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Opening Arguments

The price of sin

This editorial against the governor's desire to raise the cigarette tax could have used a little more thought:

There are plenty of reasons not to like smoking. It's dangerous. It's selfish. It's smelly. It creates messes because so many smokers can't seem to figure out how to properly throw their butts away.

But not liking something doesn't mean we have to tax it. Obesity has serious problems associated with it, but there is no intelligent reason to tax Big Macs or Blizzards.

If a behavior is so unsavory, then ban it. Don't use it as a cheap excuse for another tax. Just because most people don't like something and just because one group might seem easy to pick on doesn't mean that habit or that group has to be soaked with taxes.

The truth is that every single tax there is affects behavior because it adds to the cost of that behavior; it is a basic conservative tenant that if you want to discourage something, you tax it. The federal tax code is a famous example of a labyrinthine system that not only raises money but directs social policy. But even at the local level, taxes repress activity. So a thoughtful tax policy must be careful on two levels -- on one that it raises only the money that is needed, which is spent wisely; on the other that it is as fair as possible about whose activities are discouraged.

You could say the governor's cigarette-tax proposal is more honest than most -- it proposes to raise money AND states up front that a disliked behavior is intended to be discouraged. Given that taxes are a necessity, where should we look to raise the revenue, from activities most people like or from activities that many dislike? As someone who, um, occasionally engages in behavior that others might disapprove of, I would like the maximum freedom I can get in a free society. Don't ban my sins -- just make them more expensive and let me decide if the cost is worth it.

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Comments

Jeff Pruitt
Wed, 08/09/2006 - 6:38am

I suppose they could start printing those marijuana tax stamps...

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