Mon, Mar 09, 2009 page8

• [LETTERS]

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  Don't ban electric cigarettes

  All global smoking bans define cigarettes as items that contain tobacco and about 4,000 chemicals, only one of which is nicotine, and are lit and burned by combustion to produce tobacco smoke. Electronic cigarettes are not tobacco cigarettes by that legal definition (“John Tung Foundation takes aim at e-cigarettes,” March 6, page 4).

  With electronic cigarettes, a misnomer product name if ever there was one, there is no tobacco, no lighting, no burning and no 3,999 other chemicals. Categorizing electronic cigarettes to be the same as tobacco cigarettes simply because they both contain nicotine is junk science based solely on emotional association. Banning electronic cigarettes would also mean having to ban nicotine patches and gum too, as well as at least 72 food sources that billions of people depend on.

  The source of nicotine for electronic cigarettes could easily be from something other than tobacco. There are 66 other species of plants that contain nicotine, including potatoes and tomatoes. If nicotine is banned, then the whole human race will starve to death. Can anti-smokers really be that emotionally and mentally stupid?

  Apparently the answer is yes, they can. Instead of worshiping anti-smokers and giving them money to eradicate nicotine, anti-smokers need a lot of psychological counseling.

  STEVE HARTWELL

  Toronto, Canada

  Rethinking debt approach

  Taiwan’s public debt stood at somewhere between 27 percent and 32 percent of GDP last year.

  While the size of this public debt is not quite on a European scale (where public debt often reaches 50 percent of GDP or more), nevertheless it can ill be afforded at a time when the economy is in recession. As major companies in Taiwan bend over backwards to find ways to streamline their operations, it is lamentable that the government does not follow their example.

  The single greatest action the government could take to “stimulate” the economy would be to eliminate the source of public debt, which will continue to be a drag on the economic growth of Taiwan for many years to come.

  Public debt comes from public spending on such things as education and healthcare. It is not merely a fallacy that such services must be publicly funded in the name of providing a “safety net.” It is a pernicious error that helps to entrap people in a spider’s web of dependency on the state.

  There are a range of policy options available for paying off public debt. The first is tax increases — which nobody likes except those clients of the state who will be in a position to benefit. The second is to borrow from the public and external creditors via the bond market. Bonds, however, must eventually be paid back either by further debt or from present (or future) tax revenues. A third option is public investment in the stock and currency markets both home and abroad, which begs the question of why individual taxpayers in Taiwan are not competent to do so for themselves without the government taking their money in the first place.

  But there is also a very dangerous fourth option — which your publication has not seriously opposed. That option is to inflate the money supply by asking the central bank to “inject liquidity” (ie, print money) into the economy.

  At the very least, any proposed increase in the money supply at this point must be made only on an assessment which includes ‘hoarding’ — as Werner Sinn recently slandered it on your editorial pages (“Inflation is not the risk, Japanese-style deflation is,” March 2, page 9) — as part of the demand for money and not separate from the demand for money.

  To act otherwise would certainly lead to greater currency depreciation, consequent price rises and damage to savings which would hurt the poorest people in Taiwan most of all.

  It is of great importance that, throughout this year, you and your sister publication, the Liberty Times, vigorously agitate against both monetary inflation and increases in public spending in any sector.

  Equally I urge you toward consideration of the benefits of alternative monetary systems free from political interference and of the benefits of a true program of privatization in services currently funded by a coercive and wasteful drag on the productive activities of all of the people in Taiwan.

  MICHAEL FAGAN

  Tainan
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