| thranx said: taxing to stop people from doing something definatly falls under the category of removing choice. you said it all right there in one sentance. Forcing people to pay more is forcing people to change their choices. it never works, it has never worked, and never will. People will always make their own choices, no manner of taxes will stop that, so why punish every body? Heck, you can even ban and outlaw sugar, and that won't work either, as prohibition also never works. Look at the world around you, when has the government deciding something is best for your health ever worked succesfully, prohibition-no, ban drugs-no, tax cigaretts-no. When has education worked to help battle bad habbits-cigarettes yes. So its better to educate than to tax and ban. But of course its easier to just tax and ban than to actually solve the problem of teaching people (mainly kids from a young age) the proper way to eat and make choices for themselves. |
No it does not, taxing something is not removing choice is making the not taxable stuff a better choice, but is not removing the product from the shelf, or banning anything. If you want to buy the unhealthy stuff, it is there buy it, but is a little more expensive, is not like taxes will double the value of the item, it will just make it 10-20% more expensive.
And I agree that educating people is a very good, but the money for the education and the commercials about how bad are the cigaretts for you come from the extra taxes that those items have, so the idea is to tax rationally and invest the money on education programs, win-win situation. And way better than just ban a product.
