There has been a lot of talk these days about possibly adding a General Excise Tax (GET) exemption for food and medicine. The three Democratic candidates for governor all support it, as Hawaii News Now reported. The argument that most people make is that the GET, which applies to most purchases of things including food, is regressive. Thus, it falls more heavily on those less able to make ends meet.
Structurally, of course, that is true. The GET is a straight percentage of a sale. It doesn’t matter whether the buyer is wealthy or destitute, it’s the same percentage. Both rich and poor people need to eat, and some studies have shown that poor people spend more of their budget on food.
But, as Director of Taxation Isaac Choy pointed out in a Star-Advertiser editorial, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the tax burden falls more heavily on the poor because (1) there is already a GET exemption for food bought with U.S. Department of Agriculture food benefits, such as under the SNAP or WIC programs; (2) the State provides income tax credits for lower-income folks, one of which is called the “Food/Excise Tax Credit,” to defray those costs; and (3) there is already a GET exemption for prescription drugs and prosthetic devices. He reasons that these new proposed exemptions would primarily benefit wealthier folks and tourists.
Other states have exemptions in their sales tax statutes for food and medicine. However, the devil is in the details. For example, a bag of fresh vegetables probably would qualify under most people’s definitions of food. A hamburger from a fast-food establishment? Some previous Hawaii bills that attempted exempt food would have excluded the hamburger because it’s prepared food and not groceries. How about a Twinkie? Some states debate whether that counts because their authorities want people to buy “real food” and not “junk food,” whatever that means. And when it comes to medicine, most people will accept prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines like aspirin, Motrin, or Aleve. What about homeopathic products and nutritional supplements that are believed to have some benefit but that haven’t been scientifically proven? And what about illegal drugs, or semi-illegal drugs like marijuana?
Other considerations that go into writing an exemption like this center around what part of the population is to be benefited by the exemptions, and at what cost. It’s easier for the food exemption to encompass the vegetables, the hamburger, and the Twinkie, for example, but a broadly written exemption will cost more. It’s easier and simpler for the medical exemption to cover medicine, nutritional supplements, homeopathic products, cannabis, and medical services, but that would cost more too.
And what is to become of the income tax credits that supposedly benefit the low-income families? I have doubts about the tax credits. There are too many of them, they are complicated, and it’s very easy for people who don’t know about them to forget to claim them. People who don’t claim them lose them after a year. People who claim them but do so incorrectly might also lose them even though they might have been entitled to credits if they were claimed correctly. That’s why we have been asking lawmakers to think about rate reductions, or bracket adjustments, to lessen the income tax burden on those less fortunate rather than adding layer upon layer of complicated credits (right now we have the earned income tax credit, food/excise tax credit, credit for low-income household renters, low-income housing tax credit, and there are others).
There may be a solution to help ease the burden that our state taxes add to our astronomical cost of living. The solution won’t be simple. It will take great leadership to put together a plan and herd the different cats at our Legislature to get behind it.
Tanka or “short song” poetry began in seventh-century Japan and follows a simple 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern with no rhyming or punctuation thus lends itself to an economy of words and is an eloquent vehicle for emotional expression. Like a mathematical equation, there is more to a Tanka poem than what meets the eye by having an “affecting” bent and thus reflecting the time of day, a thought, or an event thereby captivating the Human Condition.
The title of this book comes from Albert Camus’s famous essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. Greek mythology describes Sisyphus as a cunning king of Corinth (ancient Greece) who despised death and twice escaped from Hades. The angered Gods returned Sisyphus to the underworld and face a futile nemesis, that of pushing a massive rock up a mountain, only to have the rock roll back down just before reaching the summit and repeat the task forever.
Camus likened modern man’s daily life was like Sisyphus’s perpetual struggle. What most intrigued Camus was the “pause” between Sisyphus almost reaching the summit and returning to his rock as a time for reflection. Says Ken, “My poems come from emotions via select photographs or experiences and observations during the pauses of my life”.
A poem on a “Survival”
A Trout Eats a Fly So To Survive The Next Day Then Why Is It That Human Existence Thrives On Murderers and Murderees
Poem for “Mountain Patience and Wisdom”
Patience and Wisdom Pure and Simple in Nature Embrace a Mountain Feel the Patience of Seasons And Wisdom of Standing Still
********************
Kenichi K. Yabusaki
About the Author:
Kenichi K. Yabusaki was born in a concentration camp during World War II. He is a retired biochemist with an interest in philosophy and uses poetry to portray thoughts on the human condition. Although his family’s experiences of racism and internalized oppression affect much of his poetry, his love of the natural world keeps him sane.
He is an avid fly fisher and lives with his wife in Hawaii.
During the Pause: A Collection of Tanka Poems is available on Amazon.com, Google’s “Goodreads”, Barnes and Noble, and Kindle
After discussing the unprecedented, deadly heat waves and fires sweeping across the US and Europe, my friend, who is normally an optimist said: “Unbelievable, i’m afraid this might be the beginning of the end.”
Well no, I thought. It’s more like the middle or the end of the end. Not the first inning of the end game . . . maybe the seventh.
The beginning of the end, in my reckoning began about five hundred years ago when European explorers . . . colonizers . . . conquistadors . . . marauders first sailed into the pristine bays and harbors of the Americas and began a relentless decimation of the New World environment.
After decades of war and destruction, barbaric hordes of conquerers and “crusaders” that swept across Europe and Asia boarded ships and sailed to the New World seeking new territories and fortunes for their royal patrons and sponsors.
They discovered the Americas and systematically began the deconstruction / destabilization of vast, vibrant, habitats on two continents and the many unsullied islands along their coasts. Indigenous cultures were slaughtered and converted, natural habitats annihilated in their rapacious quest for riches . . plundering resources and acquiring territories. In exchange they left rats, disease, whiskey and christianity. History books proudly describe it as an age of discovery.
It never stopped.
The only things that changed were the enormous growth in the number of people involved along with the sophistication and lethal scope of the weapons and tools of destruction brought to the task. The shot – callers are no longer kings, queens, popes or emperors. Now they are industrial giants, huge corporations and of course, their stewards, the political minions who clear and keep secure their paths. Real time, live viewing of current episodes can be enjoyed by simply turning on one’s TV to any news program.
So, here we are. “Beginning of the end?” Hardly. Free – fall is more like it. How will it play out? Can the momentum of destabilization on planet earth be broken . . . dialed back by corrective human action to a level capable of sustaining life or . . . is it now beyond the point of no return and simply a matter of evolutionary process . . . nature taking its course, seeking a new balance?
“Deep Tropics” – The image clearly states the message . . . It’s really getting way too hot.
***********************
Joseph Carlisi – Biography
Born and raised in New York City, he earned BA and MA degrees in Philosophy at Hunter College of the City University of New York and then continued his graduate studies in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology working under the mentorship of Marvin Minsky. Joseph worked as a part time content and copy editor for Harvard University Press (science and medicine) while attending M.I.T.
After ten years as a university lecturer, researcher and administrator, he started and managed an advertising / public relations firm in San Diego, CA that handled a wide range of commercial accounts. On the academic side, he published a series of seven articles on animal behavior for Harvard Magazine and two books: “A Guide to Personal Power” and most recently “Playing God on the Eve of Extinction”.
Joseph Carlisi creates oil on canvas paintings that can be described as vivid, surreal and unexpected. His paintings have been exhibited and sold in: Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York City, Miami, Tokyo, Yokohama, Amsterdam, Berlin and Salvador Brazil.
Joe’s art is available for purchase.
Contact him at carlisijoseph@yahoo.com.Advertisements
It’s too late for now, but next time this issue comes around, let’s hope our legislators heed the evidence and ignore misguided popular opinion
Hawaii lawmakers approved a bill earlier this year that will nearly double the state’s legal minimum wage over the next six years, from $10.10 to $18 an hour — despite overwhelming evidence against such a move.
And that evidence keeps piling up.
Just last month, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper by researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “Minimum Wages and Labor Markets in the Twin Cities,” that evaluated the effects of minimum-wage increases in the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
The researchers — Loukas Karabarbounis, Jeremy Lise and Anusha Nath — found that “establishments with larger exposure to the minimum wage experienced larger increases in their wage and larger declines in their jobs, hours and wage bill [than those with less exposure],” while “workers who are more exposed to the minimum wage experience significantly larger employment and earnings losses [than those with less exposure].”
Also last month, NBER published the findings of researchers from Stanford University, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennyslvania that looked at the issue from both short-run and long-run perspectives.
In their paper, “The Distributional Impact of the Minimum Wage in the Short and Long Run,” Erik Hurst, Patrick J. Kehoe, Elena Pastorino and Thomas Winberry said their “main message” was that “a permanent increase in the minimum wage to $15 has beneficial effects for low-earning workers in the short run but detrimental effects for them in the long run.”
In the short run, they said, “even a sizable increase in the minimum wage induces only a small adjustment in the employment of workers who initially earn less than the new minimum wage. Hence, an increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase in labor income and welfare for such workers.”
Over time, though, they continued, “as firms reorganize their production in response to the higher minimum, they start substituting away from these workers on whom the minimum wage binds and towards those on whom it does not.”
Unfortunately, it’s too late now for Hawaii’s lawmakers to undo what they did in the 2022 legislative session. But if they really want to support those in poverty in the future, they will resist further interfering with the state’s delicate labor market other than to remove the regulatory barriers that make new and unskilled workers less employable.
When bureaucracy grows, housing does not. That’s because more bureaucracy nearly always results in more regulation and delays — and I hope someday soon the majority of our policymakers in Hawaii will figure this out.
The latest bureaucratic wrench to be thrown into the gears of homebuilding, especially on Maui, is a June ruling by the state Commission on Water Resource Management — also known as “C worm” — that designated West Maui as a surface water and groundwater management area.
The ruling is intended to protect the environment and Maui’s water supply. But as a practical matter, it heightens the level of bureaucratic scrutiny regarding everything water-related on the island, including new housing.
Maui homebuilders already had to deal with the county Department of Water Supply. The agency not only manages and operates Maui’s existing water systems, it also implements land-use plans and identifies what resources are available for current and future use.
CWRM, on the other hand, administers the state water code and governs permits related to surface water diversions and ground water development. Its expansion into Maui’s affairs was protested by both local politicians and residents as an affront to home rule and for adding another hurdle to homebuilding.
Eva Blumenstein, program manager of the Maui County Department of Water Supply, said Tuesday on my regular “Hawaii Together” program on ThinkTech Hawaii that the CWRM ruling means that every water purveyor on Maui will have to apply for a water-use permit that is subject to special conditions under the state code.
During the program, hosted by my Grassroot Institute of Hawaii colleague Ted Kefalas, Blumenstein said parties applying for new-use permits, such as for wells not yet in production for housing tracts yet to be built, will be dealt with only after existing uses have been addressed.
“There are, at least, I think … 80 existing wells in West Maui,” Blumenstein said, “so maybe 60 or so of those are production wells that need to be processed.”
Given that Maui is still waiting for a new state permit requested in 2009 for a water-treatment facility, it’s safe to say, she said, that, “It’ll be years, I’m sure,” before any new permits are granted.
Part of the problem, she said, is that every application has to navigate a process wherein anyone can file an objection or comment, which then must be resolved.
How many applications are slowed down by objections? According to Blumenstein, the answer is “all of them.”
“Every water-use permit application we have filed has been objected to,” she said.
Thus, if an affordable-housing project wants to proceed on Maui and it has already managed to navigate the other land-use and zoning requirements, that is only the beginning.
“[Imagine] an affordable-housing project proposed to develop a new water source to serve a project,” she said. “If your water use in that permit application is contested, then that whole project may be subject to a contested-case hearing. So that could result in appeal and add time and expense to the applicant” — which, of course, the prospective homebuilder might not have.
The most frustrating thing about all this is that CWRM appears to be duplicating the work of the county water department while ignoring the expertise the county agency has to offer.
The county, said Blumenstein, had planned how to meet the needs of the community and even allocate resources in a sustainable manner that could still support new housing. But CWRM’s designation completely ignored the county’s calculations and alleges that West Maui’s water needs exceed the supply.
Blumenstein explained that the county plan includes sources of water other than groundwater.
The county’s plan, she said, “allocates the most appropriate resource to future demand, considering the county land-use plans, the community’s priorities, climate-changing impacts, legal constraints, etc. So future development, for example, will have non-potable irrigation needs.
“The [county] plan says that should be primarily met with recycled water, not by potable groundwater. The plan may also prescribe that supply for new development should not be served by that underlying aquifer for groundwater.”
This is not to cast aspersions on CWRM officials. Undoubtedly, they think they’re doing the right thing too. Either way, no one is disputing that it is important to act responsibly and preserve our state’s resources. That is as true for our water supplies as for anything else.
But delay and bureaucracy aren’t “green.” They are just additional barriers that make it harder to live in our state and more expensive to build and buy a home.
Yes, let’s protect our water supplies, on Maui and throughout our beautiful islands. But don’t make it impossible to build affordable homes. We need to reduce the number of bureaucratic hurdles to housing, not increase them with more layers of well-intended but inappropriate regulation. _____________
Keli‘i Akina is president and CEO of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.
It’s been obvious for some time that there is a physician crisis here in Hawaii. Simply put, we don’t have enough doctors here. The ones we do have are moving away, and most of the medical school graduates are opting to stay away from here.
According to the Hawaii Physician Shortage Crisis Task Force, taxes are one of the reason for the shortage. A petition attributed to the task force on change.org argues that Hawaii’s General Excise Tax (GET) taxes patients for getting sick or injured, and it penalizes physicians who serve Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE populations who are already accepting substantially lower reimbursement rates even before the GET is applied.
Health insurance and the GET don’t mix, that’s for sure. According to the petition, Medicare doesn’t pay GET, and prevents physicians from passing it on to the patient. The same is true for Medicaid/QUEST and TRICARE (the health care system for the federal uniformed services). Some private insurers also don’t pay for GET, requiring medical care providers to bill patients for the tax separately. No other state taxes health care in this way, the petition says.
So, health care providers are caught between a rock and a hard place. They are required to pay a tax that most states don’t impose on health care, and they can’t get economic relief by passing on the tax like most businesses do.
In the late 1970’s, insurance agents apparently had the same problem. A study undertaken by the Legislative Reference Bureau at the time found that there were three types of commissioned agents who were prevented from passing on the cost of the general excise tax to their customers. Taxi drivers were prohibited by county ordinance, travel agents were prohibited by federal law, and insurance agents were prohibited by state law. State legislators weren’t willing to do anything about the taxi drivers and the travel agents, apparently because the problem was created by another government entity; but they figured they needed to give some relief to the insurance agents.
Act 144 of 1978 recites, “The legislature finds that under present law insurance agents are prohibited from passing on the excise tax to their customers, while the other occupations which operate on a commission basis are allowed to pass on the tax. The direct result of this differential statutory treatment is that those occupations which can and do pass on the excise tax are subject to an actual burden of .15 per cent while insurance agents are subject to an actual tax burden of either 2 or 4 per cent.” That law made insurance agents’ commissions subject to GET at 0.15%. That rate is still in effect today, and the commissions are, moreover, exempt from the 0.5% county surcharge that is slapped on top of all 4% GET levies.
Arguably, doctors and medical practices are worse off than the insurance agents. Commission agents are taxed only on their commissions, and not on every dollar that comes in the door. Doctors and other service providers, however, are taxed on everything they earn from providing their services. Hospitals found a way out of the problem by structuring as charitable organizations, and then qualifying for tax-exempt organization treatment in the GET section applicable to charities. But individual doctors and small medical clinics can’t do that. (And one recent hospital that didn’t structure itself in that way found itself in bankruptcy court. Twice.)
Should medical services be given the 0.15% special rate like insurance agents are? There does seem to be precedent for that solution. Some lawmakers will think of doctors as wealthy fat cats who are there to be fleeced, not pitied. I wonder what they are going to say when THEY need doctors and can’t find them here.
After a successful first season, “Haole Do It” is back for more learning, laughing and living Aloha. Watch as Brother Noland, Paul Buckley and members of the Big Island community teach Adam, a mainland transplant, how to properly find his way in his new Hawaiian home.
Season Two covers topics such as Kapa, sustainable food growth, Malama Aina and more! Entertaining to locals and visitors alike, “Haole Do It” dives into local culture and explores what it means to be Haole in Hawaii through adventures, talk story, skills tests, community interviews and lighthearted laughter.
Tune in to K5 every Sunday at 9:30pm HST starting August 7, 2022. Episodes will be available worldwide on www.HawaiiNewsNow.com.
This commentary was originally published by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Aug. 3, 2022. _____________
By Keli‘i Akina
Candidates for political office in Hawaii have suddenly started talking about a policy option that has been kicking around for years: Exempt food and medicine from the state general excise tax (GET).
The reasoning is that such an exemption would offset the rising cost of groceries and other necessities at a time of accelerating inflation, when Hawaii residents desperately need help making ends meet.
And that reasoning is correct.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hawaii households spend a much higher percentage — 16.5% — of their budget on food than the U.S. average of 12.5%. Given that food prices in Honolulu alone have gone up 8.7% over the past year, a tax exemption for groceries would go a long way toward alleviating food costs, especially since with the county surcharges, Hawaii’s general excise tax can be as high as 4.712%.
To put it another way: Would it help your family to take $1 off your grocery bill every time you spent about $21? Anyone who has ever clipped a coupon or used a store discount card knows the answer to that question.
The state director of taxation recently argued there is no need to exempt food or medicine from the excise tax because drugs and prosthetics are already exempt, as are food stamp payments (“GET not as regressive as some believe,” Island Voices, Star-Advertiser, July 24). But the purpose of this exemption isn’t to help a select group of people. The idea is to give everyone some relief from Hawaii’s high cost of living — especially working families who don’t qualify for government assistance and must watch every penny.
Moreover, the benefits of the exemption wouldn’t stop there. By expanding the medicine exemption to include medical services, Hawaii policymakers would not only help lower healthcare costs, they also could help alleviate Hawaii’s doctor shortage.
Currently, the GET is not applied to hospitals, but it does apply to private practice physicians. Because federal rules do not allow doctors to pass on the tax to Medicare patients, physicians find it difficult to run a successful practice in Hawaii.
Combined with other problems doctors face, including the high cost of living and onerous regulations, the tax on medical services is among the reasons that many doctors have left Hawaii to practice elsewhere — and that’s according to the doctors themselves.
A 2020 study commissioned by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii showed that a GET exemption for medical services would result in savings of about $200 million a year. Furthermore, if the exemption persuaded just 820 new physicians to start a practice in Hawaii, that would result in 4,000 new full-time healthcare jobs in the state, as well as 4,000 new supplier and induced jobs, resulting in $1.4 billion in new economic activity and $67.3 million in taxes.
That tax bump would help offset lost revenue from the excise tax, without putting additional burdens on the industry.
In other words, the proposed GET tax exemptions would not just help lower the cost of living. They would have a ripple effect that creates jobs and spurs enterprise — as long as policymakers could resist the urge to “make up the difference” with more taxes elsewhere.
Hawaii already has a long list of excise tax exemptions intended to help different industries or lower costs. Isn’t it time that personal necessities such as food and medical care be exempted as well? _____________
Keli‘i Akina is president and CEO of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.
ABC released it’s trailer for Big Sky’s season 3 premiering Sept. 21 and gave us a first look at Henry Ian Cusick’s recurring character, Avery.
Big Sky is produced by Disney Television Studios’ 20th Television for ABC and is executive produced by C. J. Box, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Paul McGuigan, Matthew Gross, Ross Fineman, David E. Kelley, and Elwood Reid. Kelly serves as the series creator.
Narrated by Reba McIntyre, who also joined the cast as Sunny Barnes, leads an camping expedition and by her narrative, it sounds like the campers may be in for more than they signed up for!
Official Trailer
Henry Ian Cusick is Avery, a well-meaning, successful tech entrepreneur who books himself and his stepdaughter Emily on Barnes’ camping trip.
Jensen Ackles has also joined on as regular Sheriff Beau Arlen.
Season 3 premieres September 21 on ABC. Be sure to tune in!
Germany has been characterized after WWII by a series of remarkable developments that have reached its present culmination in the role the members of the Green Party play in the administration of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Unlike the Green parties in almost all other Western societies, the German Greens have succeeded in shedding their social movement background and the radical critique of the so-called “system.” They have become a regular political party and abide by the rules of the system, they once criticized in the way some of the so-called progressives undermine the mainstream agenda of the Democratic Party in the US. Realizing the need for this transformation a few years ago, they have succeeded in becoming accepted by a large section of German voters in all age groups.
This miraculous political development in contemporary Germany has not been noticed by Western politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. Even Germans themselves, as I discovered on a recent visit to my country of birth, are unaware that something remarkable is going on in their society. Germany is undergoing a political transformation that will not only have a tremendous impact on the demographically and economically most powerful member state of the European Union (EU). It will have repercussions for the EU.
According to recent polls published by the news magazine, Der Spiegel (June 25, 2022), Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party (pictured above) is one of the most popular politicians in Germany.Once considered “fringe”, Greens like Baerbock have proven to be political pragmatists.
Even the four victorious powers of WWII, which politically pacified the defeated country by occupying it until its reunification in 1990 with hundred of thousands of troops, could learn from contemporary Germany how to run their own societies peacefully and successfully. The messy political environments in the contemporary United States, United Kingdom, and even France call for a kind of pragmatic and at the same time visionary politics that is characterizing contemporary Germany. Putin’s Russia seems to be a hopeless case that can only be cured by an explosion of its civil society as a response to the sickening performance of its military in the Ukraine. Yet this scenario seems to linger at this moment in a distant future.
According to recent polls published by the news magazine,Der Spiegel (June 25, 2022), the three most popular politicians behind President Steinmeier and ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz are three members of his cabinet. All three of them are not members of his Social Democratic Party (SPD) but belong to the Green Party. They are the Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economics and Energy, Robert Habeck; the Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and the Minister for Agriculture, Cem Oezdemir.
These three politicians are members of a party that emerged out of the radical Green environmental, anti-nuclear and pacifist social movement of the 1970s. This social movement has overcome the internal divisions between the so-called ‘Realos’ and ‘Fundis’, the ecological realists, and fundamentalists, that tore the movement apart. These divisions have become a feature of the past.
Unlike right wing populists in France and the U.S. the right wing AfD party does not represent a threat to political stability in Germany.
Ideological tensions, however, color the parties on the extreme left and right, the Linke (Left) and the AfD (Alternative for Germany). Both parties are engaged in internal ideological struggles that demonstrate their growing irrelevance in German politics. Neither the extreme Linke nor the AfD constitute a threat to the stability of the political order as did the French left under Jean-Luc Melenchon and the right under Marine Le Pen in the recent parliamentary elections in France. Comparing German politics with those of France, Italy, and the United Kingdom or even the United States, Germany seems to today to be the most stable major Western country.
Yet this new German political miracle is not identical with the stability of the political system itself. It is the transformation of the Green social movement into a political party that has accepted the rules and conditions of a political system whose existential legitimacy they once questioned. They have become part of the system and are recognized by a majority of German voters, primarily still in the Western part of the country, as a viable and trusted political force.
Cem Oezdemir, Minister of Agriculture for the Scholtz administration was cited by Der Spiegel (June 25, 2022) as one of the three most popular politicians in Germany (behind President Steinmeier and ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz). He is a poster child for the successful integration of people with migrant backgrounds in German society.(This photo is dated 2009).
It is also remarkable that one of the three, Cem Oezdemir, underlines the successful integration of people with migrant background in society. He was born in Germany as the son of his Turkish parents who came to the country as guest workers in the 1960s. This is, by the way, also the background of the 29-year-old Aminata Toure, a German born daughter of African migrant parents, who was just appointed Minister of Social Affairs in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, after having been Vice President of the parliament in that state.
The Green Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Robert Habeck, was interviewed by the news magazine Der Spiegel about the unpredictable but certain energy crisis that will hit Germany this fall and winter. The way he responded to the question about the anticipated shortages for private and business consumers demonstrated the reasons for his appeal with voters primarily in the West of the country.
He was not evasive but confirmed the shortfalls that have been the result of the reduction in Russian gas and oil deliveries. Yet speaking at the end of June to the workers of a major refinery in the East, which will become a victim of the Russian gas delivery cut-off, he was greeted by protesting workers. These reductions that were the result of the German political response to Putin’s bloody invasion in the Ukraine and were initially criticized by American and other allies for their slow implementation, have been publicly identified as causing rising consumer prices and delivery problems in major sectors of the economy.
Robert Habeck, Green Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, didn’t hesitate to outline the tough measures he would recommend if Germany’s energy crisis precipitated by the Ukraine war went south.
Habeck emphasized the existence of these problems and their continuation. He didn’t refuse answers and affirmed the bleakness of the predictions. He didn’t hesitate to outline the tough measures he would recommend and be willing to implement. He also affirmed the commitment to the expansion of alternative energy sources and demonstrated political pragmatism without ever forgetting the heavy social costs these measures will cause.
Habeck, Baerbock and Oezdemir represent a new class of politicians whose political commitment can be identified with pragmatism. Yet the German Green pragmatists differ from their Anglo-American colleagues. Anglo-American pragmatism was defined by one of its founders, the British philosopher Charles Saunders Peirce, at the beginning of the 20th century, as being a realism devoid of any moral ideas. A recent political portrayal of Habeck was published under the headline: “Adieu, Ideale” (Goodbye, Ideals) [in: Sueddeutsche Zeitung, June 28. 2022]. It suggested that his no-nonsense attitude towards the coming energy crisis was captured by this phrase.
I think the author, Hillary Klute, missed the crucial difference. Habeck and his fellow Greens are pragmatists, yet they never forget the ecological, social, and overall moral consequences of their actions. They have not forgotten the comprehensive ‘Green’ vision of a world in trouble that can only be saved from environmental collapse by political action that recognizes the terminal nature of the threat.
Unlike the Green members of his cabinet , Olaf Scholz (at center during the recent G7 conference) hesitated to commit to the termination of the Nordstream-2 pipeline and couldn’t bring himself to issue a statement in support of a Ukrainian victory. Instead, he stated that Putin should not win.
Reflecting on the moral dimension of their political identity, the ‘Green’ trio in Scholz’ cabinet realized from the moment Putin’s criminal invasion was launched on February 24 that he had to be stopped. Scholz had hesitated before that event for a long time to commit himself to the termination of the Nordstream-2 pipeline yet gave his famous “Zeitenwende” speech in the German parliament, the Bundestag, with the promise of upgrading the military budget by 100 billion Euros a few days after the invasion and declared his unconditional support for the defense of the Ukraine against the bloody invader.
He had probably hesitated out of respect for the pacifist legacy of post-WWII Germany and especially the Social Democratic foreign policy initiatives by the two Social Democratic chancellors, Willy Brandt (1969-1974) and Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982). The memory of his own radical left youth may have added to his reluctance. Even at the G7 meeting in Germany that he led in June, he couldn’t bring himself to issue a statement in support of a Ukrainian victory. Instead, he stated that Putin should not win.
The Green members of his cabinet insisted that the Ukraine should win. Their moral compass told them that the lessons from WWII and the history of Nazi Germany should be a clear refusal to compromise with leaders like Putin. His reckless and violent behavior and the ruthless conduct of Russian soldiers reminded them of Hitler and the real Nazis Putin pretends to be fighting in the Ukraine.
***********************
Manfred Henningsen is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, where he taught from 1970 until 2020. He received his PhD under Eric Voegelin in Munich in 1967. His dissertation was a critical assessment of A. J. Toynbee’s A Study of History in the general context of comparative philosophy of history. It became published in 1967 as Menschheit und Geschichte (Mankind and History). From 1968 until 1974 he edited and contributed, together with Juergen Gebhardt and Peter J. Opitz the 14 volume paperback series Geschichte des politischen Denkens (History of political thought), Munich. In addition, he published Der Fall Amerika (Munich, 1974) and Der Mythos Amerika (Frankfurt, 2009), books that dealt with European Anti-Americanism and American self-interpretations. He edited Vol.5 of Voegelin’s Collected Works, Modernity without Restraint (2000); Vol. IX of the German translation of Order & History (Ordnung und Geschichte), Das Oekumenische Zeitalter. Weltherrschaft und Philosophie (Munich 2004) and the original German version of Voegelin’s 1964 Munich lectures on Hitler und die Deutschen (2006). In addition, he published 23 articles in the German cultural journal Merkur and articles and reviews in The Review of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, China Review International, and many edited volumes on history, political philosophy and politics.
A GET Exemption for Food
There has been a lot of talk these days about possibly adding a General Excise Tax (GET) exemption for food and medicine. The three Democratic candidates for governor all support it, as Hawaii News Now reported. The argument that most people make is that the GET, which applies to most purchases of things including food, is regressive. Thus, it falls more heavily on those less able to make ends meet.
Structurally, of course, that is true. The GET is a straight percentage of a sale. It doesn’t matter whether the buyer is wealthy or destitute, it’s the same percentage. Both rich and poor people need to eat, and some studies have shown that poor people spend more of their budget on food.
But, as Director of Taxation Isaac Choy pointed out in a Star-Advertiser editorial, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the tax burden falls more heavily on the poor because (1) there is already a GET exemption for food bought with U.S. Department of Agriculture food benefits, such as under the SNAP or WIC programs; (2) the State provides income tax credits for lower-income folks, one of which is called the “Food/Excise Tax Credit,” to defray those costs; and (3) there is already a GET exemption for prescription drugs and prosthetic devices. He reasons that these new proposed exemptions would primarily benefit wealthier folks and tourists.
Other states have exemptions in their sales tax statutes for food and medicine. However, the devil is in the details. For example, a bag of fresh vegetables probably would qualify under most people’s definitions of food. A hamburger from a fast-food establishment? Some previous Hawaii bills that attempted exempt food would have excluded the hamburger because it’s prepared food and not groceries. How about a Twinkie? Some states debate whether that counts because their authorities want people to buy “real food” and not “junk food,” whatever that means. And when it comes to medicine, most people will accept prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines like aspirin, Motrin, or Aleve. What about homeopathic products and nutritional supplements that are believed to have some benefit but that haven’t been scientifically proven? And what about illegal drugs, or semi-illegal drugs like marijuana?
Other considerations that go into writing an exemption like this center around what part of the population is to be benefited by the exemptions, and at what cost. It’s easier for the food exemption to encompass the vegetables, the hamburger, and the Twinkie, for example, but a broadly written exemption will cost more. It’s easier and simpler for the medical exemption to cover medicine, nutritional supplements, homeopathic products, cannabis, and medical services, but that would cost more too.
And what is to become of the income tax credits that supposedly benefit the low-income families? I have doubts about the tax credits. There are too many of them, they are complicated, and it’s very easy for people who don’t know about them to forget to claim them. People who don’t claim them lose them after a year. People who claim them but do so incorrectly might also lose them even though they might have been entitled to credits if they were claimed correctly. That’s why we have been asking lawmakers to think about rate reductions, or bracket adjustments, to lessen the income tax burden on those less fortunate rather than adding layer upon layer of complicated credits (right now we have the earned income tax credit, food/excise tax credit, credit for low-income household renters, low-income housing tax credit, and there are others).
There may be a solution to help ease the burden that our state taxes add to our astronomical cost of living. The solution won’t be simple. It will take great leadership to put together a plan and herd the different cats at our Legislature to get behind it.