Post by RS Davis on Feb 29, 2004 18:50:03 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Garry Reed Wrote:[/glow] The Miami Herald headline honked, "Tax smokers – and 5 million will quit, health chiefs say"
Really? Who says so? Four former surgeons general say so. Slap a two-buck tax on every pack of butts and smokers will respond by tossing out their ultra lights, their Zippos and their souvenir ceramic ashtrays from Bagel Beach.
Just how did these four former federal fumar-crats come up with this cause and effect scenario? Probably the same way bureaucrats always come up with their brilliant brain spasms – by blowing smoke. "We will do A and the public will respond by doing B, just as we want them to." These people, remember, are oblivious to the law of unintended consequences. Otherwise they wouldn't be bureaucrats.
If a carton of carcinogens cuts $20 deeper into your household financial planning, do you stop buying them? Or do you cut something else? Stop snapping up the National Tattler from the magazine rack every day. Skip a haircut. Chuck the National Save the Endangered Jellyfish donation form. Skip a trip to the Sip & Nip. Or a thousand other things that people do to adjust to the manipulations of our national mullahs without even consciously thinking about it.
The political plundering of our pockets only hurts the free market. Smokers who don't quit smoking simply quit something else.
Really? Who says so? Four former surgeons general say so. Slap a two-buck tax on every pack of butts and smokers will respond by tossing out their ultra lights, their Zippos and their souvenir ceramic ashtrays from Bagel Beach.
Just how did these four former federal fumar-crats come up with this cause and effect scenario? Probably the same way bureaucrats always come up with their brilliant brain spasms – by blowing smoke. "We will do A and the public will respond by doing B, just as we want them to." These people, remember, are oblivious to the law of unintended consequences. Otherwise they wouldn't be bureaucrats.
If a carton of carcinogens cuts $20 deeper into your household financial planning, do you stop buying them? Or do you cut something else? Stop snapping up the National Tattler from the magazine rack every day. Skip a haircut. Chuck the National Save the Endangered Jellyfish donation form. Skip a trip to the Sip & Nip. Or a thousand other things that people do to adjust to the manipulations of our national mullahs without even consciously thinking about it.
The political plundering of our pockets only hurts the free market. Smokers who don't quit smoking simply quit something else.
