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I'm not in favor of sin taxes, but even if these items were taxed at the standard rate, these percentages wouldn't change. If anything, it shows that there's a
by elmerfud 5y ago
I'm not in favor of sin taxes, but even if these items were taxed at the standard rate, these percentages wouldn't change. If anything, it shows that there's a great chemical dependency that should be addressed and taxation isn't an effective way to promote societal change.
- xapata 5y ago> even if these items were taxed at the standard rate, these percentages wouldn't change Back in school, we read studies that reached the opposite conclusion, suggesting that "sin" taxes are effective.
- tombert 5y agoI somewhat agree. I think that all that might happen is that the headline would change to something along the lines of "10% of households pay 50% of taxes on alcohol and cigarettes". I think it's easy to look at these things, see how they disproportionately affect the poor, and try and draw a causative relation based on that. I get it, I'm guilty of it, but I think a lot of these problems are substantially deeper than that. I think the more important question is "why are these 10% so dependent on alcohol and cigarettes? what about the way we structure society leads to this behavior?" and I think focusing on the "sin tax" part of it really misses the mark. Eliminating sin taxes would be, at most, a band-aid patch, not a "solution".
- mumblemumble 5y agoMy alternative hypothesis would be that you would expect the imbalance to increase if sin taxes work, because they would suppress consumption among casual consumers, but not the addicts, among whom demand is expected to be less elastic. Which is a societal change, though maybe not the intended one.