We all imagine ourselves to be rational people who are models of consistency. It’s just that we don’t practice what we preach.
Recently, I went on record favoring a hike in the federal tax on cigarettes to help pay for federally funded health programs, noting that treating illness related to smoking adds $68 billion a year to the bill for health care in this country. One person who read the piece asked if I would also support a tax on foods with high levels of saturated fat, with the revenues earmarked for health care.
Taxing ice cream somehow seems downright un-American. But if cigarettes are to be taxed to help cover the tab for health care, is there any rational reason for not doing the same with ice cream? There is, after all, an abundance of data linking consumption of saturated fat to heart disease and other serious and costly health problems.
Some might try to argue their way out of this conundrum by suggesting that smoking is in some way sinful while eating a hot fudge sundae is as all-American as baseball and apple pie (which, by the way, also has a high level of saturated fat if the crust is made with lard). But is it really any more immoral to enjoy smoking a cigarette or a good cigar than it is to enjoy a hot fudge sundae? For that matter, is there anything at all immoral about enjoying a cigarette or a good cigar?
Some might argue that there is a difference between ice cream and cigarettes because ice cream possesses nutritional value whereas cigarettes do not. But let’s be honest. The reason most of us eat ice cream is not because of its nutritional value, which, in substantial measure, is overshadowed by the bad things it does to us. When we are concerned about nutrition, we eat salads, fresh fruit and low-fat yogurt. When we wish to give our taste buds a treat, we eat ice cream.
Granted, sometimes we split the difference and opt for ice milk or low-fat brands of ice cream. But most of us have trouble persuading ourselves that these varieties are as tasty as the high-fat varieties of ice cream.
Intuitively, it somehow seems to be a bad idea to place a special tax on ice cream and other foods high in saturated fat. But when looking at the matter in a rational matter, one is hard-pressed to find any compelling reasons for not doing so once one comes out in favor of an earmarked tax on tobacco products.
When confronted with this uncomfortable fact of life, the best one can do is to change the subject. Like to high-minded notions such as equal pay for equal work. That’s something we all ought to be able to defend.
When I ask my students if they support the principle of equal pay for equal work, they all, without hesitation, respond in the affirmative. I then ask them why full professors (of whom I happen to be one) should be paid more than assistant professors, noting that at many colleges, including the one at which I teach, full professors and assistant professors have similar teaching loads and do the same type of work.
The students usually respond by saying that because of years of teaching experience, full professors are better teachers and, accordingly, should be paid more. I respond by asking them if, on the average, they give full professors higher marks than assistant professors when filling out course evaluations.
Silence usually overwhelms the classroom at this point, broken only by the shuffling of feet trying to distract attention from the failure of the mind to perform.
Occasionally, someone suggests that it would be bad for morale if full professors didn’t get paid more than assistant professors. That might be true, at least insofar as the morale of full professors is concerned. But that’s not to argue the case on the basis of equal pay for equal work.
The best one can do when confronted with the question of how the faculty pay scale relates to the notion of equal pay for equal work is to change the subject. Like to the merits of hiking the cigarette tax to help pay for health care.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Now that’s something with which we can all agree. At least part of the time.
