Hacker News Reader

Comment by raiyu | Hacker News Reader

I think that's where regulation comes in rather than taxes.

Think of it like this if I'm in an industry and polluting the river. Do you want to raise taxes on me so that I stop polluting, or do you want to just make that illegal?

When there are things that completely don't make sense I don't think taxes are the solution.

If I can buy a house which costs more than education in a lot of cases with a mortgage and then declare bankruptcy and not have the mortgage follow me for the rest of my life why can't I do the same with a student loan? Taxing the student loan companies won't solve that.

Similarly for the large disparity in prices for healthcare for out of pocket vs through insurance.

View on HN

>> Think of it like this if I'm in an industry and polluting the river. Do you want to raise taxes on me so that I stop polluting, or do you want to just make that illegal?

Well, I think that it mostly is illegal right now, but the penalties are either so insignificant as to be considered just an inevitable cost of doing business; and the companies with an incentive to save costs by polluting will support legislation and lawmakers who will do things like dismantle the EPA or eliminate fines for these destructive acts.

I don't think taxes per se are the way to change behavior permanently. I just think it is the easiest way right now to make it so that it is difficult or impossible to make ungodly amounts of money by hurting people and the environment. Ideally we could solve all of these problems without things like taxes or laws but my utopia isn't quite here yet.

> or do you want to just make that illegal?

The problem is, once you're rich enough, you can start paying off congressmen to pass the laws that remove regulations and make the thing legal again. Look at the US gov't for the past 3 decades...

The only solution is preventing any one person from having so much power over others -- power which comes solely from their wealth.

>> If I can buy a house which costs more than education in a lot of cases with a mortgage and then declare bankruptcy and not have the mortgage follow me for the rest of my life why can't I do the same with a student loan?

Because the lender can at least recover the house you secured the mortgage against.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com