Many people reading this would bristle at the idea that tax breaks can be equated to welfare. The former reduces the tax bill that you need to give the government, while the latter gives you free money&#x2F;services that you never had to pay for yourself. Depending on your perception, the 2 can seem wildly different and to say they are equivalent would be a hard sell.<p>However, the article does touch on 2 very important ideas:<p>1) Redistribution of wealth is an innate part of government. The term has such a bad connotation, but so many immensely popular government programs basically come down to redistribution of wealth. An increase in welfare redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. The 401k tax subsidy redistributes wealth from the middle-class to the rich. The mortgage-interest-deduction redistributes wealth from renters to home-owners, and especially, multiple-home-owners. People associated &quot;redistribution of wealth&quot; with robbing the rich, but in reality, a huge number of tax deductions have the opposite effect of redistributing money from those with less money, to those with more money.<p>2) Instead of boldly owning up to the above, politicians try to get around the &quot;redistribution&quot; stigma by sticking in tax deductions&#x2F;expenditures instead. These tax expenditures seem more politically palatable, but in reality, have the effect of distorting the market and picking coincidental winners and losers. HSA plans? You just rewarded people with predictable medical expenditures over those with unpredictable medical expenditures. Mortgage interest deductions? You just rewarded people who prefer to invest in real-estate, and not those who prefer to invest in stocks. What you end up with are certain people, who undeservedly benefit greatly from these tax programs, and others who are just as deserving, but don&#x27;t get the benefits.<p>Using tax deductions to enforce &quot;fairness&quot; is simply not a good idea. Issues of fairness should be managed at a macro scale, by adjusting the overall tax rates, and through the public safety net. Tax deductions should be used as a very specifically targeted tool, aimed at discouraging negative externalities, and encouraging positive externalities. For everything else, we would be better off scrapping them entirely, and adjusting the overall tax rates downward instead.