@Krellin:

Work is a moral requirement when being lazy causes society to suffer. However, to a greater and greater degree, people’s work just is not required. Cashiers are replaced by automated scanners, Applebee’s wait staff is being replaced with touch screens at the tables, new inferential techniques and CPU horsepower are poised to replace a lot of “knowledge work” with computers...

...And that is all *fantastic*. Everything gets cheaper and better.

The drawback is, that makes a lot of people’s talents, even at the greatest level of effort they can muster, completely irrelevant. It’s immoral to allow people to starve when they simply *can’t* contribute. And to create an system of make-work or busy-work just to keep people in order is a prison chain-gang system. I support for-profit capitalism, and I also support a basic income for everyone, regardless of contribution. More and more people will be falling into the unable-to-contribute category.

@Putin33:

“Monopoly is just fine if operated according to public interest principles.”

Monopolies act in the interest of the person or people controlling the monopoly. Any institution or business acts in the interest of the person or people that control it. Separately from that, some institutions are operated competently, some are not. I’d rather have private enterprises competing with some overall regulation to prevent abuses, than to put all the eggs in one monopoly basket under the control of someone who operates in their own interest at some random level of competence. To imagine competent, benevolent monopoly administration, you’d have to be thinking about a different species than homo sapiens. Shit, Jérôme Cahuzac, the guy in France who was meant to run the tax system for the Socialist government was a tax cheat himself.

"Damian - while I applaud your thrift, you simply cannot get by in a major US city on that income. I live ~2-3 miles outside of downtown DC and split an apartment with two others and it still costs $800 a month - which alone would eat straight through most of that income level. The only grocery store within a half hours walk is a f***ing Whole Foods, so I do all my shopping on the weekends when I have 3 hours of my day to go to a Shoppers. Public transportation quickly racks up as well. I don't use it often since I'm a student, but if I were working I'd easily pay $20 a week on transportation. That's about $11,000 just there in transportation and shelter. I understand DC is a higher priced city, but its more or less the same story in Boston, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, etc. You need at least $30,000 to survive comfortably."
DC is incredibly expensive to live in for sure. Of course minimum wage is also 2$ an hour more there. Which is approximately another 4000$ dollars a year. Still a good 10000$ below your estimated living costs. As I was saying though. I'm not even being particularly thrifty. I buy the vast majority of my food from the farmers market. Which is locally grown organic produce. It would be akin to you shopping at whole foods for the vast majority of your groceries. Not to mention that food is generally much more expensive in Canada anyway. 10$ a pound is not an abnormal price for chicken breast, in the grocery store, and it gets even higher when you buy free range. Ideally you would find an apartment that was close enough to work that you could walk or bike to work to cut down transit costs. The way I see it. Even if you're stuck with 11000$ of transportation and shelter costs. Groceries at 250$ a month is another 3000$ and phone and internet at 60$ a month, leaving 4280$ of a DC minimum wage untouched and usable for health spending, saving and the occasional night out with friends. It wouldn't be ideal but it certainly is doable. Though it certainly emphasizes why leaving the city for a less expensive location might be a better idea.

Is the minimum wage enough to support a family? Probably not. If you had two parents, each bringing in a minimum wage for a combined 38000$ in DC. 30000$ at federal minimum I suspect they could raise children. Though obviously raising children with both parents working is far from ideal.

I would probably concede that raising a family, on minimum wage in the large city is impractical. They family would have to move to the suburbs or to a smaller cheaper city. Or find better employment.

"I’d rather have private enterprises competing with some overall regulation to prevent abuses"

If only anybody could point to where competition supposedly prevented abuses more than have significantly regulated public utility monopolies has prevented abuses.

Somebody please explain why deregulation has resulted in worse service and more price gouging than before deregulation.

The mythic cure-all of competition is simply that, a myth. It hasn't been proven correct anywhere where it has been tried.

I'm not proposing competition as a cure-all, I'm proposing it as a less bad alternative to monopoly. It's less of an all-or-nothing gamble on human nature.

Nor did I propose that competition prevents abuse... I suggested regulation over the competing parties to prevent abuse.

Here's the curious thing about applying principles to practice: nothing's ever what you expected. Econ 101, which is probably the course you want to take to learn about free markets, even says this. The presumption that markets are fantastic is based on a number of assumptions or mathematical models. Take the idea of "perfect competition", for instance. In order to achieve this, you need (1) perfect information between buyers and sellers; (2) many small buyers who individually do not affect market prices; (3) many small sellers who individually do not affect market prices; (4) easy entry to market.

The thing is, this almost never happens in reality. I actually can't think of a single example of a market that matches this description. The closest thing that I can think of is the "Ribfest" that comes to town every few months. There are several sellers of ribs and related food, many buyers, and it seems that none of them has a stranglehold on the price. But I'm not entirely sure how high the barriers to entry are, and there's a little bit of information asymmetry. The sauce is pretty consistent across sellers, but there's usually one with really good sauce.

But outside of Ribfest, you're going to have more information asymmetry, you're going to have buyers who can affect market prices, you're going to have sellers who affect market prices, and you're going to have barriers to entry. These are situations in which the government needs to intervene and make the market more free. As an example, take the wireless spectrum in Canada (where I live). There are three wireless giants (there was hope that Verizon would come in, but they didn't) and a lot of smaller companies. Each has to bid on a part of the wireless spectrum so they can use it for their services, and obviously the highest bid wins. Without the government setting aside certain blocks for the smaller companies, there would be no smaller companies, because they would be forced out by lack of resources to outbid the larger companies, and the "Big Three" would have total market dominance (as opposed to the "almost total" market dominance in the status quo). I wouldn't call that a free market, because transactions within it are dictated by three large firms.

Another instance of applying theory to practice is in political philosophy. To label someone as a "liberal" and then to disparage them because they don't like individual responsibility is to (1) strawman them; (2) ignore the diversity under the liberal umbrella. (The same sort of problem also applies to any other political ideologies). Liberalism is all about the individual and the limited state. But not all liberals are the same. Hobbes, Kant, and Mill all have different philosophies and ideas, but they're all liberals. And you'll even find disagreements among individuals who are not so famous as the three philosophers above. There are debates at party conventions, and there are disagreements between similarly positioned groups. So stating that "liberals" are all the same is an intellectually dishonest argument.

Now, perhaps someone will respond by saying that the liberals in their country are precisely as I have just described. My answer is thus: you have sample bias and incomplete information. Do you know their every whim and motivation? Do you know the origins of their political positions? Are you confident that each and every one of the people you have met can adequately represent the views of an ideology that has some measure of popular support across the country? You face the problem of induction.

Using labels such as "liberal", "conservative", and "socialist" are helpful to get a general sense of the political leanings of any given individual or group, but they're extremely unhelpful (and indeed counterproductive) for anything beyond that. Calling someone a bleeding-heart, spineless liberal or a heartless conservative corporate crony is not a pleasant way to hold a discussion on the merits of redistribution or on the macro-economy. On the whole, I think we should avoid grouping other people together so as to insult them.

Now, as I understand it, the issue at hand is on the role of government redistribution in society. Rather than the binary proposed in the OP, I like to think of this as a spectrum. There are, of course, extremes to the spectrum, but I suspect a great number of people fall somewhere in the middle. Some redistribution is all right for most; after all, people need to eat to live. The great debate lies in precisely where on the spectrum we should be.

I see on one side the idea that redistribution is taking the hard work of the more well-off individuals and giving it to the less well-off, thus encouraging a particular way of life. Implicit in this argument are two ideas: first, that an individual's income is the result of solely that individual's work (i. e. the principle of self-possession); second, that the less well-off are where they are because they have refused to work as hard as the rest of society (in particular, this manifests in the "if I can do it, why can't they?" argument). I reject both of these assumptions.

The principle of self-possession can be used to counter any argument for redistributive taxes because it states that regardless of outcome, what's mine is mine, and no one else has the right to it. (There is a bit more to this, but for the purposes of this post, I shall leave it at that). The problem is that income is not solely the product of an individual's work. Let's say you study really hard and become a successful lawyer. You didn't get there on your own. You were educated by the state (public or private school, because private schools are still regulated and sometimes funded by the government) and protected from harm by the state (police, military, etc.), and you enjoyed a great many other benefits that I will not list here. Your notion of self and the ideas of what you wanted to be were nurtured and developed by you and your community in an environment made possible by the state. So, while you did work hard to get called to the bar, you didn't get there on your own. We compensate for this through an income tax that lets you keep the majority of your income, but takes away some of it to help someone else achieve the same thing you did. The fruits of your labour do not only belong to you--just mostly; there is no such thing as an atomised individual. So you can't just assert that your income is your right to disqualify the possibility of taxation.

"If I can do it, why can't they?" is an appealing argument, but it doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. damian, I'm glad you can make it under your conditions. But I suspect that your particular situation is not applicable to everyone. I'd rather not use your situation to attack, so I'm going to use another example: someone who has worked two jobs to put themselves through university. It is admirable that they have done so, and it is a testament to their individual perseverence and dedication. But they are only in a position to take on two jobs and study at once because of the conditions under which they grew up. Maybe they were lucky enough to get good job experience in high school. Maybe their parents could spend time with them to develop a certain work ethic. There are certain necessary preconditions for that person to be able to take on two jobs and study at once, and these preconditions are not available to everyone. Not everyone is exactly the same, nor should they be.

I'd also like to respond to another idea that springs from the above two ideas. Should life for those less fortunate be a never-ending cycle of work and studiousness? Life is about more than just working a job. Who would any of us be without our leisure activities? I have the pleasure of posting long-winded messages on this forum because I don't have to spend all my time working and studying. There's a reason we call out "TGIF" every week, and there's a reason we look forward to being done for the day. TV is awesome. Playing Diplomacy is fun. Activities outside of the world of work are great. So why should anyone be denied these things simply because they are not rich?

As some of you may have noticed in this post or in a previous post of mine, I have a conception of humanity that differs sharply from others'. I see that when human beings are born, they do not have an idea of "hard work" or an idea of "laziness". They don't have a clue who they are or what they'd like to do. All of these things are developed in an environment that includes other people and a distribution of resources that is random at best. Everything builds upon that circumstance, and not everyone gets the same circumstance. Outcomes are not always good. But no one is worth less or more by virtue of these circumstances or outcomes, and the road to "prosperity", whatever that may be, is not attained by assuming that they are.

Bam.

Bravo, sir.

"The principle of self-possession can be used to counter any argument for redistributive taxes because it states that regardless of outcome, what's mine is mine, and no one else has the right to it. (There is a bit more to this, but for the purposes of this post, I shall leave it at that). The problem is that income is not solely the product of an individual's work. Let's say you study really hard and become a successful lawyer. You didn't get there on your own. You were educated by the state (public or private school, because private schools are still regulated and sometimes funded by the government) and protected from harm by the state (police, military, etc.), and you enjoyed a great many other benefits that I will not list here. Your notion of self and the ideas of what you wanted to be were nurtured and developed by you and your community in an environment made possible by the state. So, while you did work hard to get called to the bar, you didn't get there on your own. We compensate for this through an income tax that lets you keep the majority of your income, but takes away some of it to help someone else achieve the same thing you did. The fruits of your labour do not only belong to you--just mostly; there is no such thing as an atomised individual. So you can't just assert that your income is your right to disqualify the possibility of taxation. "

I don't have very much time today so I'm going to keep my response relatively brief. At present we live in a society were as you say, a great number of services are provided by the state which help shape our lives. In return for these services as you say taxation is not an unreasonable proposition. However if these services were not government run, or they were provided on a service fee basis, than this argument for taxation is invalid because you have already paid for the services at the time of delivery. I wouldn't be opposed to a two tiered system of services, where you could choose to either pay for the service upfront, or pay through the service (such as education) after the fact through wage garnishing until you've both paid for the service you received. A similar system could be applied with roads, either you could pay a monthly fee or a number of tolls to the road company or government to use their roads, of you could pay after the fact in an infrastructure tax. The problem I have with our current system of taxation is that the government takes a lump sum to invest however it chooses, instead of allowing me to decide which services I need, the advantage of a system in which you pay fees, or taxes that go to very specific government programs/ or to private actors would be that citizens could "vote" with their wallet against government programs that they dislike and only pay for the services they consider beneficial. Allowing greater input from the populace on non-election years.

I have more to say, but I'm going to jump onto the next section for the sake of my rapidly dwindling time.

""If I can do it, why can't they?" is an appealing argument, but it doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. damian, I'm glad you can make it under your conditions. But I suspect that your particular situation is not applicable to everyone. I'd rather not use your situation to attack, so I'm going to use another example: someone who has worked two jobs to put themselves through university. It is admirable that they have done so, and it is a testament to their individual perseverence and dedication. But they are only in a position to take on two jobs and study at once because of the conditions under which they grew up. Maybe they were lucky enough to get good job experience in high school. Maybe their parents could spend time with them to develop a certain work ethic. There are certain necessary preconditions for that person to be able to take on two jobs and study at once, and these preconditions are not available to everyone. Not everyone is exactly the same, nor should they be. "
I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone is the same. What I am suggesting however is that the minimum wage as it stands is certainly livable. While some people may face extraordinary hardships that require the intervention of charity, the average person working a minimum wage job should be able to maintain a financially stable lifestyle. The problem faced by many who work for a minimum wage is not insufficient income, but excessive consumer spending, if you work for minimum wage you don't have enough resources to be eating fast food regularly, to own a large TV with cable, to buy a new iPhone, to buy a new car (a used one is doable though) or maintain a clown like car habit. These are all luxuries which a person working for minimum wage cannot afford yet the vast majority of people who work for minimum wage attempt to do one or more of these things. And that's alright. A minimum wage job still allows for a life with good food, a home, and a few luxuries like internet.

If the minimum wage offers an acceptable living standard, than its doing its job. Those who want a greater standard of living, than pretty fucking good, should aim to get a better job. On the other hand those who suffer from a great misfortune, like an accident which causes them to break a leg, or what have you, should maybe be able to get some help from society.

"I'd also like to respond to another idea that springs from the above two ideas. Should life for those less fortunate be a never-ending cycle of work and studiousness? Life is about more than just working a job. Who would any of us be without our leisure activities? I have the pleasure of posting long-winded messages on this forum because I don't have to spend all my time working and studying. There's a reason we call out "TGIF" every week, and there's a reason we look forward to being done for the day. TV is awesome. Playing Diplomacy is fun. Activities outside of the world of work are great. So why should anyone be denied these things simply because they are not rich? "
The assumption I built my estimates of minimum wage on is a 40 hour work week. 40 hours is pretty normal for middle class americans as well. Those who make less money certainly aren't forced into constant labour any more than a middle class American. Someone on minimum wage has enough money to enjoy a host of fun activities, though they may be unable to enjoy a variety of high cost activities, like a yacht, or a flying a jet. Instead they may have to pick simpler activities, like hiking, and picnics in the park. Personally, I don't see the problem with some leisure activities being out of reach.

"As some of you may have noticed in this post or in a previous post of mine, I have a conception of humanity that differs sharply from others'. I see that when human beings are born, they do not have an idea of "hard work" or an idea of "laziness". They don't have a clue who they are or what they'd like to do. All of these things are developed in an environment that includes other people and a distribution of resources that is random at best. Everything builds upon that circumstance, and not everyone gets the same circumstance. Outcomes are not always good. But no one is worth less or more by virtue of these circumstances or outcomes, and the road to "prosperity", whatever that may be, is not attained by assuming that they are."
A sentiment I couldn't agree less with. You give far too much credit to circumstance and nowhere near enough to the actions of the person for their relative success. Everyone should be treated equally under the law, but that is the extent to which people are of equal value.

Brief addition: I personally consider the idea of replacing the vast majority of welfare services with a negative income tax or universal basic income to be a major improvement. While it certainly isn't perfect its a hell of a lot better than the mess of programs we have now, which confuse people who need to use them, and generate a host of sprawling unnecessary departments. Far better to cut the departments and just give all that welfare money out as a basic income.

You didn't build it? Hahahahahah

@Damian - But what about those services you can't directly apply to your everyday life? I'm talking about military (how do you use the military), police (even if they never come to your house, their finding the guy who broke into your neighbors house and generally being out on the roads keeping the public at large safe is something you benefit from) and fire/EMS (even if you don't have need to use them, they need to cover the costs of being vigilant).

@damian Yeah man, yeah, YEAH, basic income, now you're talking. I really hope Switzerland tries it, to see if it actually works. I figure in Switzerland it would have a fair shot at working. Perhaps it will.

Regarding emergency services and the military. I think they could be maintained on an insurances basis. When you pay for the service to be maintained each month and in exchange receive free coverage in the case of an emergency. While those without coverage who require the service are required to pay a large lump sum, or pay back the lump sum over time as I mentioned above.

Regarding the military, specifically. While I'm not a pacifist I am extremely anti-agression. I have trouble supporting the military as is. I would happily pay into an insurance policy to maintain the military for defence and peacekeeping. But I would suggest that every foreign campaign require the military acquire funding from those who want the war.

The swiss proposal doesn't look like it plans to cut the various other forms of welfare, which would be the point from my perspective. Instead its just expanding the welfare state. No thanks. I can see some benefits to a basic income, especially because it allows small business owners to take more risks. But I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of taxing people to pay for the livelihoods of others. Anyway, basic income is better than what we have now.

The "basic income" proposal is fine in a perfect utopian society, but think about what that income would be used for. Crack whores would pump out more and more kids and take that money to buy more crack. Alcoholic welfare recipients (not, I'm not saying all welfare recipients are alcoholics, just that some of them are) would spend it on booze, not the necessities of life. Then we would still have people dying in the streets because there would be no control system to prevent them misspending the money.

I'll preface this by saying I would support a basic income. However, I think it's a loser, politically for precisely the reason Draugnar above mentioned. People are afraid that poor people will spend it on hookers and blow, and not have any money at all for the "necessities of life" (as if hookers and blow aren't!). But a universal basic income works because it's not means- or otherwise tested. It's your money and you're free to use it as you choose. Now, of course, I don't expect very many people to waste all of their basic income on terrible things, but even if they do, we can fix for these things with drug treatment facilities, social housing, etc.

Moving on to what damian said. I'm not going to go point-by-point because I fear my post would get excessively long. Instead, I'm going to try to respond to the general sentiment that I feel is coming out of his post.

damian looks to the individual as the best and most responsible actor. To a certain degree, he's right. I'm a product of my society, but I can still make choices that are my own. But choosing not to pursue studies in engineering is different from choosing to be poor. A lot of poor people sure didn't choose to be that way--in fact, I would say most poor people didn't choose to be that way. And a lot of them are trying to get out, but they cannot because of the unfortunate circumstances into which they were born. Social mobility is extremely low in North America, especially in comparison to European countries (notably Scandinavian ones) which have (generally) more government presence and more egalitarian measures.

For example, consider university education, which is considered to be one of the best ways out of poverty. (I'll have to use Canadian numbers, because those are the ones I'm familiar with). In Ontario, undergraduate tuition fees for in-province students are about C$6000 to C$7000/year, depending on your faculty. I'll go with C$6500/year. There are some families out there who aren't able to give C$6500/year and there are some who can. The poorer students will have to take on a job or two as well as student loans, whereas the richer students will not. Now, I'm sure some of you have worked and studied at the same time: it's doable, but, speaking for myself, my grades would have been higher and my stress levels lower had I been studying only.

Once they graduate from university, poorer students will have to start paying back their loans within six months with interest, and the richer students will have a clean slate. If a poorer student misses a payment, they get dinged with fines and their credit scores take a hit. And given the current job prospects for graduates, it's likely that they won't be finding a job within six months of graduation. So you have a gap: on the one hand, there are poorer students who are paying back around C$30000 of loans, possibly lower marks and higher stress levels, possibly a low-income family situation to go back to and help, and a job market that might not take them; on the other hand, you have richer students with much less debt (if any at all) and a comfortable family situation. Yes, it's possible for the poorer students to get by, but it's certainly not an "equal opportunity". The low-income students are being hindered by a family situation they did not choose.

So, yes, individual choices do matter. But choices happen within the container of circumstance, and the government has the power to change that circumstance.

Now there are a couple of other things. First, you can't really use a 40-hour work week to say that minimum wage is fine where it is, because that's not universally the case. Second, asking for private services to take the place of government is misguided because government services exist to provide access to people with lower incomes. Furthermore, democratic governments have some degree of democratic accountability, whereas private corporations do not. Yes, I suppose people could stop buying their services, but not all industries have perfect competition, and you're unlikely to get the same level of public discourse or consideration of new programs under such conditions.

In the abstract, the omnipotence of the individual is a great idea. But in human society, it is not. People's choices are constrained by the conditions in which they live, and assuming that they have more power than they actually do is likely to lead to harmful public policy prescriptions.

If they spend all their basic income money on vice, that is 100% their problem. If they want to enter rehab, that should be available for them, but anyone who takes the basic income and squanders it, that's their problem.

I'm not saying it never happens, but the caricature of having kids to collect benefits, what are the actual numbers behind it? In a utilitarian, rather than offended sense of responsibility, um, sense, is it that big of a problem?

Well, I haven't seen any basic income models that are contingent on the number of children you have, so I'm not sure how it's relevant. In Canada we have the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB), and a bunch of other programs, but I don't think it's really that much (but it does vary by income, marital status, etc.). And, you know, women's education and such, so we don't really have a need for baby factories.

Take your basic income, call it food stamps, then you don't have the above problems.

Basic income proposals are universal and usually involve removing almost all other welfare/wealth transfer programs. Food stamps, on the other hand, are means-tested and exist in addition to current welfare/wealth transfer programs.

Not to mention basic income is supposed to offer anyone a basic living standard without any need to work. It would be higher than current minimum wage and it would be universal.

So if we replace basic income with WIC (food stamps) and Section 8 housing paid by the government that includes utilities and we provide everyone a bus pass and make certain busses run everywhere, then we are already doing it except the bus part and we become... wait for it... The 1980s Soviet Union!

Universal basic income is vastly superior to the current state of welfare. Toss the rest of the welfare state out and replace it with a $10k/yr income for everyone in the working-age population

But Draug...we're compassionate Americans! If *we* did Soviet-style communism, of course it would work, because *we care*, you know, and intent trumps outcomes in all things Liberal.

10K isn't a livable income. That's not even minimum wage at the federal level.

Everyone gets it, though. That plus a minimum wage job = ~$25k/yr (taking federal min. wage level). At least in Baton Rouge (which admittedly is on the low-end of COL), if you can't live on $25k/yr you ain't tryin'.

Then combine that with living with other family members collecting the same thing and you should be able to do just fine.

@Eden - But that plus unemployed equals starving and freezing. The basic is supposed to be enough to live on, is it not?

@goldfinger0303:
"steephie - you're getting into a problem of tax incidence. Obviously the world is best when there is no tax - but we need governments, so there must be some sort of tax. There also must be a way to decrease inequality. What's the use in economic growth if its being only captured by the top 1% of people (ie. this past decade).

Going to the harberger triangle though (since this is a good vehicle to mention it). Imagine that the demand curve was much, much steeper. Move the line left to show the deadweight loss and you see much of the triangle is above the old equilibrium point. This shows that consumers are dealing with most of the deadweight loss. Switch it around with the supply curve and producers deal with most of the deadweight loss. This is tax incidence - ie. who "really" pays taxes. Too often, its the consumers, which leads to the inequality that we see now."

You completely missed my point. First of all, I disagree that no tax is best. I completely disagree.
Yes, there needs to be a way to decrease inequality. That's what I said. I don't see why you say this in your arguing against me when we simply agree on this?
Your harberger triangle example is besides the point, since the point I was making is that less people buy at any given price with the extra tax that the top 1% added to the price. The wealth lost by the consumers only counts for the consumers still buying, which is exactly why they stop buying.

If the top 1% raise their prices to compensate for increased taxes, they are less able to compete with the rest of the people, since their prices are simply more expensive.

With taxes raised on the top 1%, they can either just pay the extra taxes and change nothing, or raise the price and lose income and economic position, practically isolating themselves when their prices get crazy, since simply no one will buy them. If that happens, you can practically not count them when counting the money circulating, since their money is not circulating. That means practical deflation, in the good way. However you put it, the rich lose money, the poor get money. Exactly how we like it. People with less wealth can then compete better and improve the economy.

Am I missing something here? If not, could you react on what I say this time?

I don't want to be mean or something. It's an honest question.

@Draugnar, no, it isn't supposed to be enough to live on. It's supposed to supplement employment, not replace it

"The wealth lost by the consumers only counts for the consumers still buying, which is exactly why they stop buying."

But that only applies for discretionary buying and only if the discretionary object is one most people consider semi-essential and all manufacturers/sellers raise their prices equally. For instance, high-end TVs would apply in your example, but a basic clock radio to get up in the morning wouldn't. It is a discretionary purchase but an essential one and odds are everyone would be raising it if the tax on the manufacturers was across the board equal. So everyone in the market for a clock radio would be paying the tax and the tax wouldn't take anyone out of the market. The big screen TV, however, might find fewer buyers having taken people out of the market deciding they could live with a lower end one or what they already have.