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[penguinofhonor]

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[Rez]

How noble of them to help impoverish smokers so their financial irresponsibility can be accounted for. 

[nenjin]

State lotteries often say the money goes toward education, but I recall reading an article a couple months back that said basically 90% of state lotteries only give out about 20% of profits to the places they say it's going to. The rest is pretty much a state slush fund.

[i2amroy]

State lotteries often say the money goes toward education, but I recall reading an article a couple months back that said basically 90% of state lotteries only give out about 20% of profits to the places they say it's going to. The rest is pretty much a state slush fund.

The stuff I've read says that actually a fair bit of the profit goes to where it's supposed to go to, but that it's often matched by an equal reduction in the original budget. So like the education lottery money sends $20 million towards building new schools, but at the same time the "build new schools" fund gets a $20 million dollar reduction (which has the same effect as just using it as a slush fund, but without all the legal problems of trying to redesignate it).

[mainiac]

Money is more fungible then any other fluid.

[misko27]

How noble of them to help impoverish smokers so their financial irresponsibility can be accounted for.

It bothers me that you seem to be implying that a) plugging budget holes is bad, and b) putting a tax on a drug known to be damaging to people's health is bad. It seems to be a case of doing a moral thing, regardless of whether it's for moral reasons. I mean that's basically democracy at it's finest: Ideally, even bad people do the right thing so that they are more likely to be re-elected.

[mainiac]

Well it is bad to tax the poor and smokers are generally poor.  It's a complicated situation.

[smjjames]

Well it is bad to tax the poor and smokers are generally poor.  It's a complicated situation.

And you have the statistics to prove that smokers are generally poor people?

[Bauglir]

Yeah, it's in here, unless they're doing some obscenely misleading reporting.

[Rez]

I don't think 'plugging' budget holes with new taxes is a very smart decision; better to sew that hole together.  I think the US has seen 60 years of plugging budget holes with new taxes and printing, yet our debt increases inexorably.  States don't get it quite so easy, but the pattern is the same.  Organizations nearly always expand if they can.  I don't see government expansion as a certain good and taxes generally are a bad thing.

Sin taxes are paternalism.   I'm generally opposed to government intervention in matters of individual agency.  I'm not an ancap, so I determine this based on my importance and effectiveness vs gut liberty test.  Vaccines pass this test fairly easily.  Sumptuary taxes don't. *shrug*

The main issue is that politicians understand who these taxes affect and know that a sales tax doesn't get nearly as much attention as withholding.  That's the whole reason I brought up lotteries, which was a bit of a red herring.  They're a good way to tax people who won't pay much income tax (or any) or might be involved in grey/black markets and are generally addicted to taxed thing.  It's an example of a tax/law that disproportionately affects the poor, both in terms of affected population and % of income.

If they were spending the money on educating people about the dangers of chronic smoking, alternatives, and ways of stopping,  I think that changes the effectiveness vs gut liberty test and also allays some of my suspicions that the politicians making the taxes are profiteering off addiction.  Is it evil for cigarette companies to make money from tobacco, but good for government's to do so?

[nenjin]

b) putting a tax on a drug known to be damaging to people's health is bad.

As I look around I see at least one example of a known drug that's bad for people's health that doesn't get singled out nearly to the degree cigarettes do.

Well, it did once. During prohibition.

I know it's trite and cliche, but everyone likes to punish someone else's vices, until they start telling you your's is a problem. If we measure the health damage from sitting on our asses playing video games all day, the argument could be made we need special taxes on video games to offset the health consequences they cause. Or perhaps a special tax on all gun sales to cover the numbers of mass and/or accidental shooting per year.

Maybe in the 70s when non-smokers were regularly hotboxing with smokers whether they liked it or not, taxing the shit out of smokers was fair. (Except it wouldn't have gone over because, then, it was acceptable.) Scales and social opinions have shifted dramatically since then, and I think smoking has long since just been a convenient target for things you know the public at large won't really fight you on. Tax that thing I don't do? Letmethinkabou-Sure!

[Rez]

Some states run the liquor stores too.

Ed:  Between dry counties, Sundays, and state-run liquor stores, I'd say it's probably harder to be an alcoholic than a smoker.

[nenjin]

That's mostly a bible belt thing. Rules like you can't sell cold beer and silly shit like that become less common as you head West.

[misko27]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't think 'plugging' budget holes with new taxes is a very smart decision; better to sew that hole together.  I think the US has seen 60 years of plugging budget holes with new taxes and printing, yet our debt increases inexorably.  States don't get it quite so easy, but the pattern is the same.  Organizations nearly always expand if they can.  I don't see government expansion as a certain good and taxes generally are a bad thing.

Couple questions: one, are you familiar with "Starve/Feed the Beast", and what is your opinion on it? Two: What are you referring to when you talk about inexorable debt increase? Clinton managed to balance the budget, and the surplus sent US debt relative to GDP on a downward slide until 2001-2 if wikipedia is correct (I would suspect tax cuts and military spending ended that). The rapid rise in debt is more recent,  and would seem to be more related to the 2008 crash then anything else.

[Rez]

It's obvious I believe we need politicians who think government should always be smaller and are willing to be pragmatic; people who aim to expand government power do the same thing, as I think the power and funding of the sigint mega-bureaucracy shows.   If you understand anything about group budgeting, you know that people will not budget under-run unless it is in their direct interest to do so.   This behavior occurs in all sorts of groups and individuals, across human cultures and across ages.  It's just simple desire and greed, traits all people have.

I think the historical circumstances of Clinton's presidency were extremely good and he was a good leader.  The surpluses of the Clinton years are the result of both.  I suspect if he had gotten the Congress he needed to pass NHS-style reform, there wouldn't have been much surplus by 99.  The general trend has been expansions of both military and welfare budgets when the economy permits and I think our government has many more ways to waste money with total surveillance and militarization of the police.  The trend has been cronyism to all who apply.  You're totally right that the rising debt is due to the crash; when the economy slowed down, government expansion/graft outpaced tax income increases.

It's not about budget.  It's about what taxes buy and why you're running deficits.  I'm not happy with what we're buying on a federal and state level and we need people who are willing to do what they can to get us our refund.  Not too many of those, since most are in the pockets of some business or another.