On Welfare Traps

A welfare trap is a situation in which the income (wages plus government benefits) of an individual on welfare remains the same or actually decreases if that individual starts to earn higher wages but loses some or all of his government benefits. For example, if a particular government program provides $5k in benefits for individuals earning $30k or less, an individual who earns $29k in wages has a higher income ($34k) than another individual who earns, say, $32k in wages. Obviously, this creates a perverse incentive for individuals on welfare to avoid work or higher-paying work (which, to first order, is more productive and generates more wealth) since they have the same or even higher income by not working and/or being less productive. This perverse incentive exists even for otherwise well-motivated individuals on welfare (i.e. people who are not simply lazy “moochers”). Moreover, for all the talk that the “rich” should “pay their fair share” there is no rational definition of “fair” whereby a person on welfare doing little or no work has more income than a more productive person earning higher wages.

Unfortunately, all the focus on “fairness” in the U.S. tax code has nonetheless ignored the fact that there do exist significant welfare traps in America. Zero Hedge found a presentation by Pennsylvania Secretary of Public Welfare Gary Alexander with some clear (and disturbing) graphics that highlight these welfare traps. One such graphic is:

Click for larger image.

The plot is of income (welfare benefits + wages) as a function of wages. The dark blue bars indicate contribution to the net (after-tax) income of an individual due to earned income alone. The bars of other colors indicate the contribution to a person’s net income of various welfare programs.

There are two ways to look at this plot. The first is to follow the net income (vertical axis) as wages (horizontal axis) increase slightly. For the most part a small increase in wages results in a small increase in net income, but in several places and in a variety of situations net income decreases significantly as wages increase slightly. For example, a person who earns $29k and qualifies for all benefits has net income of about $57.3k, but if that person increases his or her wages to $31k then net income falls below $50k. Consequently, a person who earns $29k and qualifies for all benefits is discouraged from earning higher wages by a loss of over $7k in net income — even if that person is a hard-working and motivated individual trying to earn a better life for his or her children. Every case in the plot in which net income suddenly decreases like this is a welfare trap, and every such welfare trap hurts the economy since it discourages people from being more productive and earning more.

The second way to look at the plot is to compare points where net income is the same for different earned incomes. The one highlighted in the plot shows that a person earning $29k and who qualifies for all benefits has the same net income as someone who qualifies for no benefits but earns $69k. There is also a case where someone earning only $9k and who qualifies for all benefits has the same net income (about $54k) as someone who qualifies for no benefits but earns about $64k, although at least in this case the person earning only $9k has somewhat of an incentive to earn more since he or she only needs to earn $15k to increase his or her net income. This situation is not “fair” under any reasonable definition of “fair”, which reveals that the left’s complaint that the “rich” don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes* is either a red herring (i.e. they aren’t concerned about fairness and just want to soak the “rich”) or (naively?) selective. Leftists would undoubtedly seek to flatten the net income curve by raising the means test thresholds and thereby increase the net income of those earning between $30k and $69k, but if $42k (the minimum net income on the plot) is sufficient for people earning $44k then $42k is sufficient for everyone earning less than $44k and benefits can be reduced. The savings from such a benefit reduction could be used to slightly increase the net income of the poor slobs earning too much to qualify for benefits but not enough that their net income is higher than those who do, or — even better — reduce our deficits and debts (the federal government alone has been running deficits greater than $1 trillion in recent years, and has a total debt greater than $16 trillion and greater than the U.S. GDP).

Welfare traps such as the ones in the above plot help explain why the poor in America are often seen as lazy and/or “moochers” by conservatives: those with low wages earn less, yet through a variety of welfare programs can actually have a higher income than middle wage earners who do not qualify for such welfare programs. While it is justifiable for middle income earners to be angry and frustrated that lower income earners can have a higher total income, the problem is with the government and its policies rather than the low wage earners themselves. To re-iterate the point: welfare traps give low wage earners perverse incentives against seeking an increase in their wages, so even a hard-working and well-motivated individual finds it personally beneficial to avoid higher wages and productivity. There is no need to demonize the poor (or the rich, for that matter). Perhaps if politicians spent less time demonizing people and more time considering the unintended consequences of their actions they could agree to eliminate obvious obstacles to economic growth such as welfare traps.

————————————————————————————————————-

* This complaint uses the left’s preferred but subjective definition of “fair”, and the left’s incorrect definition of “rich” as high income earners.

On Media Bias: Unemployment Rate Edition

The BBC recently posted an article with an exciting title: U.S. unemployment rate falls to four-year low. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The first few paragraphs make it sound even better:

The US added 146,000 jobs in November, official data shows, as the economy seemingly shrugged off storm Sandy.

The unexpectedly strong performance brought the unemployment rate down to a four-year low of 7.7% of the workforce.

The jobs figure was well above most analysts’ expectations and continued a recent surge that began in July.

Weekly benefits data registered a sharp but short-lived jump in the number claiming unemployment benefits in the states ravaged by the storm last month…

Unfortunately, the details in rest of the article don’t sound so great. For one, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had to (surprise, surprise)

downwardly revise the jobs [gains] for the preceding two months by a cumulative total of 49,000.

Those preceding two months, of course, include the October right before the election.

But the real gem of information was left until the antepenultimate paragraph:

Statistics suggest that much of the decline in the unemployment rate since 2008 has been due to people dropping out of the workforce, either due to retirement or because they have given up seeking work.

So most of the decline in the unemployment rate isn’t due to an economy with “strong performance” that is adding jobs, but rather due to people retiring and giving up the job search! That information belongs near the first paragraph because it changes the interpretation quite drastically. However, it does not fit the leftist narrative that the Democrats (who control the executive branch and the Senate) are slowly but surely digging us out of the “Great Recession” caused by the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress President Bush, so it is left at the very end of the article in the hope that most readers will stop reading before they get to the end.

The lesson here isn’t so much that the media is biased, or even that it is biased in favor of leftists. The real lesson is that an otherwise objective, unbiased statement like “the unemployment rate falls to a four-year low” can nonetheless be written or said in a way that suggests a very biased interpretation by including or excluding certain bits of information, or by giving certain bits of information more prominence than other bits of information. Such a bias is ultimately even more of a problem than an openly biased news source — at least it is obvious that an openly biased source may be trying to persuade you, but you may not seek other sources or think critically about information received from a purportedly objective news source with a subtle bias.

Thomas Sowell on Tax Cuts

One of the most contentious topics in recent American politics has been tax policy. Republicans have advocated tax cuts to relieve the tax burden on Americans and, in doing so, (hopefully) improve the economy. In contrast, Democrats have advocated tax rate increases on the “rich” (who are mistakenly considered to be high income earners regardless of wealth) in the hope that tax revenues can be increased so that the federal government can be more generous with its welfare and entitlement programs. Republicans argue that increased tax rates will increase the tax burden on Americans, which will ultimately hurt both the economy and tax revenues. Democrats have made some serious arguments against Republican plans for tax cuts, but more often than not have attacked those plans as “tax cuts for the rich”, “trickle-down theory”, etc.

Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell has written a superb and informative article addressing these leftist attacks on “trickle-down theory” and the like. The article — which everyone should read — explains that leftists are attacking straw men when they make such arguments since no one has ever actually advocated a “trickle-down theory” or anything like it. As Dr. Sowell explains this fallacious thinking:

What is…inconsistent [about such arguments] is attributing [leftists'] own assumptions to those who are arguing on the basis of entirely different assumptions. Challenging those other assumptions, or the conclusions which derive from them, on either analytical or empirical grounds would be legitimate, but simply attributing to them arguments that they never made is not.

Dr. Sowell demonstrates that not only has no conservative or Republican has ever argued for a “trickle-down theory” or the like, but that Democrats like Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy and even economists like John Maynard Keynes have argued for tax rate cuts in order to improve the economy and increase tax revenues.

Avoiding the leftist assumptions and inflammatory word choices, Dr. Sowell offers the following succinct explanation of the actual theory (emphasis his):

[H]igh tax rates that many people avoid paying do not necessarily bring in as much revenue to the government as lower tax rates that more people are in fact paying, when these lower tax rates make it safe to invest their money where they can get a higher rate of return in the economy than they get from tax-exempt securities.

In other words, lower tax rates encourage people — poor, rich, low income, high income, etc. — to invest their money in the economy rather than in tax-exempt securities, which results in an improved economy and increased tax revenues. Tax revenues increase despite lower tax rates since there is more taxable income overall.

Finally, it’s worth noting — as Dr. Sowell points out in his article — that tax cuts have resulted in increased tax revenues as recently as George W. Bush’s presidency. As much as the left hates the Bush tax cuts, even the New York Times admitted that a

steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.

This is a telling admission since the New York Times is hardly a friendly source for conservatives and Republicans — betraying its already obvious leftist bias, the Times called this increase in tax revenues “surprising” and “unexpected” despite the fact that such an increase in tax revenues was and is entirely expected by conservatives. It’s also noteworthy that the increased tax revenues came mostly from corporations and the wealthy, which are precisely the groups the left keeps telling us they want to “ask to pay a little bit more”.

Dr. Sowell’s article explains all this and more (in layman’s terms, as he is known for) so be sure to read the entire article.

On Homosexuality and Christianity

Homosexuality (and its related issues such as same-sex marriage) as viewed by Christians is often poorly understood by non-Christians. Indeed, Christians themselves do not agree on how to approach and treat these issues. Christianity is generally understood be opposed to homosexuality, although there are schools of thought within Christianity which argue that homosexuality (more specifically, a homosexual act) is morally permissible. This debate between Christians is outside the scope of this piece (and would result in a very long text!) so I will assume here the orthodox Christian view that only sexual intercourse between a married man and his wife is morally permissible, which of course means that homosexual acts are not morally permissible.

Choice or Genetics?

One of  the most common arguments over homosexuality is whether it is a choice or determined genetically. Individuals seeking to diminish the influence of homosexuality in society and/or who believe that homosexuality is immoral/sinful (such as many Christians) often argue that homosexuals choose a homosexual lifestyle. On the other hand, those who celebrate open homosexuality and/or those who are homosexuals themselves often argue that homosexuality is genetic and thus cannot be chosen. Both arguments have merits. On one hand, it seems unlikely that homosexuals choose to desire a lifestyle that is considered sinful by many religions (especially for homosexuals who subscribe to one of those religions). On the other hand, there exist examples of identical twins where one is heterosexual and the other is homosexual — so the source of sexual preference can’t be completely genetic.

The argument for genetics as the cause of homosexuality is made by those who think homosexual behavior is morally permissible in order  to make the following “born that way” argument:

1. Individuals who sexually desire members of the same sex — homosexuals — are “born that way” (i.e. they did not choose to be attracted to members of the same sex).
2. Anything that cannot be chosen cannot be immoral.
3. Since by (1) sexual desire for members of the same sex cannot be chosen, then by (2) homosexual behavior is not immoral.

The typical response to the “born that way” argument is to attempt to refute (1). However, this argument over (1) is ultimately irrelevant because the key to the Christian refutation of the “born that way” argument is that (2) is false under Christianity.

Desire vs. Action

Desires — including homosexual desires — are not inherently sinful. Desires cannot be controlled nor are we called to somehow eradicate them. Actions, on the other hand, can be sinful and must be controlled. This means that although it is not inherently sinful to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex, it is sinful to participate in homosexual acts. The same principle applies to heterosexuals as well — while sexual desires are not inherently sinful, many sexual actions are. Rape, adultery, fornication, lust*, etc., are all sex acts that both heterosexuals and homosexuals may desire but which are sinful according to Christianity (and some of them are also illegal). Any sex act other than intercourse between a man and woman married to each other is sinful — according to Christianity — yet even a married man or woman retains sexual desires for individuals other than his or her spouse. As an example, consider a married man who encounters a beautiful woman who is not his wife: the fact that he is married does not change the fact that he is sexually attracted to women in general, and marriage does not require him to somehow lose sexual attraction toward all women except his wife. However, he is required to control the actions that he desires (i.e. it is not morally permissible for him to have sex with this other woman, which would be adultery).

The principle that actions rather than desires are sinful applies to non-sexual sins and desires as well. For example, a kleptomaniac is tempted by the desire to steal — even when stealing is not necessary for his survival — but this desire alone is not sinful nor is it illegal. Nonetheless, it is of course sinful (and illegal) if the kleptomaniac acts on his desire. Kleptomaniacs who desire theft, homosexuals who desire fornication, heterosexuals who desire fornication and/or adultery, etc., are tempted by desires for sinful actions, although the particular temptations are different for each person and some temptations are harder to resist for certain individuals than others. What all have in common is a desire to commit sin because to desire sin is to be human. The fact that humans desire to commit sin (and do sin) is part of the central message of Christianity (see, for example, Romans 3:23) and this fact is easy to see in practice — even devout Christians sin! The only way to explain why devout Christians still commit sin — despite knowing that they are sinning before, while, and after they commit a sin — is to realize that the desire to commit sin is an inescapable part of human nature. Despite this constant desire to sin, it is not the desire itself but the action of choosing to succumb to temptation that is sinful. The problem with premise (2) of the “born that way” argument is that it confuses a choice to desire something with a choice to commit an act. Under Christianity, all humans have a sinful nature that we are slaves to (so that we cannot “choose” to not desire sinful things). However, if (2) is true then any act one desires is morally permissible and sin does not exist! This is clearly not consistent with Christianity so neither is (2) consistent with Christianity, and the “born that way” argument does not apply to Christianity (nor, for that matter, in general — the law would not consider a kleptomaniac guilty of theft unless he actually commits an act of theft).

Coming back to the specific issue of homosexuality, one might predictably object that the Christian doctrine on sex (which says that sexual intercourse is only morally permissible between a married man and his wife) effectively forces homosexuals to remain totally abstinent while heterosexuals are at least morally permitted to have sex within marriage. However, homosexuals are not the only individuals called to remain totally abstinent. Any unmarried person — whether homosexual or heterosexual — is required by Christian teaching to remain abstinent. If that unmarried person does not find a suitable mate to marry, then that person is also effectively called to remain totally abstinent for life. Also, homosexual desires are not the only sexual desires which always result in sin when acted upon — for example, a pedophile acting on his sexual desires for children is always behaving sinfully as well as illegally (this is not to equate pedophilia with homosexuality, of course, since homosexual acts between consenting adults are not instances of rape nor are they illegal as acts of pedophilia are).

The Christian Message About Homosexuality

Admittedly, the Christian view that homosexual acts are immoral/sinful often suffers from poor messaging. Many Christians attack the wrong premise of  the “born that way” argument — (1) instead of (2) — and are unnecessarily condemnatory (with groups like the repulsive and truly hateful Westboro Baptist “Church” being an extreme example, complete with all sorts of other bad theology). This messaging, which often claims that homosexuals are going to hell simply because of their desires, is incorrect and counter-productive (what homosexual would embrace a faith that condemns himself to hell automatically?). Such a message is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy since it gives homosexuals (and even heterosexuals) a powerful emotional reason to reject Christianity, yet under Christianity everyone must accept that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.

On the other hand, orthodox Christianity does teach that homosexual acts are sinful and so Christians must not perpetuate the belief that homosexual acts are morally permissible. While it is sinful to commit homosexual acts, it is even more harmful for a homosexual to believe that homosexual acts are morally permissible — God forgives sinful acts but how can a person ask God for forgiveness of his sins if he doesn’t even believe he has sinned in the first place?

Christians must therefore be careful in explaining the message that homosexual acts are sinful. We must acknowledge that such acts are sinful but we cannot forget to also proclaim the Good News: that while we have all sinned and are unworthy of salvation by our merits, we are saved by our faith in Christ (Romans 3:21-26). All human beings must struggle to avoid acting out on our sexual desires in sinful ways — a homosexual act is merely one of many sexual sins, which include adultery, fornication, lust, etc., and are just as difficult for heterosexuals to avoid. If Christians can explain that homosexual behaviors are sinful yet also approach homosexuals with the humility that we too struggle (and often fail) to avoid sexual sin, hopefully we can help turn others (especially non-Christians and homosexuals) to Christianity. If nothing else, hopefully such a message can avoid the knee-jerk “Christians are homophobes” response and generate a more fruitful discussion about Christianity and homosexuality.

—————————————————————————————————————————

* Note that lust is not the same as sexual desire but, according to Christ himself, is morally equivalent to adultery.

Milton Friedman on Health Care

The other day I came across a superb article by economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman on how to cure health care (H/T Swiss Economist who originally linked to the article, and who posted a comment about it on Enjoyment and Contemplation). The article is somewhat long but definitely worth reading, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Neglect and Unaffordable Care Act (known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Newspeak, or as “Obamacare”). The government naturally ignored all of Friedman’s advice in the Patient Neglect and Unaffordable Care Act, and Friedman hints at why the government’s health care reform will fail (despite the fact that Friedman died even before “Obamacare” was written).

First, Friedman explains why health insurance — unlike many other forms of insurance — is bought through one’s employer:

We have become so accustomed to employer-provided medical care that we regard it as part of the natural order. Yet it is thoroughly illogical. Why single out medical care? Food is more essential to life than medical care. Why not exempt the cost of food from taxes if provided by the employer? Why not return to the much-reviled company store when workers were in effect paid in kind rather than in cash?

The revival of the company store for medicine has less to do with logic than pure chance. It is a wonderful example of how one bad government policy leads to another. During World War II, the government financed much wartime spending by printing money while, at the same time, imposing wage and price controls. The resulting repressed inflation produced shortages of many goods and services, including labor. Firms competing to acquire labor at government-controlled wages started to offer medical care as a fringe benefit. That benefit proved particularly attractive to workers and spread rapidly.

Initially, employers did not report the value of the fringe benefit to the Internal Revenue Service as part of their workers’ wages. It took some time before the IRS realized what was going on. When it did, it issued regulations requiring employers to include the value of medical care as part of reported employees’ wages. By this time, workers had become accustomed to the tax exemption of that particular fringe benefit and made a big fuss. Congress responded by legislating that medical care provided by employers should be tax-exempt.

I had always wondered why health insurance was bought through one’s employer. It is indeed “thoroughly illogical”. Next, Friedman explains that the meaning of insurance has undergone a drastic change in the context of health insurance:

Employer financing of medical care has caused the term insurance to acquire a rather different meaning in medicine than in most other contexts. We generally rely on insurance to protect us against events that are highly unlikely to occur but that involve large losses if they do occur—major catastrophes, not minor, regularly recurring expenses. We insure our houses against loss from fire, not against the cost of having to cut the lawn. We insure our cars against liability to others or major damage, not against having to pay for gasoline. Yet in medicine, it has become common to rely on insurance to pay for regular medical examinations and often for prescriptions.

This is exactly what I was explaining in my argument against health insurance mandates. The problem with using insurance to cover regular medical expenses like examinations is that a third party (the insurance company or government) needlessly interferes with normal economic transactions between caregiver and patient, and the patient has no incentive to pay attention to costs since the insurance company is paying for the care (i.e. the costs are hidden from the patient). As Friedman puts it:

Third-party payment has required the bureaucratization of medical care and, in the process, has changed the character of the relation between physicians (or other caregivers) and patients. A medical transaction is not simply between a caregiver and a patient; it has to be approved as “covered” by a bureaucrat and the appropriate payment authorized. The patient—the recipient of the medical care—has little or no incentive to be concerned about the cost since it’s somebody else’s money. The caregiver has become, in effect, an employee of the insurance company or, in the case of Medicare and Medicaid, of the government. The patient is no longer the one, and the only one, the caregiver has to serve. An inescapable result is that the interest of the patient is often in direct conflict with the interest of the caregiver’s ultimate employer. That has been manifest in public dissatisfaction with the increasingly impersonal character of medical care.

This system results in high costs for health care due to the fact that

nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own.

This principle is the ultimate basis for conservative arguments against such heavy government involvement as created and perpetuated in the most recent health care reform — government cannot and does not spend money as wisely or frugally on health care as patients themselves, who are also most familiar with their health care needs.

Friedman gives a solution to reducing the high cost of health care:

A cure requires reversing course, reprivatizing medical care by eliminating most third-party payment, and restoring the role of insurance to providing protection against major medical catastrophes.

The ideal way to do that would be to reverse past actions: repeal the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care; terminate Medicare and Medicaid; deregulate most insurance; and restrict the role of the government, preferably state and local rather than federal, to financing care for the hard cases. However, the vested interests that have grown up around the existing system, and the tyranny of the status quo, clearly make that solution not feasible politically.

Note that Friedman’s solution does call for some government involvement, particularly for the “hard cases” (individuals with pre-existing conditions, the poor, etc.). The conservative approach to health care does not mean the poor and unhealthy must be neglected or that government has no role in health care — despite what many leftists think and would have you believe — but it does limit the government to its proper role.

A politically feasible approach to Friedman’s solution (that actually exists to some degree already) is a medical savings account:

A medical savings account enables individuals to deposit tax-free funds in an account usable only for medical expense, provided they have a high-deductible insurance policy that limits the maximum out-of-pocket expense…it eliminates third-party payment except for major medical expenses and is thus a movement very much in the right direction. By extending tax exemption to all medical expenses whether paid by the employer or not, it eliminates the present bias in favor of employer-provided medical care.

This solution not only restores the true meaning of health insurance as insurance against major, unexpected, and catastrophic health expenses, but it weakens the current model of employer-based health insurance. With employers paying less for high deductible health insurance plans than for low deductible plans, employees can receive more of their compensation in the form of wages rather than health insurance. Cash is more flexible than insurance, so employees can choose to either spend their extra wages on health care (their out-of-pocket expenses would be higher) or on whatever else they want to spend it on (for example, if they are healthy and don’t need much health care).

Given the clear benefits of medical savings accounts, can you guess what the Patient Neglect and Unaffordable Care Act does? Although the law does allow such accounts, it restricts what they can be used to purchase (non-prescription medications cannot be paid for with funds from such accounts) and limits the amount of tax-free contributions that can be made to the accounts.

For completeness, Friedman does briefly mention the leftist approach to health care and its benefits and drawbacks:

In terms of holding down cost, one-payer directly administered government systems, such as exist in Canada and Great Britain, have a real advantage over our mixed system. As the direct purchaser of all or nearly all medical services, they are in a monopoly position in hiring physicians and can hold down their remuneration, so that physicians earn much less in those countries than in the United States. In addition, they can ration care more directly—at the cost of long waiting lists and much dissatisfaction.

The reason why this government approach to health care leads to rationing and long wait times is, of course, explained by basic economics:

Legislation cannot repeal the nonlegislated law of demand and supply: the lower the price, the greater the quantity demanded; at a zero price, the quantity demanded becomes infinite. Some method of rationing must be substituted for price, which invariably means administrative rationing.

With artificially low prices due to insurance mandates (like the “free contraceptives” mandate) demand rises and the low or zero price product is over-utilized. Furthermore, although the government can use its monopoly position to hold down physicians’ compensation, doing so reduces supply in a system of rising demand so that even more rationing is required. There are obvious reasons why monopolies should be avoided, so the leftist desire for a government monopoly (which, unlike a private monopoly, also has the authority of law and armed force to coerce) is “thoroughly illogical”.

Developing a good system of health care is certainly a difficult problem that requires much serious thought and debate, especially when dealing with the “hard cases” like the poor and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions. Both the left and the right have solutions to this problem, although as Milton Friedman has shown the left’s solution has serious logical and practical conflicts with the laws of economics. The conservative approach outlined by Friedman, on the other hand, takes into account the laws of economics and gives patients the power to choose how best to spend their money — on health care as well as other expenses — rather than impose an “individual mandate” tax.

On Motives in Politics

A common political tactic is to attack a political opponent’s motives instead of his policies. This is a fantastically effective tactic since it puts one’s political opponents on the defensive and forces them to explain their motives rather than the merits of the policies they support. Yet from a logical perspective it is an extremely weak argument for the attacker’s political position since it is an “appeal to motive” ad hominem logical fallacy (it also suggests further weakness for the attacker’s position, since one would expect the attacker to use a logical argument instead if such a logical argument was persuasive).

A recent example of such an attack is the leftist “war on women” rhetoric in response to anti-abortion legislation (and even conservative positions that oppose things like “free” contraceptives). The fallacious argument goes something like this: conservatives want to limit the availability of abortions and prevent women from obtaining “free” contraceptives because they hate women and want to “punish” them with pregnancy as a means to control and oppress them, and to maintain The Patriarchy™. But the idea that conservatives’ motive for opposing abortions and “free” contraceptives is because they hate women is absurd, and doubly so when the conservative in question is a woman. Conservatives do not hate women — many conservatives are women themselves or care about and love their wives, mothers, sisters, etc. Even if conservatives did hate women, it would be utterly foolish to publicly attack women since women have the same power to vote as men and can seriously reduce a politician’s chance to get elected or re-elected. The actual conservative motive is of course to reduce the number of abortions — which many conservatives consider unjust killing in all but a few rare cases — and to avoid the wasteful, unfair cost of “free” contraceptives (which, in the case of some leftist “free” contraception policies, also violates religious freedom). The fact that these policies affect women is a secondary effect. Moreover, the same policies affect men as well — reduced abortions mean that a father whose child would have been aborted would have to support the child (even if he didn’t want the child), men as well as women pay insurance premiums which cover the costs of “free” contraceptives, etc.

Another leftist appeal to motive that occurs very frequently is the charge that conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage and similar “gay rights” legislation are homophobes and bigots who are motivated solely by their fear, intolerance, and hatred of homosexuals. Rather than engage in meaningful debates on such topics as the appropriate legal definition and purpose of marriage, leftists attempt to shut down any debate by labeling their opponents as bigots whose opinions are illogical and meaningless. Ironically, leftists who do this are themselves acting with bigotry since a bigot is

a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion

By refusing to listen to conservative arguments against same-sex marriage (and similar policies) and instead calling their opponents homophobes and bigots, leftists display an intolerance to conservative opinion.

Yet another example of the appeal to motive fallacy is the occasional but persistent leftist claim that certain statements made by conservatives are really “code” or contain “unspoken words” expressing racism, sexism, etc. When Representative Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” and interrupted a speech to Congress by Barack Obama, Maureen Dowd claimed that her apparently superhuman hearing allowed her to hear Wilson shout “You lie, boy!” — an apparently racist attempt by Wilson to assert his superiority over Obama since Wilson could not accept a (half) black man as U.S. President. By his own actions Wilson had already embarrassed himself enough, but Dowd had to invent code words to advance the leftist narrative that conservatives don’t like Barack Obama only because we’re allegedly racist and he’s (half) black (this narrative is itself a case of leftists impugning conservatives’ motives rather than addressing our policy arguments). Dowd is certainly not the only leftist claiming to have cracked conservatives’ “racist” and “sexist” code book: Andrea Mitchell and Craig Melvin claimed that Newt Gingrich was using “dog whistle” rhetoric during his 2012 presidential campaign in South Carolina to appeal to South Carolinian racists (wait…if Andrea Mitchell claims to be able to hear whistles that only dogs can hear, and she’s female…is she telling us something in code?). There are numerous examples of similar leftist accusations, but The Young Turks went the furthest and published an entire “guide to conservative code words” which is filled with fallacious appeals to motive.

Leftist appeals to motive occur in nearly every political debate: voter ID laws (claimed to really be “voter suppression” laws that prevent the poor and minorities from voting, despite video proof that without voter ID requirements it is possible to defraud even prominent leftists of their voting rights), conservative budget proposals to reduce spending on entitlement programs (claimed to hurt seniors, the poor, etc.)*, tax rates (conservatives’ preference for low tax rates is claimed to be due to greed and desire to coddle the rich), etc. In fairness, leftists are not the only ones who engage in appeals to motive. Conservatives also fallaciously appeal to motive when discussing a variety of policy debates: leftists want to tax the rich because they “hate” them, the poor who support leftists for their social programs are motivated by “laziness” and “greed” for someone else’s money, etc. However, it is typically leftists who appeal to motives (and leftists often guess conservatives’ motives incorrectly). The reason for this can be understood from Charles Krauthammer’s “law” that “conservatives think liberals are stupid [and] liberals think conservatives are evil.” It makes little sense for conservatives to appeal to leftists’ motives since we tend to think that leftists mean well but are misguided fools. On the other hand, leftists tend to think that conservatives are motivated by evil and/or selfishness, so it is easy to attack this perceived motive in order to attack the conservative position (who wants to enact a policy supported by evil people?).

Unfortunately, so much time is wasted speculating on others’ motives, and a person whose motive is attacked often feels compelled to waste time defending his motives. This time would be better spent engaging in more civil debates that argued facts, theories, and statistics. By recognizing appeals to motive and pointing out that such arguments are fallacies the time needed to engage in civil and meaningful debate is not lost.

—————————————————————————————————————————

* Notice how leftists never claim that cutting defense spending hurts the men and women in the military by depriving them of more and better weapons, increased pay, etc. This is because leftists actually do like to cut defense spending.

On Trayvon Martin, Media Bias, and Self Defense

There’s so much hypocrisy in the media narrative of the Trayvon Martin incident that it makes one’s head spin. The media narrative is also driving a similarly hypocritical public response. The media narrative of the incident is basically: an innocent, unarmed Florida teenager named Trayvon Martin was shot by a half-white half-Hispanic (emphasis white) neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman (who is probably a racist), and the police aren’t charging Zimmerman with a crime because of Florida’s so-called “stand your ground” law that allows an individual to use deadly force in self-defense rather than retreat from an attacker. The incident certainly looks suspicious for Zimmerman (though he does have possible exculpatory evidence), but both the media framing of it and the leftist public’s response to it have some serious flaws.

The reason the Trayvon Martin incident has gotten such leftist media attention is twofold: it is a case of alleged racism and white-on-black crime (even though the alleged perpetrator is half white and half Hispanic), and it can be used to attack self defense laws like Florida’s “stand your ground” law which allow the use of deadly force such as from a gun (and thus it can also be used to promote stricter gun control). To the first point, the media is running stories about things like black men warning their sons about public perception of black men as criminals and about pervasive white-on-black crime, despite the fact that such crime is relatively rare compared to black-on-white crime, and especially relatively rare compared to black-on-black crime. That the public often perceives black men as criminals is certainly tragic, but not entirely unreasonable or inherently racist (the author who warned his son about being black at least admits this) given actual crime statistics. To the second point, the leftist media hates guns and doesn’t understand them (they usually can’t even identify them) so they will run any story that could possibly convince the public to increase gun control or remove laws that allow the use of guns (like Florida’s “stand your ground” law).

The actual M-16 and AK-47 are in the top row and labeled in reverse

The problem with the media’s portrayal of Florida’s “stand your ground” law as preventing Florida police from arresting Zimmerman is that the “stand your ground” law is not much different than any basic self-defense law. The relevant text of the law is

(1)  A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if

…

(2) The presumption set forth in subsection (1) does not apply if:

…

(c)  The person who uses defensive force is engaged in an unlawful activity or is using the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle to further an unlawful activity

…

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

The issue in the Trayvon Martin incident is whether Zimmerman acted in self-defense or not. If Zimmerman did not act in self-defense then by (2) (c) the “stand your ground” law does not even apply (nor would any self-defense law, of course) since Zimmerman would in that case have been engaged in unlawful activity. If Zimmerman did act in self-defense then the only difference between Florida’s “stand your ground” law and a “duty to retreat” self-defense law is that under Florida law Zimmerman’s legal defense would not have to prove that Zimmerman was unable to retreat. This is a fine distinction as it is, and if Zimmerman’s claim that Martin was slamming his head against the sidewalk is true then Zimmerman may not have been able to retreat (and thus would have been justified in shooting Martin even under a “duty to retreat” self-defense law). On the other hand, one can argue that self-defense is not applicable — either under “stand your ground” or “duty to retreat” — since Zimmerman apparently pursued and confronted Martin. Despite these legal arguments, the media are assuming that Florida’s “stand your ground” law would make any difference in the incident compared to a “duty to retreat” law. We the public just don’t have enough information to know whether the “stand your ground” law is even applicable, much less if it would make any difference.

Another hypocrisy in the leftist media narrative and many leftists’ public response is the fact that the same leftists who constantly admonish everyone not to “judge” people have rushed to judgment of Zimmerman. Not only do they judge him as a murderer even though he hasn’t been arrested, but they also judge him as a racist based on the fact that Martin was black and Zimmerman is (half) white. Once again, Irreverend Al Sharpton is accusing the local authorities of racism if they don’t charge Zimmerman (which, after the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, probably means that the police really don’t have enough evidence to arrest Zimmerman). Instead of pre-judging that Zimmerman and the police are all racists and that Zimmerman murdered Martin, we must all wait and allow the legal system to judge whether or not a crime was committed. That’s what it’s for.

In some extreme cases the public response has been particularly and obviously hypocritical. While Zimmerman has been accused of having acted like a vigilante during his encounter with Martin, some members of the public have reacted to the incident with their own vigilantism: fliers labeling Zimmerman as “Wanted Dead or Alive” have been created and circulated, and the New Black Panther Party has posted a $10,000 bounty for the capture of Zimmerman (H/T StuphBlog). It is disturbing that these anti-Zimmerman vigilantes fail to see such blatant hypocrisy in their actions (fortunately, the Martin family attorney seems to see it).

No matter how the investigation of this incident turns out, it is ultimately a tragedy. As a result of it Trayvon Martin has lost his life and George Zimmerman’s life will be forever tainted by it even if he is not held criminally responsible. One can only hope that the legal system brings to light the truth. If George Zimmerman really committed murder then hopefully he will be charged and convicted of the crime, and if not then hopefully he will either not be charged or will be acquitted at trial. Either way, we would do well to reserve judgment and not attempt to use an isolated incident for political gain.