Local governments need money. Meanwhile items are sold locally that are a burden on the public and cost citizens money. Likewise for bad practices. One solution to balance these things out is to tax the undesirable activities and products, both to discourage them and to provide funds to help offset their costs to the community.
Here are some suggestions to get the list started:
1) Restaurants that serve disposable paper & plastic products (no dishwasher)
2) Bottled water.
3) Disposable cameras
4) Electric billboards
5) Night lights for private property owners
6) Mobile billboards
7) New wells in OWASA or Hillsborough service area
8) Property owners that do not allow evening parking in empty lots.
What else belongs on the list?
Issues:
Comments
ur easily stunned...
...and confuse freedom with a vacuum. Social externalities may very well limit your freedom, in which case you are certainly wise to rationally challenge them. These externalities may also enhance your freedom, in which case you would be wise to honestly recognize them and the concomitant implications relative to your proposal. No one is suggesting you "lay down and accept" unjust externalities. I'm simply suggesting you be honest with your own ideas and consistent in your logic.Regardless, I'd certainly be interested in hearing your answers to my previous questions.
My attempt to answer your many questions
1) "Yes, the actions of corporations, governments and individuals in general are constantly "externalized" to you and others. I'm not sure why you feel you have some kind of right to be free of the realities of the world at large, but let's assume for a minute you do.If so, how can you then justify your own proposals which, in reality, are nothing but that which you complain about?"Actually I started this discussion in an attempt to identify things that don't pay their way. I'm not complaining, just trying to shift the burden of taxation away from income ( a good thing) to stuff that needs to be discouraged.2) "Certainly taxes on fast food and all else that you find distasteful would create new externalities, no? "In the strict sense of externalities, you are right. Your point is a good one in that I need to find a better, less neutral, word than "externalities" to describe what happens when we let unhealthy activity get paid for by those who don't support it (to me this is the essence of libertarianism).3) "Have you quantified the toll upon society of these evil forces?" Yes - will you promise to read every word?4) "What, for example, does Carrburritos owe to society in exchange for that which it has already collected?" Actually we owe Carrburritos. Substitute Progress Energy and the answer is obvious.
"an attempt to identify
"an attempt to identify things that don't pay their way"Was there an attempt there? I saw no figures there about what "their way" should actually cost, what they are paying, and what their deficit is. I simply saw an assertion that local governments need money and a claim that this fact along with a vague allusion at "burdens" justifies taxing things you happen to label as "undesirable". Interestingly, I saw no mention of your own obligations which would follow from your argument. Certainly you would be willing to pay for any positive externalities that you've received from corporations, governments, and individuals as they are identified using the same logic you are using? Or does this only work when you or organizations you prefer are the beneficiaries?"I need to find a better, less neutral, word than 'externalities'"Changing the word doesn't change what you're actually doing -- punishing things you simply find distasteful in order to shore up governmental coffers. You can call it whatever you wish, but the reality of it doesn't change. And it's no different than what those you rail against are doing -- acting towards their own aims partly at the cost of unwilling others."will you promise to read every word?"Sure."Actually we owe Carrburritos. Substitute Progress Energy and the answer is obvious."What do we owe Carrburritos, then? And what does Progress Energy owe us? That, of course, it not obvious. How can you hint at math without providing a single number? You've exposed that your facts will simply follow your conclusions and that's what makes your proposed policy corrupt.
I agree with you
We should understand as well as we can both the positive and negative repercussions of what goes on and react accordingly.
I can definitely agree with
I can definitely agree with that.
Pot-kettle syndrome
"I'm not sure why you feel you have some kind of right to be free of the realities of the world at large." Do those realities include the consequences of pollution, financial malfeasance, imbalanced taxation, and so on?
Absolutely. I'm certainly
Absolutely. I'm certainly not suggesting that we should accept those things, or even treat them as inevitabilities that we must be resigned to. I'm simply suggesting we look at them the same way we look at all of the various natural forces that affect us everyday, willingly or unwillingly.
Natural?
The word "externality" has begun to be tortured here, and the word "natural" promises even weirder spins on the discussion. How do you get to "natural" from landfills so unmanageable that they pit communities against each other or plastic bags creating major blockages in the marine mammals that ingest them?
None of the things you
None of the things you describe is "unnatural". Undesirable? In many ways, yes. Unnatural? No.
Q.E.D.
I think that statement does imply a tortured definition of "unnatural," but this thread is wonky enough without going into semantic side trails.
If you are against
If you are against additional "sin" taxes to cover the costs of cleaning up these messes, should I presume that you are for higher property and sales taxes? Every year the state bemoans the money spent on roadside litter removal. Were a sample of the litter collected analyzed, we could bill an according portion of the cost to the originating industry. I doubt Coca Cola, Anheuser Busch and Food Lion would honor such an invoice, but it would send a message.There is a danger, particularly if the taxe revenues are placed in the general fund, that the state would become dependent on the 'sins' to keep the lights on. A modest sin tax may actually encourage unwanted behavior by mitigating the payer's sense of guilt.
Pure Comedy
I'll preface my remarks by acknowledging I am not definitely not what many of you would term a "progressive". I rarely post, and lurk fairly often (once a day?), not to find kindred souls, but just as another resource to better understand and keep my fingers on the pulse of the community.With that being said, with no semantic arguments, would I be too bold to call this one of the most inane conversations I have ever had the privelege of reading? There are people on here who are LEGITIMATELY arguing to put a "sin" tax on leaf blowers? Trash bags? McDonalds? Really? REALLY?In my humble opinion, here's why a "sin" tax doesn't pass the smell test: Some years back, somebody put a cross in a jar of urine, took a picture, and called it art. Some people got pissed (pun intended) and said the picture shouldn't be shown. Some court said that, even if distasteful, people had to let other people decide whether it was art or not. So, in this country, that means that when I see that picture, I don't think "art", I think "what a strange s-o-b that that is the best thing he can come up with, but, hey, as long as it's not in my house, not my problem." As Walter Matthau so eloquently put it . . . "linguini? Now it's garbage."I think we'll all disagree that child pornography is pretty distasteful. Now, after that, what's left? What you think is a sin/unethical/harmful/flat out bad/whatever, is just art to the next guy. Who are you to recommend an additional levy imposed on it, just because you don't like it?And the holier-than-thou approach of taxing fast food as a way to create a more health conscious community . . . now THAT is grand. Quarter Pounders w/ Cheese are bad for me? WHAT?? SINCE WHEN?!??! Say it ain't so about the Big Mac? I mean, two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun is bad? THAT'S ALL THE MAJOR FOOD GROUPS IN ONE DELECTABLE NON-BIODEGRADABLE BOX!!!!!!! Hey, I KNOW it's bad for you. I know if I have one today, my bowels will NOT thank me for it tomorrow. But man, I also know that some days, there's nothing that will taste better than a greasy QPC and some salty McD's fries. Just like we all know that alcohol increases your likelihood of liver damage, addiction, and really poor decision making, but I bet half the people that read this post all the way through (sorry) had a night cap in the last 72 hours.So, just so I can't be accused of coming the table without solutions, I'd like to propose the following:If you don't like plastic bags, good for you! I actually try very hard to avoid getting them, and my wife does a great job of packing her groceries in the reusable bags. But, instead of going to the typical default of legislating them out of existence or taxing the hell out of the them, why don't you lead a coordinated effort with Harris Teeter to eliminate them? I know they (and Food Lion, Safeway, Walgreens, etc.) are evil corporate monsters, but, you know what? They have to PAY for those bags, and I bet if you could help them find a way to educate their customers so that they NEVER had to pay for bags again, they'd probably give you groceries for life.Final point of clarification: Financial reports of all publicly traded corporations are available any time you would like to review them. It is not only factually inaccurate, but its a tragic display of your prejudices, to imply or state that corporations do not pay their fair share, or any (?!?), taxes.Sorry for the rant, I'll schlep back off to lurker-ville now. Go Heels, have a great night.
No need to lurk!
Great to read your post, Chris. You know, I must confess that I sort of thought this whole thread was light hearted. I am reminded yet again that nuance is lost in Internet postings. As for plastic bags, some states charge for bottle returns to encourage recycling, so this kind of legislation has been done before. I agree that it is better for stores to encourage people to use their own grocery bags. Harris Teeter is taking tiny baby steps in that direction, and Whole Foods gives a 10 cent credit per bag. That said, I don't think it's bad to discuss some of these things here on OP. Good ideas come from sifting through tons of bad ideas. I, for one, hope that in the future you will join the fray here. Please write again.
debt
Instead of taxing interest on savings and investment gains, the government should tax debt.
2% of your credit card balance
1% of your car loan
.5% of your mortgage
3% on your equity line
Corporation issues a bond: tax it at 3%
Everyone says we spend to much on credit and save to little. I think reversing the disincentive would help.
If only other people would
If only other people would do what we think they should, everything would be just fine....... :p
A few good ideas for the lazy libertarians
Let's allow backyard trash burning again.Let's allow people to smoke inside restaurants & stores again.Let's stop recycing. No more speed limits.No more emissions inspections for vehicles.Just a few ideas to get out from under the tyranny of the pinheads who think they actually know what's good for us.
Lets compare your lists.
Mark,I originally took this thread as a pleasant joke, a way for people to vent about their pet peeves but clearly some have taken it very seriously. They have seen this discussion as a way
to shift tax burden, so much so that someone even suggested that we do
away with free public schools. It is also very disturbing to me that
some have used this thread as a way to attack all attempts at the
legislation of social and economic justice.Comparing the lists in your post above and your original list that started this thread is
interesting. Do you believe that any of the 8 things in your original
list come anywhere near the items you listed in the post above in terms
of relevance, importance or social acceptance? Personally I think
not. Only 1 and 4 have some (pale) potential justification and the
justification for 1 may be mitigated by biodegradable disposable ware. For the record I think taxes should be based on the ability to pay them.
I did the comparison
Actually, I think all of the suggestions on my original list meet the criteria of robbing from the commons, not necessary in any way, and therefore worth discouraging. Again, taxing these items or activities does not ban them. It just provides economic incentive to move toward positive alternatives. And I think it is obvious from some of the posts that a large number of people don't understand the dire ecological situation we are in.
Politicians
Let's tax politicians every time they lie to us.
Toronto passes billboard tax
http://www.truthout.org/1217096
Taxing what we don't like
1. Taxing what we don’t like makes sense to me. We tax tobacco, so people smoke less. That one is pretty easy for me, but some folks object to excise or sumptuary taxes generally, on the theory that they are discriminatory and regressive. See, for example, Shugart, ed., Taxing Choice (Independent Institute 1997).
2. Even if we agree to tax what we don’t like, deciding what we don’t like gets tricky. We may disagree as directly and strongly as we do on theology or the absence thereof. For instance, there’s a Dutch politician who would “force women in Muslim head scarves to pay an extra tax (for ‘pollution of the public space’).” (New Yorker of 7 December 2009, page 40). What’s disagreeable to him is her religious duty. Less starkly, some believe in a progressive income tax, while the flat taxers don’t, and they won’t convince (and probably won’t persuade) each other. There, values compete, and individuals get to have opinions.
3. Sometimes, folks get the facts wrong, and at least part of the conflict is not between values: part of the conflict is about accuracy: I cannot understand, for example, Sarah Palin’s position at http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=181952698434: “A tax on national defense? I hear liberal Congressional proposals and I, like most Americans, wonder if they’re serious.” Those proposals she mentions would impose a tax to pay for national defense, not a tax “on” national defense, so I see Ms. Palin’s position as a misinterpretation. But maybe I’m missing something.
4. Some folks oppose any and all taxes. That opposition, in my opinion, results from naïveté, except for a few cases of crypto-anarchism. But those folks vote, too.
5. Who are we? As for the question who decides what’s detrimental, a Constitutional republic can, should, and does sort these issues out in a predictable way, and discussion, however futile it seems, offers hope. Subjective whims or reasoned analysis (all in the eye of the beholder) prevail or lose out eventually on the basis of the electoral and Constitutional mechanism, however flawed.
6. Even if we reach a conclusion on what we don’t like, a big if, practicality may intrude. How would we tax leaf blowers, for instance, at the local level? (A tax on manufacturers and importers at the Federal level would work.) At retail, If Chapel Hill taxes them and Durham doesn’t, we have a nonstarter. To tax use, would we invent a mechanism of surveillance to measure duration or decibels? That’s a nonstarter, too. Or might we charge for permits, visible from the street, that allow unlimited use? That hurts my head to think about.
7. The discussion has focused on things that some people don’t like that are legal now. A whole “’nother” category is out there: things we dislike so much we’ve banned them. In Theoryland, the State could impose an extra tax on folks who buy wine before noon on Sunday (or call it a convenience fee): that looks like more trouble than it’s worth, probably.
8. Back in the real world, too often, instead of taxing what we don’t like, we tax what we do like. At the Federal level, we impose a direct burden on jobs through the capped portion of the FICA tax on wages. But kind of like John Prine’s grandfather, who voted for Eisenhower ‘cause Lincoln won the war, we cling to that tax because it was the best deal FDR could get for Social Security.
Maybe some of the above makes sense, but as someone whose calling is to tax policy, I'm reminded of the joke about what you get when you cross a tax lawyer with the Godfather: he makes you an offer you can't understand. Best wishes to all.
Crypto-anarchism?
Sign me up. All these things are true, yet, still, as a community we must act.
It's not about like . ..
Talking about "liking" or "disliking" something will always cause essential problems in discussing taxes. It's not like people like taxes, like.... The issue is identifying things necessary enough to the common good to warrant taxation -- primarily to fund the cost of providing that good, but increasingly to pay the costs of the non-good's effects (smoking, etc.), or - when unavoidable and politlcally manageable - to deter the outright harmful, not just distasteful. That last one is the questionable one when you define "harmful" as something unlikeable, because there's always some ... er .... people who'll insist that being deafened is preferable to being taxed, although they never seem willing to purchase the right to drive everyone else nutty at the price set by "the market" (i.e., everyone else).
Taxes and Smoking
It seems to me there are a lot of other causes of the decrease in tobacco use besides taxes. Some that come to mind are education, publicizing the health risk of smoking and second hand smoke, laws about where smoking is allowed and I think most importantly the ban (or al least the control) of advertising. Are there any studies that show the importance of various factors in the change in tobacco habits in the US?I am disturbed by the use of tax policy to control behavior for the reason you mention above. It is discriminatory and regressive but also because it is like giving someone a license to do something. I paid the tax, so why can't I smoke.
Taxes and smoking
This comes from World Bank, which provides lots of information and supports tobacco taxes:
“Economic studies show that increasing cigarette prices could change people’s smoking behavior towards quitting, reducing consumption or switching to cheaper brands. Based on evidence, a 10% increase in price would reduce the cigarette consumption by 4% in developed and 8% in developing countries. Since levels of taxation can be used to raise prices, or to keep them high, taxation is an important part of any effective strategy to reduce smoking.”
http://www1.worldbank.org/tobacco/Presentations/Presentation3/slide4.ppt
A paper from Johns Hopkins runs through the math with some assumptions (starting at page 26):
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/GlobalTobaccoControl/PDFs/Lecture7.pdf
Opposing tax increases on tobacco as on many things, the Heritage Foundation provides some analysis, but I haven’t been able to find their number for the elasticity. http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/wm1548.cfm; http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm1548-methods.cfm
For the record, on balance, I’m for high tobacco taxes, but not so high that bootlegging becomes a serious problem (in this country, inter-jurisdictional bootlegging has been a problem at times).
What would happen to the
What would happen to the incidence of new smokers if someone had to purchase a bond before they started smoking that funds the future cost of their medical problems as a result?
Related story
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/from-the-forums-how-about-taxing-non-organic.php
A nickle to keep our creeks unclogged?
Just after New Year's Day, our family happened to be in a DC deli on day one of DC's new nickle-per-bag charge for plastic bags. Money collected goes to a fund to clean the rivers. Some deli customers groused, others didn't. Many in both groups decided they didn't need a bag.Now, we are in New Delhi, India, where yesterday, a shopkeep, shocked at her request, exclaimed to my wife "Madam, If I give you a plastic bag I'll be fined 500 Rs!"http://bit.ly/aDt17KDidn't the NC legislature approve an outright ban on plastic bags for the OBX? Why not a fund for waterway maintenance? A discount could be offered for plastic bags made from 100% post-BP Gulf of Mexico "seawater".
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