Sunday, September 30, 2007

Taxing Cigarettes to Fund Child Health Care

Punish those smoking bastards. Good plan democrats.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think a better alternative could have been to pay for it with the money we spent on a war in Iraq, but alas, Bush had other plans.

Diatribe said...

Democrats could do that if they wanted. Turns out they control the funding for the war. Stop funding it - don't raise taxes on cigarettes. Turns out that is not Bushs' fault.

By the way it is getting old when Democrats response to most anything this day is - Well if it wasn't for the war.

Anonymous said...

"By the way it is getting old when Democrats response to most anything this day is - Well if it wasn't for the war."

Yeah, the war is getting old too.

And what do you care if taxes on cigarettes are raised? Those are the people who'll be costing us money down the road when we're paying for their healthcare. They should pay more now.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to say, interpreting a cigarette tax only as a punishment on smokers is pretty simplistic. Do higher fines for speedoing just constitute a punishment for speeders? Or is it better understood as a disincentive to try to stop people from speeding?
Sin taxes have been around forever, and the stated goal is almost always to abolish a behavior rather than to create a revenue stream.

Anonymous said...

"Sin taxes have been around forever, and the stated goal is almost always to abolish a behavior rather than create a revenue stream"

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

And George Bushes stated reason for invading Iraq was to get rid of his weapons of mass destruction.

At any rate creating strong disincentives to get a smokers to stop smoking and then using those resources to fund children's health care is foolish. As the disincentive takes affect on smokers the money needed to support child's health care is going to reduce. Who then do you think is going to have to pick up the tab?

As a side note I have seen some argue that smokers actually cost the system less than non-smokers because on average they die sooner.

Anonymous said...

Haha Sophist I think you answered your own question through a typo:

"As the disincentive takes affect on smokers the money needed to support child's health care is going to reduce. Who then do you think is going to have to pick up the tab?"


Did you mean to say that the money 'produced' to fund children's health care will decrease? because you're correct, as people stop smoking, we'll need less money to provide healthcare.