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Join Date: Aug 1998
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A little too late.
From The Examiner He displays some ignorance, but he's against SCHIP. Interesting.
Quote:
One tax, two tax. Sin tax, poor tax.
1 comment
February 4, 11:49 PM
by Jim L. Cunningham, DC Progressive Examiner
The poor and middle class are affected by the tax.
Let me start out by saying I’m super-duper happy that millions of children will now have health insurance that wouldn’t have otherwise. The intention for the new SCHIP bill couldn’t have been better or the recipients more deserving. Bravo!
Now that THAT’S out of the way…
Let me just state that I don’t like at all the way this thing is being paid for.
For one thing, all those Bush tax cuts for the rich are still on the books. You remember those don’t you? After Bush campaigned in 2000 on “the dignity of the White House” and was oh-ever-so-humble on the campaign trail, wore his religion on his sleeve and talked about social issues to please the religious right, reached out to the NRA and all those “regular people”, the fact is that when he actually got into office the first thing he did was to go after the money. Bush’s first priority wasn’t all those “have a beer with me” regular-people issues. His first and biggest priority were those giant tax cuts that went, largely, to the wealthy – to pay off all those millionare/billionare campaign donors that got him there – THOSE tax cuts. Do you remember now?
Anyway, they’re still on the books. All those m(b)illionares are still benefiting from those very same tax cuts. Obama hasn’t done anything about them. Yet.
Yet, we received an entirely NEW tax to pay for SCHIP.
I know what you’re going to say… “But it’s a tax on those evil, disgusting, smokers that put such a strain on our healthcare system and, besides, people shouldn’t smoke anyway; this will help them quit!”
Strawman argument? Perhaps.
That’s OK. I’m only going to argue with the spirit of the argument anyway.
I argue, “What healthcare system?” and also, I propose that it’s more Progressive to not poke noses into other people’s business, tell people what to do with their bodies (sound familiar) and worry about people’s… SINS.
Yes, sins.
It’s a sin tax we’re talking about here – the concept whereby that which you find morally objectionable, you tax to death.
Prohibition for tobacco. Remember Prohibition? All those pious Bible thumpers telling people not to drink; remember that?
Yeah, we’re doing THAT. The Left is taxing that which it doesn’t agree with. Shame. Shame. Shame!
I thought the GOP was the party of trying to outlaw all that they found annoying: People wearing their pants too low, gay people, people speaking Spanish… you name it. If it irritated conservatives, some representative somewhere with an (R) after their name was going to try to get a law passed against it while base conservatives cheered them on. “Yes, yes, we hate that! Let’s outlaw it!”
Shame on us for being just like them! I don’t think it’s very Progressive to tax someone or impose our will on their freedoms just because we don’t agree with their lifestyle choice.
Enough about my disappointment based on principal. Let’s move on to the more concrete reasons I dislike the way SCHIP is being funded:
Cigarette taxes disproportionately affect the poor. This is true for a number or reasons:
First, the poor are more likely to smoke in the first place. Sometimes it’s cultural. Sometimes people are influenced by their parents or peers. Poor people represent a larger percentage of smokers than the population at large. Poor people smoke MORE.
Second, the poor are much less likely to possess the means needed to quit smoking. Sure, the prevailing argument is that if poor people quit smoking than they’ll have more money and won’t be so poor, and that, perhaps, we should make smoking even MORE expensive so that they’ll quit… yadda, yadda, yadda. The fact of that matter is that it’s very difficult to quit any addiction, and nicotine is a particularly difficult monkey to knock off your back. Smoking cessation programs, assistance drugs, and all those weaning-off products cost more money than the cigarettes themselves. And, these things are usually not covered by health insurance policies, assuming people even have health insurance.
Finally, simple math shows that a bump in the cigarette tax hits the poor much harder:
The 2008 poverty level for an individual was an annual salary of $10,400 a year. If a person smokes a pack a day, the new tax costs them about $20 a month. That’s a pretty big dent in the usual monthly budget after rent for someone who only makes around $800 a month.
A middle class American making $75,000 a year who smokes a pack a day barely notices the change. How much of a difference does an extra $20 a month make? Nothing. Zilch. That’s movie tickets and a box of popcorn. (Certainly not dinner for two nights.)
Well, that’s my main argument. Thank you for reading. I hope you understand why the cigarette tax disproportionately affects the poor and why this method of funding of SCHIP ticks me off.
But, as long as I’m at it, let me say one more little thing about this tobacco tax…
The tax affects cigars. The perception is that cigars are a luxury item for rich people. However, I’ve been smoking cigars for years with my friends. All of us just barely sneak into what’s considered to be the middle class, but we do all enjoy a decent cigar. It’s a great way to celebrate a week of work having come to an end. We actually represent the majority of cigar smokers, but this fact seems to be not known. Radio talk show host, Thom Hartmann, often has Bernie Sanders on his show to talk about things going on in Congress. Last time this issue came up (which Bush vetoed), Bernie referred to these products as “luxury cigars” and said of cigar smokers, “they don’t even ask what they cost.” Now, I’d never ever heard the term “luxury cigars” in my life before it left Bernie’s lips. I was shocked. The concept that this is a pastime of only the rich is simply not true. The truth is that, in our internet-shopping economy, many middle class cigar smokers depend on buying their cigars from online stores and cigar auctions like Cigarbid.com where they buy boxes at the more consumer-friendly prices you’re used to getting when you shop online for any retail item (Amazon books, anyone?). This tax will jack up the price for these regular Joes as much as 52%. Yes, these tobacco-enjoying working-class Americans DO, in fact, ask the price. Do you feel sorry for these cigar lovers? Maybe you do, maybe not. Do they, also, deserve the sin tax?
SCHIP is a good thing, but Obama and Congress should have sought another source of funding that didn’t affect middle and lower-class Americans while the rich are still lapping up those big Bush tax cuts.
Americans have the freedom to choose to smoke or not to. It’s not the government’s business. The Progressive thing is to leave them alone.
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Last edited by TommyBB; 02-05-2009 at 07:35 AM.
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