Why does anyone even need to decide? Just look at the amortized costs for any activity, whether it is "essential" or not. Essential things still cost money. The

Why does anyone even need to decide? Just look at the amortized costs for any activity, whether it is "essential" or not. Essential things still cost money. The only thing you might want to do is provide a rebate for taxes on "essential" activities. This still provides the market pressure for people to minimize costly activities (but doesn't ban it), while being net zero impact to revenue. Someone mentioned there are 200 climbing accidents a year. Figure out how much that costs, and bake it into the cost of some climbing specific requirement (climbing permits? equipment? gym memberships?). I doubt the cost will be significant. And if it is, maybe we should rethink climbing as an activity. Same with sugar. Figure out how much added sugar actually costs in terms of health impacts, and tax sugar appropriately. A key point of this strategy is that if you aren't consuming a large amount of e.g. soda, as a parent post claimed, then the tax is negligible anyways. > Motorcyclists can crash, but they're choosing a form of transport that is far more efficient than a single passenger vehicle in many ways (fuel consumption, parking requirements, traffic impact). Motorcycles aren't actually that efficient. A prius gets better gas milage than many (most?) motorcycles: https://www.latimes.com/news/la-hy-throttle2apr02-story.html https://www.latimes.com/news/la-hy-throttle2apr02-story.html At least a prius has a chance of carrying more than one person.