Saturday, July 30, 2011

omniduction breakdown

Apologies for flashing some political stripes, but here goes... Recently I read an angry online comment about the "threat of raising taxes by gradually reducing the mortgage interest deduction". 1) On one hand, the comment's writer believes in limited government that doesn't intervene in private markets. 2) On the other, the comment's writer believes that all rises in the effective tax rate are by definition terrible. So removing a tax cut, which is evil according to #2, would reduce government intervention in the housing market, which is good according to #1.

The attempt to derive an opinion by omniduction has produced a "SYSTEM ERROR". Perhaps policies in the real world have trade-offs and case-by-case factors to consider, and individual policies can't be attacked in isolation from the rest?

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