SIN TAXES AND UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

Booze, Cigarettes, Chips, Fast Food--There's this knee-jerk reaction to put a special tax on all of them (on top of the special taxes already on them).

I think you must first decide what your governmental purpose is: Regualtion of Behavior or Raising Revenue.

If you want to raise revenue, sin taxes are a crappy way to do it. You tax the behavior highly enough and people will stop the behavior, move away or buy their sin elsewhere (see cigarette bootlegging). Then you lose the revenue stream and the purpose of the sin tax is defeated.

If you want people not to do the behavior, educate them, reward them for not doing it or (where you can) make it unlawful (please, I get the whole prohibition failure thing--That's what we have with cocaine now). Taxing the behavior is, at best, the fourth best way to deter it (and it's actually further down the hit parade than that.)

Yeah, I've heard the cigarette sin tax should be tied to an emergency room fee or a cancer research fee. Dedicated funds are a fairy tale--How's that working out with the lottery money going to education or the road fund going exclusively to roads?

My vote, sin taxes are stupid and counterproductive, no matter which goal they are designed to attain. Maybe I'll get some of the tea baggers together and have a "Quincy Camel Party"