The initial post was based on an NZI discussion solely focused on the nature of tax cuts – government spending issues were left to the side. Given they were only discussing taxes, my criticism of their critique seemed war rented methinks 😉

“Can we agree that myopia and the externality effect on the public health system justifies some government intervention to insulate homes and that this would employ people who would otherwise be out of work”

Not quite. We can agree that when these things are an issue it can justify government intervention.

But I can’t go as far as stating that this is what I believe. In an objective sense we agree – it is the value judgments that we differ on, which is good 🙂

@FreneticMonkey

Why would people randomly be researching insulating their homes – providing information helps people recognise choices and make decisions for themselves 🙂

so rationality is so limited that people cant get on teh interwebs and inform themselves about insulation

but not limited enough to justify the heavy hand of the state offering to insulate their homes?

I’m not just looking at the costs – our conversation just moved onto discussing the measurement of costs 😉 Remember I said:

“If they value the improvement at a sufficiently low rate, and given that the cost is positive, I think it is fair to give them the option”

I would term the decrease in power bills as a benefit myself – as I always try to define costs very very narrowly.

However, if it turns out that people would make back the money in power bills in a very short amount of time – then the key is to tell them so, and to help inform people how they can get the job done.