I misread your comment - I assumed you were pointing out that alternatives would be less effective than charging a minimum of a buck for every consumable purcha

I misread your comment - I assumed you were pointing out that alternatives would be less effective than charging a minimum of a buck for every consumable purchases, but rereading it I see that was just my assumption. Retail sales tax is not universally implemented across the United States, so is at least not essential to the financial solvency of a government. My objection isn't to the general notion of taxing poor people, but of introducing taxes that disproportionately burden the poor. A poll tax disproportionately burdens the poor because it introduces a flat bill paid by everyone regardless of income. A tax introducing a flat bill on all consumable purchases disproportionately burdens people who make more consumable purchases and who have less opportunity to return consumable purchases for the deposit, in addition to disproportionately burdening people for whom 10% or a minimum of $1 is a bigger and more essential portion of their daily income. Your source from the Container Recycling Institute is supportive of bottle deposits, but bottle deposits are usually 5c a container, not 10% or a minimum of $1, are far less universal than a tax across all consumables, and only implemented in 10 states so far. >In any case your entire argument could be made about taxes in general. Only if you simplify it to the point of reducing it to a strawman. I'm trying to be as specific about my critique here as possible: I don't think charging everyone a "a 10 percent or at least a dollar deposit" on every consumable is going to reduce litter effectively without disproportionately burdening the poor, and I think proposing such an egregiously steep and broad tax as a reasonable policy ignores the realities of the people it would disproportionately punish. Edit: >any sweeping action will disproportionally affect the poor simply because most Americans are poor. the only viable thing then is to do nothing. I would request some evidence on this one, too. 55% of workers are paid hourly, and only 1.5% are on minimum wage. Obviously the poverty line excludes a lot of people we would probably consider "poor" but that's still 11.4% of the country. From what I can tell, this claim and your defeatist conclusion from it have no basis, like your earlier claim that the government "does nothing" to address litter. [0]https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-27... [1]https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm