"Sin taxes go away, so constituents are nudged and nannied and pandered to less."
This is a terrible idea. The outcome would likely be a statistically significant increase in deaths do to drinking and smoking increases.
This is a terrible idea. The outcome would likely be a statistically significant increase in deaths do to drinking and smoking increases.
I don't really think it is the government's role to police private behavior choices.
It would also cause the personally responsible poor to have more money because sales taxes are regressive. God forbid a blue collar worker wants to have a couple of beers after work.
Not only that, but cigarette companies target youths with an addictive substance that people eventually want to stop using but have a very difficult time doing so.
If smoking reduced total health expenditure (because those who die early from smoking-related illnesses avoid the costliest years of their lives), would you advocate for the government to encourage smoking?
I considered multiple facets when making this decision: 1) people are harmed by it, 2) even though people willfully start doing it, they can't always willfully stop doing it, 3) it negatively impacts them and their family's health/finances, 4) it negatively impacts society in a variety of ways.
I believe that impacts to society is what gives society (read: government) the right or obligation to intervene. Taxes are an effective mechanism of softly encouraging good behavior and they have much less risk of unintended consequences than total bans do.
How do you decide the role of government intervening?
Is the role of government to maximize each individual's contribution/cost ratio by force of law, how do you balance that against personal freedom?
Off the top of my head, I'd say a combination of genetics (studies show political leaning has a genetic component) and input (from social circles and reading).
I believe voluntary association is the only moral form of governance.
Yes. The cost of my health insurance is based off of the cost to hospitals; hospitals need to charge paying customers more if they have to write off their non-paying customers.
> All of our stupid pointless wars cost me money, as well as being deeply evil, but that argument hasn't stopped them yet...
Our stupid pointless wars are indeed one of the biggest breakdowns in democracy. Bush promised to stay out of foreign entanglements and Obama promised to leave Iraq and Afghanistan. As CiC, the president does not need any help from congress to withdraw (or refrain from sending) troops, so these are much easier promises to follow through on those that require congressional approval.
> in the meantime keep your hands off my consumption of beverages.
If you're going to wait for politicians to act with high standards of ethics before they pass any regulations, you are, for all practical purposes, arguing for anarcho-libertarianism.
The thing that the system does, continuously, for decades, is not a "big breakdown". It is obviously the purpose of the system, intended by those who control the system. The system is not waiting for a good person to come along. That candidates lie about everything all the time has been a commonplace assumption throughout my lifetime. Yet still they are elected...
Since I am an anarchist, I often argue against arbitrary authority and its capricious and unjust actions. I contrast my position with those of people like yourself who believe that their own economic decisions entitle them to subvert the autonomy of others.
Sales taxes are in some sense fungible, in that vendors could eat the cost to consumers by reducing their prices, in the same sense as a direct tax on those vendors would also be fungible, in that vendors would raise their prices to account for the taxes. Arguably, consumer-facing sin taxes are cheaper and simpler to administrate, and are the superior solution.
Is any government calculating the net cost between tax dollars spent because of cigarette smoking and tax dollars gathered from tobacco products and setting the tax in that manner?
Has any government put a lower or higher tax rate on any tobacco product based on risk or cost profile?
It is not that the arguments you are making aren't viable, I'm just not so sure that anyone is actually doing those things.
You can obviously disagree with the argument, but it's not incoherent and is in keeping with the underlying notion of a Pigovian tax.