The U.S. welfare state was designed to transfer wealth, to tax the rich. Some think Social Security is part of the "welfare state." Some believe that it is a right, based on how much you 'paid in' to the system while you were working. Some think it is a form of insurance. Most likely, FDR thought of it as a poverty-prevention program for a very small number of elderly people, given that life expectancy was shorter in 1935, and the number of Americans who would be collecting Social Security each year would be a tiny percentage of both the working and total population. In its early days, more than ten working people supported a single retiree, some of whom paid very little into the system. Today, at best there are three people paying into the system for each person drawing funds. Thus, the inevitable projection of bankruptcy for the fund within fifteen years.

Ip must realize that there is no such thing as an American welfare state. America is a self-reliant country with a great amount of compassion and charity as people, not as a government program. The "general welfare" clause in America's founding documents refers to making life manageable for all, not to providing a welfare state for all.