"Some contemporary non-fairness public policy issues: How about raising the tax on cigarettes? Or building a new aircraft carrier? Or something about which I posted my annoyance recently, Medicare not paying for blood glucose tests for pre-diabetics? I can't think off-hand how the fairness factor might determine any of those decisions."
Lane, the aircraft carrier example takes us to an arena where fairness is generally near the bottom of the list of considerations. When it comes to protecting the nation we care much less about fairness issues and much more about efficiency issues and your example is an excellent one to illustrate your point.
The reason for that, of course, is that fairness issues only arise whenever we make choices between competing policies that will benefit or burden one group versus another. Because national defense is equally critical to every group, in terms of the procurement of weapons we don't generally consider who will benefit and who will not; we consider how to spend our dollars wisely to maximize the benefits for everyone. (The question would be different, however, if we decided to protect the ports on the east coast but not the west coast.)
The question of raising the tax on cigarettes, however, is an example where fairness is an important factor. The cigarette tax advantaged the non smoking public and disadvantaged the smoking public but there were specific considerations that qualified that as an arguably fair tax policy.
Do you think that we could have selected commodities like chewing gum, or milk, or big Macs as specific targets for sky high taxes? Do you think the legislators would have tried that? Do you think the public would have accepted that without a huge outcry from those who chewed gum and drank milk and even those who did not?
The difference between imposing an onerous, item specific tax on one of those commodities versus cigarettes was that the societal and individual health costs of smoking are high and those costs put smoking in a separate category. Simply put, considerations specific to cigarettes made it "fairer" to impose that tax and the policy makers and most Americans understood that.
Many smokers who grumbled and grumbled about the tax understood and eventually accepted the thinking behind the decision.
Of course these are my assessments and you may disagree. As you have stated, these things seem obvious to me and I "reassert" that fairness standards can be applied in policy making...and that they are.
I've enjoyed the discussion but.....
If you want the last word I'll read it with interest. Ed
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