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* As to health Cost vs Tax intake, let us NOT Forget Australia - Senator Thanks Smokers for their TAX Contributions!
Politician THANKS Australians for smoking in extraordinary speech
I like this guy, even if he did get trashed by the medical community for underestimating the cost of healthcare.
Calling regressive taxes 'sin taxes' doesn't hide the scale of the problem. Smokers are typically poor, which makes this vast tax-take all the more perverse. It means, for example, that social planners who want to redistribute money from the rich to the poor need to increase both welfare payments and income tax rates to achieve their goals.
Maybe they haven't studied any history, because if they did, they would learn that the regime controlling cigarettes is no longer one of 'legalise, regulate, and tax.' Instead, it now resembles two other regimes, regimes that were and are catastrophic failures. I'm thinking here of Prohibition and the War on Drugs.
In a world where cannabis is in the process of legalisation – because illegality simply doesn't work – and where Prohibition enriched Al Capone but beggared the US Government, I think people like me need to do better by you, the smokers of Australia.
I am put in mind of a constituent's comment, made to me last week. He pointed out that he valued the e-cigarettes now available because they meant he didn't smoke during the day, and also meant he didn't inflict his smoke or smell on others.