Unhelpful
The rhetoric, if you can call it that, employed by Shadow Finance Minister and Liberal blowhard Joe Hockey is unhelpful to the debate, even though it’s already over. We’re going to have a temporary increase in the Medicare levy to pay for the reconstruction of Queensland, “dumb”, “stupid”, or not. I take the point of Warwick McKibben that a tax increase puts pressure on the public just when we’ve been holding off an economic crisis, but notice that the good professor’s reasoning points to the idea that deficits are not in themselves bad, but that sticking to artificial deadlines and targets may be. Where the Liberal Party line is that Labor is fiscally irresponsible for its deficit spending, economic reasoning tells us quite plainly otherwise.

I will not object to the levy. Insurance won’t and can’t pay for everything. I expect the government to make cuts where it can and should already, but I’m happy to pick up a fair share. I may reduce my charitable giving, however, since the government’s going to pick up the slack for me.