| Kasz216 said: You don't feel like it's immoral for the government to control behavior by levying unequal taxes on people who make the same amount of money? |
I would if it was in an extreme way, but I feel as though a tax on cigarettes to pay for treatment is akin to paying road tax to use your car because your car damages the road. It's a government expenditure and so they are taxing it at the source, like many things. Now if the government levyed a tax that was for extreme or financially uneccesary social engineering then I would be the first to speak up about that.
Mind you, you say social engineering, I think that is an unfair definition of taxing cigarettes to pay for treatment. Your definition seems to be raising taxes to stop something that kills people people... To me that's no more social engineering than teaching kids not to smoke while they are at school.
So stop putting a horrible definition on something that does not require/fit it. Social engineering is what the Nazis and Soviets did, this is completely different.
It's not controling behaviour, people are still free to smoke. In fact it works very well because the more they smoke, the more they pay for the higher treatment costs they will require.
