Liberal Debate Strategy: Redefining Baselines

I'm becoming very tired of liberals redefining baselines. The most recent example comes from the IMF. According to them, we can reduce carbon emissions by decreasing subsidies to fossil fuels. So far, so sensible. However, when you learn what they're classifying as subsidies, you see that they're warping traditional definitions, as liberals like to do.

Burning fossil fuels clearly has a negative externality--it harms people who don't directly use it because of pollution. One way to offset the cost to the public is to tax the burning of fossil fuels. This way, those harmed can be compensated and those who use the fuels have a disincentive to do so.

What the IMF does is says, any tax on fossil fuels below this level of optimal taxation, we're going to call a subsidy. This is another strategy from liberals--to skew traditional definitions in new directions. Usually we think of a tax as any price increase caused by the government and a subsidy is a reduction in cost or a payment to users from the government. The baseline has always been government non-intervention.

Now, the IMF wants to argue that the baseline should be the optimal tax on it. I wonder if that works the other way around. Can we say that something with a positive externality should be subsidized, so any failure to subsidize should be considered a tax? Should we go around from now own decrying the fact that the government taxes landscaping?

The level of optimal taxation/subsidy is impossible to determine; we should stick with the baseline of zero government intervention.

Liberal Debate Strategy: Appeal to Humanity

I challenge anyone to read this and not feel awful. Basically it's the story of how someone became sick, and his insurance wouldn't cover treatment without his challenging the CEO publicly.

I think anyone's first reaction is to feel miserable that anyone has to go through this. This is the emotional response.

Liberals are always, however, saying that they only look at facts/data. This clearly is not true. Sometimes they use examples like these to evoke a sympathetic response for their point of view. We must be cognizant of this strategy.

As far as data, one question I would have is whether this student had the option of another health insurance plan, and did he choose the cheaper plan. This is critical. If he chose the cheaper plan knowing of the limits and risks, then as tragic as this is, he made a choice.

I believe many liberals want to argue that this is not a choice people should be able to make (and they actually can't make it anymore under the ACA), but they must acknowledge that by restricting that choice, they're raising the costs of healthcare for everyone. If they announce that, and most people still desire this policy, great. But instead, they present this regulation as something that benefits everyone and has no costs.

Market-oriented people, if they want to argue for the ability to choose options that could possibly have tragic consequences, have to be ready to defend their stance against these emotional appeals, which is very challenging.