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"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 signific
by JTbane 7y ago
"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.
- colechristensen 7y agoSo? 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.
- mywittyname 7y agoBut most of us do feel like the government should police behavior that negatively impacts us all. I want to dissuade people from smoking or excess drinking because it makes health insurance for me and my family more expensive while tying up hospital resources treating people for preventable diseases. 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.
- EPTmVux 7y agoThen the solution should be decoupling other people's behavior from your health care costs.
- leetcrew 7y agovouched this because it is a legitimate, if inelegant, contribution to the discussion.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago> I want to dissuade people from smoking or excess drinking because it makes health insurance for me and my family more expensive while tying up hospital resources treating people for preventable diseases. 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?
- mywittyname 7y agoNo. 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.
- aidenn0 7y agoThis works so long as you don't think it's unethical for hospitals to turn away people that can't pay. Otherwise other people's negative health choices cost me money.
- colechristensen 7y agoMany of other people's choices cost you money. In fact it is quite difficult to decouple any choice from affecting the rest of the population. 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?
- chillacy 7y agoWe have this technology called representative democracy which allows us to make that determination. Other societies have other technology. It all boils down to might makes right in the end though.
- colechristensen 7y agoThat is how laws get made, it is not how a person decides their ideas about the roles of government. I am asking the latter.
- chillacy 7y agoProbably the same answer to "how do people form beliefs?" 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).
- rootw0rm 7y agoIt's easy for me to decide on government intervention. I believe voluntary association is the only moral form of governance.
- 7y ago
- tptacek 7y agoYou don't have to believe it's the government's role to police private choices to support sin taxes; another coherent way to look at them is that they internalize market externalities. 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.
- colechristensen 7y agoBut do they? 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.
- tptacek 7y agoAren't sin taxes one of the textbook examples of internalizing (Pigovian) taxes?
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoWe're going to start seeing that with taxes on EVs to make up for lost fuel tax revenue.
- tptacek 7y agoBut that's not a complete engagement with the argument, right? Fuel taxes pay for more than just the carbon and pollution externalities of driving, but also of the cost of maintaining safe roads. You can obviously disagree with the argument, but it's not incoherent and is in keeping with the underlying notion of a Pigovian tax.
- munk-a 7y agoAs long as I don't get assaulted by a drunk dude or get cancer from second hand smoke I agree - but a lot of these sin taxes are on items that effect others through their usage.
- vgetr 7y agoOh man, you came to the wrong town, my friend.