Beer Pong Anyone?

[tigerbob]

Sin taxes are regressive in nature. The poorer you are, the larger the percentage of your budget is taken up by liquor and cigarettes. The percentage of tax increase to the poor is much higher than it is to those making more money.

So? I don't have any issues with making it more difficult for poor people to smoke given that I am probably paying for their healthcare costs.

Actually, you're probably not.

 

[auditor0007]

Sin taxes are regressive in nature. The poorer you are, the larger the percentage of your budget is taken up by liquor and cigarettes. The percentage of tax increase to the poor is much higher than it is to those making more money.

So? I don't have any issues with making it more difficult for poor people to smoke given that I am probably paying for their healthcare costs.

Do you realize that the US has one of the lowest smoking rates of all industrialized countries, yet we pay double for healthcare compared to any of those other countries. At the same time, while those countries have a greater percentage of smokers, their life expectancy is greater than our own. So what gives? Smoking does contribute to health problems, but it is nowhere near the problem as obesity is.

Based on your thinking, we should then also tax all fast food like we do cigarettes. If we compare the rates, that would make your average Big Mac around $10.00.

 

[Luissa]

Yet another example of government stupidity:

Outrage brewing over proposed 1,900% beer tax hike
Lawmakers say tax will help budget; brewers warn of lost jobs

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Five Oregon state lawmakers want to impose a hefty tax on beer and have introduced a bill that brewers say would cripple them.

Four Portland legislators joined a Springfield senator to introduce Oregon House Bill 2461, which would impose a $49.61 tax on each barrel of beer produced by Oregon brewers.

The tax would raise revenue for the state at a time when budgets are running in the red. Specifically, the bill says it would fund prevention, treatment and recovery programs for those addicted to alcohol and other substances.

The bill's language defends the tax by arguing alcoholism and “untreated substance abuse” costs the state $4.15 billion in lost earnings as well as more than $8 million for health care and nearly $1 billion in law enforcement-related expenditures.

Outrage brewing over proposed 1,900% beer tax hike | Local News | kgw.com | News for Portland Oregon and SW Washington


Sooo, they want to raise the tax on beer by 1,900% to pay for . . . . treatment for alcoholics? And when the beer companies go bellyup? Do these guys ever think? This is just like the tax on cigarettes paying for schip increase . . . . but then they turn around and include $75 million in the porkulous package for smoking cessation plans.

Where's that island they're stuck on, on Lost? I want to go to there.

these taxes can help the rate of goniherria!!!

Homer Simpson once called alcohol "the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." Recent studies offer evidence to buttress that assertion in its entirety. A glass of beer or wine a day may sharpen your mind, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study, which reports that women who imbibed daily lowered their risk of memory loss and senility in old age by about 15 percent. But too much alcohol (enough to acquire a pair of "beer goggles," shall we say?) has different and less desirable consequences—or so suggests a study by three NBER economists, which finds that disincentives to drink may significantly reduce gonorrhea rates among young men. Working with infection data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the authors report that every 10 percent increase in the excise tax on beer reduces the gonorrhea rate by 4.7 percent among males aged fifteen to nineteen, and by 4.1 percent among those aged twenty to twenty-four. In addition, males aged fifteen to nineteen in states with zero-tolerance drunk-driving laws had gonorrhea rates seven to eight percent lower than those of males in other states. (Interestingly, neither factor had a significant impact on female infection rates.) For those who don't know when to say when, perhaps a compromise is in order—namely, non-alcoholic beer, which is neither mind-sharpening nor STD-increasing but may, according to a Japanese study using lab mice, offer protection against cancer.

Primary Sources - The Atlantic (April 2005)

 

[catzmeow]

Do you realize that the US has one of the lowest smoking rates of all industrialized countries, yet we pay double for healthcare compared to any of those other countries. At the same time, while those countries have a greater percentage of smokers, their life expectancy is greater than our own. So what gives? Smoking does contribute to health problems, but it is nowhere near the problem as obesity is.

Based on your thinking, we should then also tax all fast food like we do cigarettes. If we compare the rates, that would make your average Big Mac around $10.00.

Are you actually arguing in favor of smoking as a healthy activity?

 

[auditor0007]

Do you realize that the US has one of the lowest smoking rates of all industrialized countries, yet we pay double for healthcare compared to any of those other countries. At the same time, while those countries have a greater percentage of smokers, their life expectancy is greater than our own. So what gives? Smoking does contribute to health problems, but it is nowhere near the problem as obesity is.

Based on your thinking, we should then also tax all fast food like we do cigarettes. If we compare the rates, that would make your average Big Mac around $10.00.

Are you actually arguing in favor of smoking as a healthy activity?

Nope; I didn't say that. I said that obesity is a bigger problem and that foods that lead most people to becoming obese should be taxed at the same rate (sin tax) as cigarettes if your argument for sin taxes is that those products cost society monetarily.

 

[catzmeow]

Nope; I didn't say that. I said that obesity is a bigger problem and that foods that lead most people to becoming obese should be taxed at the same rate (sin tax) as cigarettes if your argument for sin taxes is that those products cost society monetarily.

I don't support sin taxes on cigarettes for health benefits (though it is a side benefit). I support sin taxes on cigarettes because it's a gross and disgusting habit.

I'm not pretending to be objective here. I don't support sin taxes in general, I just don't oppose them as stringently with cigarettes because they have no redeeming value at all and can easily be regulated.