Getting Stupid Over Cigarette Taxes
Last year, my home state of Minnesota was the latest in a long line of states that took the easy way out and opted to raise taxes (er, fees) on tobacco products as a flimsy, short-term means of plugging budget holes. This year, my adopted home state of Iowa looks poised to travel down the same cowardly road. Like nearly everything about the over-the-top anti-smoking movement of the early 21st century, there are so many reasons for this lifelong non-smoker to heartily condemn tobacco tax hikes that it's hard to even know where to begin with the criticism. Indeed, a single blog entry wouldn't do justice to the multitude of societal ills that the forces of Big Anti-Tobacco are clubbing America and most of the Western world over the head with, so I'll focus my indignation in this particular blog entry on my three biggest problems with tobacco tax hikes.
My first criticism is the ethical bankruptcy of the proverbial "other guy tax," particularly when "the other guy" happens to be the person least capable of affording the additional burden. There are a number of reasons why tobacco taxes are the most popular form of taxation, none of which are good, but the main reason is that more than 75% of the population doesn't have to pay them. They get to defer the cost of government onto the backs of a politically incorrect minority even though, despite the mythological talking points to the contrary, smokers represent the least expensive demographic of individuals regarding the extraction of government services over a lifetime. I've always been of the mind that taxation should be a shared burden that most affects those with the greatest ability to pay. Tobacco taxes undermine both of these principles, affecting only the 22% of men and women who smoke, and who are disproportionately working class and below the median income. Its a tax that is regressive, selective, immoral and a logistical contradiction....the worst of all worlds.
Secondly, the increasing dependency by every level of government on this single tax will ultimately yield diminishing returns. The cost of smoking cigarettes has exploded in the last 10 years, and shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. Make it too expensive for smokers to indulge their habit and millions of people will discontinue that habit. Meanwhile, state and federal governments are constantly dreaming up new programs that they intend to pay for using money from tobacco taxes and outlays from the tobacco companies as part of the 1998 settlement. How is this all gonna come together? Through their narrow-minded gluttony, they're shooting the goose that's laying them all the golden eggs.
What should scare the bejeezus non-smokers about the above scenario is that when the pinata of tobacco revenues bursts, political leaders will be looking for a new path of least resistance to replace all of that revenue loot. The "other guy tax" of yesterday will become "my problem" as soon as these weasels tar and feather consumers of every other non-puritanical product with a regressive and supersized "sin tax" of its own. Think of everything you had to eat today and how, to the jubilant applause of the out-of-control nanny-state special interest culture, revenue-hungry politicians would sign into law measures that would more than double your daily food and drink bill. A quarter sin tax for every cup of coffee, 50 cents on your pack of Oreos, $1 for your 12-pack of Mountain Dew....and pretty soon we're talking about real money. And it's all coming our way if we don't draw a line in the sand over state and federal governments' dysfunctional and counterproductive means of collecting revenue, with increasing dependence on the taxes incurred from a declining product (tobacco) at the top of that list.
And lastly, remember all of those TV ads after 9-11 telling us that the use of illegal drugs finance terrorism? It seemed like a far-fetched means of trying to talk teenagers out of using drugs, but technically it was very true. The underground global drug trade has long been a fundraising source of terrorist cells, but it's no longer the #1 form of funding terrorism as it was back in 2002. Four years later, cigarette smuggling in America and Europe has become terrorism's primary means of fundraising. Basically, if you're a terrorist who wants to raise $2 million in a weekend, you fill a semi full of $20 per carton Marlboros in North Carolina and truck them up to New York City where they sell for almost $80 per carton.....or a corresponding scenario in Europe where the price disparity is equally substantial. When the value of a good or service is artificially inflated through taxation, it basically amounts to a quasi-prohibition, opening the door for organized crime of some sort (like terrorism) to deliver that good or service to its consumers closer to market value. With tens of millions of smokers at home and more than a billion worldwide, that's a pretty significant market for "bad guys" to tap into if we insist on providing them the means to do so. And that's the irony here. New York City Michael Bloomberg really got the ball rolling with the supersized tobacco tax hikes as a response to diminished tax revenue in his city following the 9-11 attacks. Through his "solution" to that revenue loss, Bloomberg has very likely given terrorists the funding that they'll be using to wage their next attack against his city.
To paraphrase that deep thinker George Walker Bush, the increasingly overzealous crusade against tobacco consumption has become the central front on the war against personal freedoms in this country. As a nation, we're soon gonna have to decide if we're gonna allow insurance companies and revenue-hungry government to turn us into a health-and-wellness police state. Our willingness to either yawn or celebrate every time The Man decides to smack around smokers is a frightening indication of how we're likely to respond as the trend of personal freedom theft expands. As ethically hollow and financially counterproductive as tobacco taxes are, their continued popularity and the media's unwillingness to report its many blistering downsides tells me this is yet another losing battle. Chalk it up to one more reason why the America of tomorrow looks to be a place that spits in the face of everything I believe.
My first criticism is the ethical bankruptcy of the proverbial "other guy tax," particularly when "the other guy" happens to be the person least capable of affording the additional burden. There are a number of reasons why tobacco taxes are the most popular form of taxation, none of which are good, but the main reason is that more than 75% of the population doesn't have to pay them. They get to defer the cost of government onto the backs of a politically incorrect minority even though, despite the mythological talking points to the contrary, smokers represent the least expensive demographic of individuals regarding the extraction of government services over a lifetime. I've always been of the mind that taxation should be a shared burden that most affects those with the greatest ability to pay. Tobacco taxes undermine both of these principles, affecting only the 22% of men and women who smoke, and who are disproportionately working class and below the median income. Its a tax that is regressive, selective, immoral and a logistical contradiction....the worst of all worlds.
Secondly, the increasing dependency by every level of government on this single tax will ultimately yield diminishing returns. The cost of smoking cigarettes has exploded in the last 10 years, and shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. Make it too expensive for smokers to indulge their habit and millions of people will discontinue that habit. Meanwhile, state and federal governments are constantly dreaming up new programs that they intend to pay for using money from tobacco taxes and outlays from the tobacco companies as part of the 1998 settlement. How is this all gonna come together? Through their narrow-minded gluttony, they're shooting the goose that's laying them all the golden eggs.
What should scare the bejeezus non-smokers about the above scenario is that when the pinata of tobacco revenues bursts, political leaders will be looking for a new path of least resistance to replace all of that revenue loot. The "other guy tax" of yesterday will become "my problem" as soon as these weasels tar and feather consumers of every other non-puritanical product with a regressive and supersized "sin tax" of its own. Think of everything you had to eat today and how, to the jubilant applause of the out-of-control nanny-state special interest culture, revenue-hungry politicians would sign into law measures that would more than double your daily food and drink bill. A quarter sin tax for every cup of coffee, 50 cents on your pack of Oreos, $1 for your 12-pack of Mountain Dew....and pretty soon we're talking about real money. And it's all coming our way if we don't draw a line in the sand over state and federal governments' dysfunctional and counterproductive means of collecting revenue, with increasing dependence on the taxes incurred from a declining product (tobacco) at the top of that list.
And lastly, remember all of those TV ads after 9-11 telling us that the use of illegal drugs finance terrorism? It seemed like a far-fetched means of trying to talk teenagers out of using drugs, but technically it was very true. The underground global drug trade has long been a fundraising source of terrorist cells, but it's no longer the #1 form of funding terrorism as it was back in 2002. Four years later, cigarette smuggling in America and Europe has become terrorism's primary means of fundraising. Basically, if you're a terrorist who wants to raise $2 million in a weekend, you fill a semi full of $20 per carton Marlboros in North Carolina and truck them up to New York City where they sell for almost $80 per carton.....or a corresponding scenario in Europe where the price disparity is equally substantial. When the value of a good or service is artificially inflated through taxation, it basically amounts to a quasi-prohibition, opening the door for organized crime of some sort (like terrorism) to deliver that good or service to its consumers closer to market value. With tens of millions of smokers at home and more than a billion worldwide, that's a pretty significant market for "bad guys" to tap into if we insist on providing them the means to do so. And that's the irony here. New York City Michael Bloomberg really got the ball rolling with the supersized tobacco tax hikes as a response to diminished tax revenue in his city following the 9-11 attacks. Through his "solution" to that revenue loss, Bloomberg has very likely given terrorists the funding that they'll be using to wage their next attack against his city.
To paraphrase that deep thinker George Walker Bush, the increasingly overzealous crusade against tobacco consumption has become the central front on the war against personal freedoms in this country. As a nation, we're soon gonna have to decide if we're gonna allow insurance companies and revenue-hungry government to turn us into a health-and-wellness police state. Our willingness to either yawn or celebrate every time The Man decides to smack around smokers is a frightening indication of how we're likely to respond as the trend of personal freedom theft expands. As ethically hollow and financially counterproductive as tobacco taxes are, their continued popularity and the media's unwillingness to report its many blistering downsides tells me this is yet another losing battle. Chalk it up to one more reason why the America of tomorrow looks to be a place that spits in the face of everything I believe.
posted by Mark at 6:55 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home