Making the muddled, misshapen campaign of misinformation that is the health care “debate” even more confusing is the unacknowledged fact rhetoricians on both sides are secretly waging two simultaneous debates.

First, there’s the discussion of health care reform — changing poorly conceived policies that raise the cost of health care. Unfortunately, these debates are often derailed by an unannounced shift into the second type of health care debate — not reform but redistribution. Not a policy debate, but a moral one.

There’s something emotionally appealing about redistributive arguments.

Some can’t afford health care. Sympathy compels us to help the unfortunate at the expense of the fortunate.

But it’s curious we only selectively apply sympathy and equality.

This summer Gregory Mankiw — a Harvard economist against redistributive taxes — published a paper facetiously favoring redistributive taxes on height.

If we tax the successful, why not tax those with traits often correlated with success? After demonstrating the efficiency gains of such a tax, he said “a moral and political philosophy is not like a smorgasbord, where you get to pick and choose the offerings you like ... It is more like your mother telling you to clean everything on your plate. If you are a Utilitarian redistributionist, the height tax is like that awful tasting vegetable your mother served up because it is good for you. No matter how hard you might wish it wasn’t there sitting on your plate, it just won’t go away.”

To take the point farther, if we’re going to redistribute economic outcomes, why not redistribute romantic outcomes and use force to bring affection to the loveless in America? 
Using force to redistribute affection might look like rape, but using force to redistribute resources looks like theft, and that doesn’t stop progressives from taking from those who contribute more.

This isn’t “gotcha philosophy” — this is a real question about the way our sympathies lie.
George Mason University economist Robin Hanson provides a possible answer. In the same way “food isn’t about nutrition” and “clothes aren’t about comfort,” Hanson argues “politics isn’t about policy.”

We can humbly admit to having zero political influence.

Every vote counts, but every vote only counts for one, and the chances of an election being a tie without your one vote is negligible.

Perhaps you are interested in politics, not as a way to save the world, but as a way to signal to others your values, cultural affiliations and personality traits.

Perhaps we only show compassion for certain groups because we want to signal we are compassionate people.

Maybe it’s all about sex.

In a recent blog post, Hanson argued, “by sympathizing with creatures who suffer in ways that kids might suffer, people signal their parental nurturing instincts.”

Using politics to signal parental instincts makes evolutionary sense.

Publicly calling for a redistribution of money to help poor children get health care says, “I’ll sacrifice my interests to make sure our future children will be cared for in sickness,” and we can see people taking that strategy.

Calling for redistributions for “my short, ugly, fat, loveless children” isn’t a good evolutionary strategy. Perhaps that’s why it’s only facetiously done.

No wonder the debate on health care is so convoluted. Mankiw is playing a different game than the signal senders.

But even if that theory is false, equality is a lousy policy goal.

In the depths of the dark ages, humans were mostly equal. No one could fly airplanes, take antibiotics or stalk hotties on Facebook. The only difference between the richest and the poorest was whether they lead or followed their neighbors into pointless wars and the age of the straw covering their bare earth floor.

If you’d rather live in this century than the 13th, then you’d rather have growth and 
progress than equality.

Instead of using violence to transfer what little we have from the fortunate to the unfortunate, let’s reform our laws until the fineries of modern life are commonplace and the rich get even cooler toys.

And as a side bonus, focusing on reform over redistribution will make you sound intelligent, ambitious and productive like an excellent parent.

May the opposite gender clamor for your reproductive bits.

Daniel Morgan is a 21-year-old economics senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter@TDR_dmorgan.
----
Contact Daniel Morgan at dmorgan@lsureveille.com