David Harsanyi has more on sin taxes:
We already have set a precedent with cigarettes. The argument most often employed by sin tax proponents revolves around economic externalities — or the idea that everyone shouldn’t have to pay for the destructive habits of the few. (Though there is evidence that the societal cost of obesity is largely inflated, as it were.) I have sympathy for this argument. So perhaps all citizens can begin taking fiscal and moral responsible for their own behavior . . .
. . . I’m just kidding. That’s crazy talk.
But once we start rationing health care, externalities will only become more of an issue. If we collectively pay for health insurance, then what is to stop the majority of us from dictating to the minority what it can eat or drink?
Or as John Galt famously declared, “Get the hell out of my way — I’m going to Burger King!”
What I have never understood- what needs to be explaine to me- is the logic of calculating a budget using tax money that will slowly evaporate-*by design.*
If you tax a thing in order to discourage its sale, then you’re signing up for revenue loss.
How does this help anybody?
Obama has no guts. If he really wanted to improve the health of your average American he’d reduce the subsidies that make meat so cheap: water, wheat, etc. Oh, and he’d make massive feedlots illegal on the grounds that their runoff is screwing up the delta to the point where hurricanes that once broke up harmlessly miles off coast now make landfall a whole lot closer, radically increasing the damage they do. No need for taxes. Argh!
Jeff
http://thoughtgun.squarespace.com/
“Or as John Galt famously declared, “Get the hell out of my way — I’m going to Burger King!””
What page was that on again ( as he furiously leafs through his copy of Atlas Shrugged)?
The sad part is that all these attempts to improve health will raise medical costs. About 12 years ago or more the Economist did a study proving that smokers more than paid their way; the government got all the extra taxes and as smokers live 7 – 10 years less than non smokers they received less social security and medicare. The cost of dieing being roughly the same regardless of what you die of, the only way the government was going to save money on health care is to encourage seventh graders to smoke.
You’re right Jim. That’s the dirty little secret even the tobacco companies don’t want you to know–there is no social cost to smoking because the medical care smokers need is more than offset by the fact that they die earlier.
The whole “sin tax” issue makes me want to puke. First there’s the name, which should raise first amendment flags and tips their hand that what they are really doing is legislating morality. Then there’s the fact that we all have bad habits that might kill us, but only some bad habits become media anti-darlings and get the attention of demogogues whoring for a few easy votes.