Offer to my admirable vegetarian friends

I have several vegetarian friends (and even two vegan friends). Though I am an omnivore, I would like to say just how impressed I am with their will and dedication. I imagine it is not easy, in a society where eating animals is central to most meals and where eating is an important part of culture, to abstain from eating meat. Be that as it may, there are several reasons to be vegetarian. Here are a few of those reasons.

The Environment
Animal grazing destroys natural habitats, riparian areas and emits large amounts of greenhouse gasses. It is a wonder to me that with so many negative externalities, the government (in an attempt to save jobs) subsidizes the meat industry with underpriced grazing access to federal lands and import limits on meat exporting nations. Instead, there should be a higher tax imposed on meat (in particular beef) to price in the whole cost of meat consumption.

Health
I’m no nutritionist but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a health expert suggest that we should eat more hormone injected red meat.

Cost
Eating meat is expensive. Thanks to my parents, I have been indoctrinated with a from-the-farm Idaho Mormon passion for frugality. While meat tastes great and can make one satisfying meal, it can also double the cost. Too rich for my blood (who says that?).

Animal Cruelty
The way the meat industry raises and slaughters the animals we eat can be less than humane at best. Nobody likes to see a living being suffer.

Whatever your reason for being vegetarian, I believe it is a noble one. That being said I would like to offer a standing invitation. If ever any of you vegetarians have an unquenchable hunger for meat and need moral support to bring yourself to temporarily lapse on your animal friendly commitment, I stand at the ready. We could go out for rodízio or I could fry up some steaks on my grill. If you want your indulgence to remain a secret, I won’t tell anyone—not your spouse, not even my wife.

Your judgment free pork chop awaits.

-Andrew

Recipe for Idiocy

As many of you have noticed I’ve been on a taxation kick recently. A few days ago, to bring my temporary obsession with taxation to an end I decided to write one more taxation blog—one that would solve the fiscal budgetary crisis, rising health care costs and the American obesity problem all at once. The title of this blog was “Fat Tax—Solving the Health Care Problem One Pound at a Time”. Upon completion, I forwarded the draft to Gwen to look over and post. She rightfully informed me that despite my minimal effort to keep it tasteful, the blog was outrageously offensive. She told me I could post it when I got home if I still wanted to. When I got home I still wanted to post the blog but realized that my sarcastic piece of satire could possibly be misinterpreted. Plus it was kind of mean. I then decided to shift my blogging attention away from taxation (and economics in general) to a less polarizing topic—recipe websites.

If you or your spouse is anything like my wife, no meal can be prepared without extensively researching several cookbook websites and blogs. Online recipes are a prime example of how technology has allowed us to collaborate and connect with a large number of people for the betterment of life (more specifically in this case, our meals). This, like the democratization of technology in general, has some unavoidable and interesting side effects. One such side effect, which I would like to comment on today, is the ridiculously irrelevant comments posted on some of these sites.

Most of these sites and blogs allow the general viewers to post comments on the recipes posted. This can be very beneficial. A small adjustment stumbled upon by an end user, when shared with the greater community, can increase the utility of everyone. This is an example of how collaborative innovation can be a magnificent method of creation. The down side of this technological democratization is that for every one thoughtful commenter and beneficial comment there are x number of dense commenters and ridiculous comments (where x>1).

Here are a few “has nothing to do with the recipe” comments I found online (or rather I made up, but they probably exist):

Woman, age 42 from Dallas writes:

“Thanks for the tuna casserole recipe. My husband doesn’t like tuna or casserole but I decided to make this anyways. He works really long days selling stuff he stole on ebay and generally prefers to eat frozen corndogs dipped in a strange sauce of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and butter. One day we ran out of ketchup so he sent me to buy some. I ran into an old friend of mine who also reads your blog. I don’t think she’s tried your tuna casserole recipe yet.”

Justin a bachelor age 33 from Georgia writes:

Title: beter by gold
“I made these here smoothies last nite. Last nite their was a meaten about the health care barak hoo-in-sane obama is gonna shuv down our throts. He is such a moran. It’s communism! He is gonna take away our wrights. I herd he is also gonna raise gas prices and send our jobs to Africa, like in china.”

There are also the “change the recipe until it is no longer even remotely the same” comments. Here are a few examples:

Tara, age 28 from Philadelphia comments on a chicken noodle soup recipe:

“This was absolutely disgusting! It didn’t taste at all like the chicken noodle soup I remember my grandmother making. I did exactly what the instructions said to except I didn’t have any salt so I just added a little extra pepper to compensate. I also was out of carrots and onions so I put in a little garlic for flavor. I accidentally doubled the amount of water so I let it boil for 10 extra minutes so that it would evaporate out. My fiancé and I only ate a few bites and then we had to throw the rest away. Do not make!”

John, age 23 from Oregon comments on a vegetarian taco recipe:

“These were the best tacos I have ever had! Thanks for the recipe. I did make a few adjustments that I think improved it just a bit. For example, instead of using black beans I used re fried beans. Instead of 1 cup yellow onions I used ½ cup red onions. Instead of using taco seasoning I used spaghetti sauce. I quadrupled the amount of cheese and added a package of bacon. Instead of frying the ingredients and putting them on tacos, I decided to bake them on a pizza crust. They turned out awesome."

The list of examples could go on for the length of several encyclopedia sets. Feel free to post a comment of your favorite ridiculous recipe comments.


-Andrew

I really love the color

yellow.


--Gwen

Comments fix

An avid blog follower informed me recently that he was not able to post comments on the blog. I investigated the issue and found that indeed posting comments was not working. This discovery answered the question that has been bothering me recently--"why are the estimated thousands (seasonally adjusted) of my blog followers not posting on my blog?" I fixed the glitch and now you all should be able to flood the boards with your praise.

-Andrew

A Republican saying increase taxes??

Wow two posts in just two days.

I was reading some past posts from my favorite blog (by Greg Mankiw) and I came accross this article

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/pigou-club-manifesto.html

I generally don't have a good taste in my mouth for anything with "manifesto" in the title (Communist manifesto... anyone?) but after reading this article I decided to let go of my bias against manifestos and join the pigou club.

I fully support higher gasoline taxes for the reasons Mankiw listed in this manifesto. The article got me thinking about how our whole tax system should generally be based on consumption taxes. Here are a few reasons I believe this:

1) Consumption taxes imposed on things that aren't good for individuals can be highly beneficial. Generally called "Sin Taxes" taxes on things like cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana (if it were legalized) and I would even add fast food, candy, soda etc. discourage people from consuming things that are generally bad for them and encourage consumption of things that are generally good for them. People who consume the items listed above abundantly generally have worse health and therefore higher health care costs, especially in their later years. This becomes a high cost for the government as health care for the elderly is often paid for partially or entirely by the government. These taxes, therefore, make those responsible for the cost of health care the ones who have to pay for it. This reduces what I believe is a huge inefficiency. In a sort of twisted way a higher gasoline tax would be a type of sin tax in that it discourages you from doing something bad (driving) and encourages you to do something good (walking--at least to the T).

2) Immigration woes. One of the biggest anti-immigration arguments is that illegal immigrants fill our prisons, schools, and hospitals draining our money from our system. This may be a valid argument under the current tax system that we have in place, but if we shifted towards a more consumption based tax system, illegal immigrants who work for wages under the table (and avoid income tax) still pay taxes like the rest of us because they are still consuming. They, like the rest of us, would then be paying into the system which they, like the rest of us, take out of. At the very least it might silence the extreme right wing, gun toting, confederate flag wielding nut jobs from vomiting the same old (get those damn--insert ethnic minority here--out of our country) rhetoric.

3) Increases the incentives for savings. Like briefly mentioned in the manifesto, a more consumption based tax system encourages people to save, and with the savings rate recently near 0% in the US, that seems to be a pretty important thing. When I go to Burger King I have really only two options: Buy the Jr. Whopper for 99 cents or don't and save that 99 cents (I always eat off the dollar menu--due to my extreme frugality). If the whopper jr. were $1.30 I would be less inclined to buy it and more inclined to save the money. Our current tax system (largely based on income, payroll and corporate tax) discourages saving and encourages spending.


The biggest argument against consumption taxes (especially sin taxes) is that they are more regressive than income tax. While this doesn't necessarily have to be the case, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to shift towards a less progressive tax system in the United States. The US currently has the most progressive income tax system of the OECD nations, (http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/24944.html), and recently the top 1% of taxpayers began paying more income tax than the bottom 95% of tax payers combined. (granted income distribution is a key component of this figure--it's still surprising--see link above)

In short-tax negative externalities? Yes! Shift from an income tax system to a consumption tax system? Yes!

-Andrew