Friday, May 1, 2015

Tsai Ing-wen gets it wrong about moms and childcare

It was disappointing to read Tsai Ing-wen's uninformed and uninspiring policy talk reported in the Taipei Times today.

Is it not better for loved ones (the elderly and children) to be cared for by those who love them: their family members? Tsai Ing-wen is not a mom. But she should realize something: it is much better for the country if the moms are not forced to work but have a choice whether they wish to stay home to raise their own children. But many families are strapped for cash because of Ma Ying-jeou's pro-China and pro-corrupt developer policies that have driven up real estate prices and at the same time driven jobs and capital investment to China.

Spending tax money to provide more day care for children is not the answer, but rather further perpetuates the problem by bloating the government with more entitlements that will put the squeeze on tax payers. Already the national healthcare system is going bankrupt so that the government is finding more ways to tax citizens, hidden of course by taxing companies or those who have passive income. But to tax one is ultimately to tax all. Costs get passed down. Tax a company more and it reduces the size of its workforce, or the level of pay. Or it increases the cost of the product. The buyer ends up paying the tax indirectly but not knowing about it. Disproportionately tax a writer who gets passive royalties as income so that she has to pay a higher level for national health care, and she may just decide the massive hours she puts into a book are not worth it and not write another book. Who loses? To get money such a writer will be forced into a regular job where the employer gets hit with the hidden cost. Her creative output will be suppressed. The net sum of intellectual property in Taiwan will go down.

Tsai Ing-wen should be asking how she might help women to be able to stay home with their children by setting policies that will make more higher income jobs available to their husbands. She should be seeking to reduce the size of government and therefore the tax burden. Further she should seek to eliminate the hemorrhaging of jobs and money flowing to China. She should further embrace efficient fossil fuel burning plants rather than worry about carbon footprints of supposed anthropogenic global warming. Yes, we are too geologically unstable for nuclear power, but the earth can afford greater emissions of CO2. In fact, it will like it. Plants thrive on higher CO2 levels and grow faster. Taiwan needs to upgrade fossil-fuel burning plants to be more high tech, therefore more efficient burners, therefore emitting less of anything except CO2.

These things would help rather than more entitlement spending. Yes, please stay away from KMT fascist cronies and China's commies, but also please do not import failed policies from Europe's proggies.


Proggies: progressivists = socialist, statists, or soft communists/fascists who think the government should have its hand on everything as if it were a goddess to be worshipped.