Regarding the lift of taxation on breastpumpts and devices:  Among my
various things I do, I am a policy analyst.  I have not reviewed the
Maryland policy proposal, but I can give you a basic overview of the
economic theory behind this.

As Naomi said, "One of the tools legislators have to encourage or discourage
certain behaviors that they can't mandate directly is to
reduce or increase  taxed charged on them."

POSITIVE EXTERNALITY AND NEGATIVE EXTERNALITY theory are the underlying
reasons for this.  What? you ask.  In very simple terms an externality
occurs when a product or service produced (in the capitalist economy) that
creates uncaptured economic effects.  A negative externality occurs when a
factory produces pollution and that pollution has a negative effect on
society, but the price of the good produced does not incorporate the clean
up costs of that pollution.  Taxation is one way to "capture" this cost and
make the responsible parties pay the true cost.  This taxation theory also
takes advantage of something called  PRICE ELASTICITY OF DEMAND, where some
consumers have a more flexible or "elastic" demand for a product than
others, depending upon the price.  In general, as price goes up, demand goes
down, but certain populations and certain goods have different proportions
that the increased price results in.  For example, the state of California
imposed a cigarette tax which was then also used to help finance antismoking
campaigns, forest fires and the cost of health care.  After the increased
price of cigarettes, the demand for cigarettes went down.  It especially
decreases in the most price elastic populations such as teenagers and poor
folks.  Some analysts and economists believe that this is a regressive form
of taxation because it disproportionately impacts the less affluent.  Many
excise taxes are meant to tax goods that we want to discourage the use of
and to raise money (also called "sin taxes").

Now, as for positive externalities...when a good or service produces net
gain for a society that is not captured by the price of those goods and
services, we have a positive externality.  For example, a bee keeper locates
her bee boxes next to a clover farm.  Both the clover farm and the bee
keeper benefit, as well as the larger community without any of this being
captured by the market.  If your neighbor installs a street lamp and you
benefit without paying,  the light causes a positive externality and you are
said to be free riding.  In the case of breastfeeding, society benefits from
more breastfed babies by having less land devoted to cows and sow, less
water diverted to grow grain to feed these cows, fewer byproducts of formula
production, less pollution because of packaging and transportation of
bringing formula to market, and a healthier population and workforce.

The idea that breastpumps or devices are taxed is repugnant to me (I live in
a no sales tax state but do support sales taxes on some things) because
breastpumps are clearly helping to create this positive externality.  As
such, we should use policy to encourage breastfeeding.  By dropping a tax
from the pumps, we are making pumps relatively lower in cost; however, to
really account for the economic contribution we should be subsidizing breast
pumps to the end that they encourage breastfeeding.    These types of
relative subsidies (either non taxation or actual subsidization) have the
greatest impact on those people who are most "price sensitive" or who have
the most elastic "price elasticity of demand."

I hope I haven't confused anyone.  If you need clarification, do let me
know.

--Chris Hafner-Eaton, PhD, MPH, CHES, IBCLC    [log in to unmask]
€€€INFANT CUISINE AND MOTHER CARE: LACTATION CONSULTING & PERINATAL CARE€€€
mom, wife, active UU church member, educator, lactation consultant,
homeschool mom, researcher, scientist, author, organic gardener,
photographer, wilderness adventurer, lapidary creator, lousy cleaner;) 

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html