Eliminating Cancer

Economists are often thought of as the broad thinkers who can provide out world with the best ideas on how to solve problems and improve our lives. Take Global Warming and carbon emissions. Their solution is a "free market" approach of taxing carbon. As noted in a recent Nature piece on an upcoming meeting:

A global carbon price — so far excluded from consideration in international negotiations — would be the ideal basis for a common commitment in our view. A price is easy to agree and handle, relatively fair, less vulnerable to gaming than global cap-and-trade systems, and consistent with climate policies already in place, such as fossil-fuel taxes and emissions cap-and-trade.

Now since this is considered the approach, not research and development, not engineering, but taxing, I thought we could do the same for Cancer. We know that cancer kills people, rather harshly at that, so why not have a Cancer Tax, stop all that R&D, close down the hospitals, eliminate the drugs; just tax it. It is a Jonathan Swift like solution. Swift suggested cooking Irish babies to eliminate the problem, a bit harsh but many English took his suggestion to heart, so we would just tax Cancer, not the victims, just the disease.

Then according to economists it should "clear the market", and with the tax money we could allow the Government to spend more, say on increasing Government salaries. With no hospitals, no doctors, no drugs, we drop health care burden to near zero, with people dying off real quickly, we reduce the demand for Social Security and Medicare, and with the added taxes, well we get a balanced budget!

Just think how smart these economists are! We don't need R&D, that just allows people to survive longer, with a cure, we need more people turnover. Thus the Cancer Tax, also a Carbon Tax, and yes we can most likely tax anything the Government folks think is bad for us.

I think there is the view that if all one has is a hammer then everything one sees looks like a nail. It may very well apply here.