"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Monday, July 02, 2012

Tax or No?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

The sublime verse of Shakespeare comes as scant but welcome compensation to all of us who will endure the tedious semantical debate over whether Obamacare's individual mandate is actually a tax or not everyday until November 6th.

Whether it is or it isn't, Juliet's assertion is apposite here: By whatever name you want to call it (a "tax", "penalty", or "fee"), the fundamental issue is that the individual mandate -- and Obamacare, in general -- constitutes an additional expense on both individual Americans and businesses.

The contest over whether it is a "tax" or not is simply whether this fact is enveloped in a fatty layer of euphemism or not.