Uh, that wouldn't make any sense. He's saying that the majority of people quitting because of higher costs are lower income smokers. Hence them accounting for half of those quitting. He did the study he's writing about, so I don't know what figures you're confusing here.

so by this reasoning a full 60% of the cost of your glass of beer should be a state tax, since smoking pales as a dollar cost to the state in comparison to alcohol. smoke and mirrors, alcohol is a popular drug so cost to the state is immaterial....

If you make this argument, you're a flat out cynic and as credible as big tobaccao. seriously, both sides are FOS. These are Oregon's kids, that's where the tax belongs.

Kevin, it would have been easier to overlook the obvious fallacy in your argument if you hadn't followed it through to its final (and ridiculous) conclusion. Chaloupka's numbers are based on his estimate of the relative responsiveness of low income oregonians to the increased price of cigarettes. However, you cite more general numbers relating to the prevalence of smoking in different socioeconomic groups. Your statistics are most definitely influenced by a number of factors beyond the price of cigarettes, such as differing levels of education or tobacco advertising campaigns that target low income consumers. For this reason it is wrong to try to use the statistics you cite to try to refute Chaloupka's study.

You certainly aren't doing your argument any favors when you conclude that "Clearly those above the poverty level are much more responsive to price increases than those at or below it." That is absurd on its face. Why on earth would people with more disposable income be more responsive to price increases? Obviously, all other things being equal, people with low incomes will be more responsive to any commodity price increase that those with higher incomes because the increase has a greater relative effect on their personal budgets.

Don't make the mistake of getting sucked into what really are handwaving economic arguments in Chaloupka's piece (resting your analysis on elasticity data from 2000 under very different economic conditions without validation really doesn't pass muster), or misread it as a valid basis for health care policy. Chaloupka's entire thrust here is as an academic economist who has been an anti-tobacco advocate for some time, arguing his pet "rational addiction" model that views low-income people as a depersonalized and dehumanized group. In this case, his work models low-income people in dehumanized terms of how they can be forced to comply with the rabidly anti-tobacco norms and values of the socio-economically privileged through punitive taxation. His model is NOT accepted as anything approaching valid, much less humane, clinical or health care policy. And in fact, he has done no academic work I could find (or that he has listed on his CV) in health care reform policy.

The way to understand the real deceit in this political piece (which published reports say the pro Measure 50 campaign paid between $2000 and $2500 for) is to start from the understanding they were trying to combat the legitimate argument against Measure 50 that it is bad and inequitable health care policy. That is, for those who who gave us this and who are pushing it now, Measure 50 has always been an middle and upperclass crusade against tobacco, with just a little classist contempt for low-income people thrown in. Health insurance for children has been used as tool for selling the anti-tobacco agenda. Measure 50 has not engaged with critics who point out just how bad Measure 50 is as health care policy, primarily because it intended by design to be welfare for the private health insurance industry, and in fact they have quite overtly pursued the approach of attacking such informed critics as pawns of the tobacco industry. Once that is understood, this dishonorable effort by Chaloupka and "Yes On 50" is easily discredited as a failed attempt to distract people from the fundamental mean-spiritedness and unfairness of Measure 50. (What's saddest is how some advocates for health care for children have utterly sold-out their principles in this effort and joining in attacks on those health care advocates who have held onto their principles as, at best, being dupes to the tobacco industry.)

Measure 50 unfair in the first case because even the purported benefits Chaloupkas claims it offers low-income people as a depersonalized group to make his case are not spread even close to equally across that group. Smokers who don't have children, or whose children have grown, (the most dishonorable "other" in the eyes of Measure 50 supporters) will get no health care coverage, and smokers with children (the equally dishonorable "other") will get less benefit in the way he chooses to define benefit than will non-smokers with children (still the "other" by virtue of being low-income relevant to many in the "Yes On 50" movement, but honorable only to the extent they are obedient to the anti-smoking moralism now more prevalent up the income scale and at the heart of the "rational addiction" model as applied to the anti-tobacco agenda).

Measure 50 is unfair in the second case, and despicable health care policy because it actually embraces the right-wing, regressive argument that low income people should bear as much of the burden of their children's health care from which the socio-economically privileged can find pseudo-moral rationalizations they can use to step away. Of course, Chaloupka presents NO argument in this paper about good health care policy. This further hints at his misleading technique of citing abstract group benefits when they help make his argument, but individual (frequently non-quantitated) benefits when the punitive emotional appeal against a dehumanized smoker "other" is stronger. That is a second face of the "rational addiction" model which embraces and justifies the expedient of punitive taxes on lower income people who they would effect most as the optimal way to serve the classist basis of the RA model in this case.

Finally, Measure 50 is unfair in the third case because the actual health care benefits delivered to low income people are far less than they would be if all the revenues were actually put towards the most economically and clinically beneficial way of delivering health care, rather than to a corrupt private health insurance industry. You have to remember the Governor, the Democratic majority, and virtually all of the lead proponents of Measure 50 dismissed alternatives that did that, such as rebuilding the OHP as permitted by SCHIP. It is politically advantageous, and fully compatible with the anti-tobacco political effort, to trade off health care for children in exchange for benefit to the private health insurance industry if that furthers the classist, punitive, anti-tobacco agenda of those like Chaloupka and Measure 50 proponents.

Significantly, if we just adopt Chaloupka's approach here of citing group benefits, we see that the higher income people who tend to benefit more from the business of insurance would get an independent economic return on the tax they pay in the form of indirect and direct income. Since in the end everybody receives a net benefit, which for lower income people mainly derives from the federal matching funds but for higher income people also derives from free rent of public money by private insurance providers) the real question is who really benefits more and who ends up bearing more of real costs? Chaloupka carefully avoids doing a full economic analysis of the benefit upper income folks derive from this tax. That is a relevant macro-economic question, and it is relevant because his attempt here to support his "rational addiction" model is in part based on an appeal to punitive, anti-smoking emotions that low income people will reduce their smoking more precisely because they will feel $1.00/pack more than those who by virtue of their socio-economic status tend to smoke less and receive income from increased diversion of public funds into the private health insurance industry.

Chaloupka's work is only convincing to those who can be misled because they don't actually understand it. And that is what "Yes On 50" intends because they know the truth about the true, fundamental unfairness of Measure 50 is something they can't answer.

Calling BS is clearly working for the anti-50 campaign. His comment probably isn't even what he personally thinks. He's paid to state those points.

I'm willing to discuss and argue with Kevin who 1) seems pretty damned smart and 2) is a real person stating what he believes. I'm not willing to even read Calling BS's whole post.

Calling BS is clearly working for the anti-50 campaign. His comment probably isn't even what he personally thinks. He's paid to state those points.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course.

How appropriate, though, in response to an argument that Chaloupka is a hired zealot whose class-based "rational addiction" theory bloodlessly models the effects that cause addicts to perpetuate their addiction as a positive economic return and argues that the best social response to addiction is the market-based world-view of increasing the real $$$ cost on those who it will cause the most negative economic return.

A prime example of how the "Yes On 50" crowd knows they can't deal with the fact that Measure 50 is truly bad health care policy, in large part because of the condescending, mean-spirited, unfairness of it as argued above, and instead launch:

attacks on those health care advocates who have held onto their principles as, at best, being dupes to the tobacco industry.

A phrase was left out above from the phrase class-based "rational addiction" theory. It was supposed to be particular class-based application of "rational addiction" theory.

One has to go to the actual report, not the incomplete newspaper summary to find the core of the problem with Chaloupka's analysis (and why this is a paid-for political hit piece):

Focusing on the population below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (the low-income population defined above), the Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office (2007) estimates that 59,993 of the 68,000 eligible children will eventually be covered by health insurance under the program created by Measure 50. The value of this benefit for each child is $160 per month, or $1,920 per year (Office of the Governor, 2006). Given this, the total value of the benefit for the children in low-income families will amount to $115.2 million per year. Following the same approach and accounting for the reduced subsidy as income rises, families with incomes between 200 and 350 percent of the federal poverty level will receive health insurance benefits amounting to $29.6 million.

1) Chaloupka omits in this key paragraph estimating "benefit" that is federal SCHIP matching funds that are the primary source of additional economic value injected into the program. He carefully states that his number is "health INSURANCE benefits" (ie. private insurance policy premium costs) and not true quantitable, health care benefits.

2) Aside from his political agenda, the reason probably is because he cites the Governor's press release and associated materials as the basis for a $160/child health insurance benefit. That is in fact the maximum premium it is estimated that a family would be charged for private health insurance through this plan. That number has no meaning in terms of the actual health care benefit delivered to children: If forced to offer coverage at that figure in the face of health insurance cost inflation several times the total rate of inflation, private insurance companies will decrease health care services, the only type of positive utility that matters to children of low-income parents here, as necessary. All of you who supposedly care about children saw Sicko, and how it demonstrated the essential fraud against people, and low-income people in particular, of misrepesenting health insurance as health care, didn't you?

3) Looking at it another way, Chaloupka does not study the real economic question about the true economic value returned to low-income people and "the commons" is wasting $1920/child/year in an economically inefficient and predatory private health insurance system, rather than alternatives like expanding a public program like OHP up the income ladder as permitted by SCHIP that many on the "Yes On 50" side worked against in the legislature. He does not take up the real question whether this system is a misuse of SCHIP funds, in the sense of lost positive utility to children and the "commons", if good health care policy were the goal, because providing benefit to private health insurance was ALWAYS part of the plan in Measure 50 (and is accordance with the class-based values he explicitly expresses in his application of "rational addiction.")

This further demonstrates that the primary social value he and "Yes On 50" seek to further here is a class-based anti-tobacco agenda. As the true unfairness arguments above demonstrate, this is a punitive agenda which intentionally inequitably distributes benefits in accordance with the self-serving values of a socio-economically privileged class who depersonalize and dehumanize those who do not share their relative privilege.

His unsupported, unquantitated handwaving political arguments about general reductions in health care costs, introduced solely for emotional effect, would get this paper rejected as economic analysis in any credible academic forum.

The study shows poor people who smoke paying in $20M but poor people as a group getting $180M in benefits. Looks to me like the middle class gets the shaft. So $160M is taken from people who earned it and given to those who didn't.

I haven't seen anyone talk about the inflation of health care insurance from plans like this. Once you give the health insurance industry another $200M a year we'll see even higher insurance rates for everyone else.

Kevin:

I think we agree on almost everything about M50. I agree that it is at best a stop-gap measure. I agree that is does not address the root causes of healthcare access for the poor. I don't know whether it will decrease the number of smokers and, honestly, I don't care very much. Eliminating a vice from society is a different issue -- and one that is on much shakier moral ground.

I am less concerned about the regressiveness of the tax than you are -- largely because I believe the tobacco companies will eat the lion's share of the tax. And I ended up voting yes because right now it's the only solution on the table and I believe it's better than nothing.

Hi Kevin, I've got a study, too!

"In general, lower-income smokers are not only more likely to start smoking but also less likely to quit than higher-income smokers. [...] One of the best ways to prompt lower-income smokers to quit is by raising cigarette prices through cigarette tax increases. Numerous studies have documented the fact that raising the price of cigarettes directly reduces both adult and youth smoking, particularly among low-income smokers. Most notably, smokers with family incomes at or below the national median are four times as likely to quit because cigarette price increases as those with higher incomes."

CBOC

Who is really waving hand here?

I'm going to assume this was meant in the spirit of academic joust, because I believe you are a better scholar than that paul g.

First of all, let's be clear what I asserted as an intellectually responsible critic. Namely that his argument is not proven, not that it is disproven. More on that below.

Do we have any reason to suppose that price elasticity would change in six years?

We certainly do have reason to suppose this. Elasticity in this case is a property, and in fact just a statistic in practice, of the sub-population of people who smoke or who are likely to smoke. Papers in 2000 rely on data that is nearly a decade old (1998-1999?) compared to when the tax would take effect (2008) and both the social mores and economic conditions which are variables that contribute to selecting the population of smokers and those likely to smoke have changed radically in a decade. I'm not going to go into more detail how here unless "Yes On 50" wants to pay me $2000 or more to tell them with intellectual honesty why they got taken when they spent their last $2000.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would observe that a decade ago you would rightly be considered a total prick if you said some of the things I've heard said in public towards smokers in the last year or so. And you rightly be considered a selfish, right-wing pig if you made some of the arguments about low income smokers paying for their own children as I've heard some supposed progressives say here.

My gut reaction is that a low income consumer's price elasticity to cigarettes, a relatively low cost and addictive product, really wouldn't have changed much in the last six years.

I have to be straightforward here and say that your gut reaction about an individual, addicted smoker viz a viz elasticity is a logical fallacy known as "Hasty Generalization". As already noted, as applied by Chaloupka, elasticity is a statistic of a population that includes people with varying genetic predispositions to addiction and moral attitudes towards dealing with addiction. As noted above, there is able reason to suppose your gut reaction is just about as reliable for characterizing that statistic as many gut reactions are (not).

I don't know what "very different economic conditions" you are thinking of.

1998-1999 was just about the peak of the Clinton era of relative economic good times. Lower income people as a group, defined by the criteria and in the manner as Chaloupka does, generally perceived themselves as doing much better economically than they are in 2007-2008. It is possible that much if not most of the elastic demand has been driven out of the marketplace in the intervening 10 years as those whose personal elasticity is higher reduced or quit smoking as their personal economic conditions worsened.

If you think C is wrong, isn't the onus on you to demonstrate that elasticity figures based on 2000 are not comparable to 2006?

Chaloupka's argument rests in part on the ceterus paribus hypothesis that elasticity is roughly the same now as it was estimated to be in 2000. It is up to him to demonstrate that this hypothesis is true, or at least beyond reason to doubt, for him to assert his conclusion to be true. I've already commented why there is credible reason to suppose it is not, therefore I have met my burden of proof intellectually that his argument is not proven.

I have also met my burden of proof that people who run with an unproven argument have no argument themselves.

Of course, the second part of Chaloupka's argument is that the economic value delivered to low income people, in exchange for real $$$ out of their collective pockets, should be measured in terms of health insurance benefits rather than actual health care, even though the conversion between the two is determined by the selfish business goals of the private health insurance industry and (aided and abetted by the corporate health care industry.)

I have no idea if I share the political or personal values of darrelplant. I can say as a requirement of intellectual honesty, and unlike "Yes On 50", that he has put his finger squarely on one of true frauds of their argument:

When it is to their advantage to inflame certain voters with an anti-tobacco diatribe, they say that it is that the tax (in accordance with their purpose) will have a significant punitive effect that will decrease smoking.

When it is to their advantage to counter questions voters have about the idea of basing health care policy on the very idea of a tax base you are trying to decrease, they say that smokers will continue to smoke at just about the same rate as now.

And finally, when pushed that they can't be arguing both sides as the principle why someone should vote for Measure 50, and that the numbers are fuzzy at best, they dismissively claim that just about the right number of truly disgraceful hardcore addicts will keep smoking to keep the program running that will deliver to those hardcore addicts the amount of health care they deserve (namely NONE in the view of the "Yes On 50" proponents).

Funny thing is, they don't seem to believe that most of the voters they think these arguments will sway actually have very admirable feelings about other people, much less about actually providing quality, sustainable health care for anyone except themselves. The truly interesting question is this: Does the "Yes On 50" side share that unadmirable view of voters they are trying to gain for their side, or are they just content to cynically take advantage of it? They certainly have not repudiated it.

Maybe instead of

(namely NONE in the view of the "Yes On 50" proponents"),

I actually should have said

(namely NONE in the view of the "Yes On 50" proponents", who believe the money that could have helped provide actual health care for those addicts actually should go into the truly "deserving" private health insurance industry as business income, since that is what Chaloupka and they argue is the benefit here.)

Obviously, Professor Frank Chaloupka is in the employ of the damned progressive forces who conspire to tax the poor in order to increase the size of government bureaucracies. And if those uninsured children had any conscience, they'd spend there meager allowances on smokes to pass out among the hacking poor.

This debate is interesting -- not because of the ideas, but because of the dynamics. Heading into 2008 I expect we'll see the same dynamics over and over. We would do well to recognize what is happening and to change the way we approach debate on candidates and issues.

Here's what I see happening in this post. Kevin is arguing in good faith and CBSOC is not. Kevin is stating and explaining his actual objection to M50, which seems to come down to "I believe the taxing mechanism is more harmful than the program it funds is good." That's an opinion I do not share, but I respect.

CBSOC is tossing up whatever he can to distract /confuse/obfuscate. He's using all sorts of rhetorical tactics, the goal of which is not to convince the other side, but to prolong the argument indefinitely without admitting defeat. He is debating for sport, not arguing in good faith. Here’s how you can tell the difference: if you respond to Kevin about one of his points, he responds to you about that same point. If you respond to CBSOC about one of his points, he raises other, unrelated objections.

Put another way, if you could demonstrate to Kevin that the program is really good or that the funding mechanism isn’t that bad, then Kevin would probably change his mind. If you demonstrate to CBSOC that a study based on 1998-99 data is still relevant, he would immediately find some other objection. It’s a game he can play forever, because there will always be something he can pretend to object to.

I don’t know CBSOC’s motives. I think I was wrong that he works for the anti-50 campaign. Maybe he’s a Reed freshman or lives in his parents’ basement or something. But there are a lot of people whose motives are to create noise so progressive messages cannot be heard.

When Rush Limbaugh responds to a damning article about the White House by attacking the reporter for having donated money to Al Gore in 2000, he isn’t honestly trying to show that the article should not be believed. He is trying to blunt the article by changing the topic. Suddenly the debate is about whether a reporter’s political donations should affect his credibility. And it doesn’t matter whether Rush’s allegations turn out to be true or false. Rush has succeeded if we talk about the donations instead of the original article.

What do we do with argument-like-noise-makers? I’m not sure. It doesn’t work to treat them as though they are interested in arriving at the truth. They’re not. Perhaps it is sufficient to ignore them. Perhaps it would work to say you don’t believe they hold the view they espouse.

Suggestions?

darrelplant,

We both favor progressive taxation. I believe almost all Democratic officeholders do as well. The problem is with those of other party, who refuse to increase taxes on the wealthy, and with the voters of Oregon, who have put the kicker and revenue raising supermajority provisions into the constitution. Faced with lack of services, Democrats supported the lottery and support the tobacco tax.

Also, tobacco tax is quite different than general sales tax and the lottery. One of its purposes is to reduce smoking and the problems that causes. It is a "sin" tax, and in this case, the sinners tend to have lower than average incomes.

Chris:

I agree with some of what you said and disagree with some. And ironically, I changed the subject. Now we're talking about something unrelated to the initial post. However…

I agree that CBSOC is probably not a right-wing troll. And I agree that there is not (and should not be) any sort of enforced progressive orthodoxy. I like rational debate and the strength of progressives (compared to conservatives) is we're reasonable people who can change our minds when facts demand it. Well, that and we’re cuter.

I disagree that CBSOC is arguing in good faith. I disagree that he directly addresses arguments made against him. I disagree that his only problem is ad hominem attacks. He does not state his reasons for his position, he merely disputes any reason that other people state for their positions.

In the Paul Gronke case you mention, CBSOC does not respond to the elasticity issue directly. He changes the subject to “rules for debate” and basically says, "the study must prove it's assumptions beyond any doubt, otherwise the whole study is unproven." That may be true in high school forensics, but as a standard for debate on BlueOregon it’s ridiculous. It’s epistemological sophistry. CBSOC’s next step, I suppose, would be “prove to me that cigarettes even exist.”

When CBSOC says “you pro-50 guys,” it’s more than just an ad hominem attack. He uses a rhetorical device that sounds like an argument, but isn’t. He says, “since you pro-50 guys say x then you must admit y, otherwise your argument fails.” It’s false for the obvious reason, but there’s more. He tries to show there is a fundamental inconsistency in the opponent’s position that can be used to dismiss the opponent. His purpose is not to explain, convince or question. His purpose is to shut the opponent down on a (false) technicality.

I really don’t know what CBSOC’s motives are. He (she?) may think that M50 is such bad policy that anything is justified in order to stop it. His feelings may have been hurt when someone jumped on him and accused him of being a right-wing troll. But the point is, his behavior is no different than the right-wing obfuscators that we have to deal with whenever big elections come up. I’d like to figure out a more effective ways of dealing with these people. I don’t think what we’re doing now works.

<h2>I’d like to continue this conversation off-line. If you’re willing, send me an email with “BlueOregon” in the title. You can find my email address by following the Bert Lowry link to my website.</h2>