My Lesser Self is satisfied that smokers and gamblers are apparently going to have to dig deep into their pockets with stained, trembling fingers in order that we might have a balanced state budget.
On the governor’s desk is a hike in cigarette taxes from 58 cents to 98 cents a pack and an increase in the tax on admission to riverboats from $2 to $3 along with a significant boost in taxes on casino revenue that are sure to be passed on to the wagering classes.
We call these sin taxes–where Puritanism meets pragmatism as lawmakers try to fund and shape society at the same time. And since I’m not a sinner, at least not when it comes to tobacco and games of chance, the burden of topping off the trough in Springfield will fall largely on others.
But my Better Self is uneasy. My Better Self realizes that penalizing only certain indolent, gratuitous indulgences while exempting others violates the concept of fairness that ought to guide government. And anyone who gloats when the law unfairly treats those held in low esteem by the majority erodes his right to complain about other arbitrary actions of the state.
For instance, what if our legislators were to decide someday to slap a $2-per-round tax on golf and a 1 cent-per-ounce tariff on restaurant coffee? If I support extra tobacco and gambling taxes today, then on what basis, other than a personal interest in keeping low the price of my little pleasures, could I complain tomorrow?
Careful readers will note that I refer to others’ weaknesses as “sins” and mine as “little pleasures.”
Are gambling and smoking sins in the Judeo-Christian tradition? Motivated exegetes find divine condemnation of gambling in Proverbs 28 (“A man with an evil eye hastens after riches”) and of smoking in Corinthians 16 (“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. . . . Therefore honor God with your body”), though neither is mentioned specifically in scripture and smoking was unknown in the biblical world.
But that’s no concern of a secular government anyway.
It makes sense to levy extra taxes on cigarettes, gambling and liquor for two reasons. One is that the money pays for the additional social costs of tobacco and gambling addiction and for alcohol-related diseases and injuries. Two is that no one has to pay them–smoking, gambling and imbibing are wholly optional, non-essential diversions.
What doesn’t make sense is that the pain is not distributed equitably. Consistency demands that we look for revenue to a variety of non-essential indulgences instead of simply picking on those that are most reviled.
Golf wouldn’t be a bad place to start. I love the game, despite how cruel it is to me, but come on, it’s just entertainment, not fundamentally different from shooting craps on a riverboat. Why should someone who prefers to roll sevens rather than shoot them on par 4s suffer disproportionately for his pleasure?
And coffee. A Starbucks tax. Why not? After a smoker gets done ponying up his per-pack share of the financial damage the habit wreaks upon society, it’s not right that he must continuing paying for his pathetic addiction while I jitter along freely with mine.
You think this is satire? Not even. There’s an initiative pending in Seattle to help fund early childhood education with a 10-cent tax on every espresso drink; in late 1999 the City Council in Newcastle, Wash., tacked a $3.75 “admission tax” onto green fees at its local golf course.
Last month, talk around Springfield was that the General Assembly was seriously considering imposing a statewide tax on cable TV, another mind-rotting frill.
A paper published two years ago in the American Journal of Public Health said 19 U.S. jurisdictions impose special taxes on soda pop or snack foods–including Chicago’s 3 percent soft drink tax. And though these duties pull in $1 billion a year, said the report, they should be vastly expanded because they don’t come close to paying for the estimated $71 billion annual national cost of diet-related diseases.
Yet whenever a lawmaker floats an idea to make sin taxes broader instead of simply deeper and more punitive, the public howls as though it’s time for another Boston Tea Party.
My Lesser Self howls too. But my Better Self thinks, “Yes. Make those tea junkies pay too. It’s only fair.”
