Nanny State PING!
Nanny State PING!
Oh, the irony!
Lower the tax then and watch it disappear.
EZ money
Federal government sponsored Underground Railroad. The more they tax, the more they divert attention to the real problem—taxation. If it is so bad and the evasion of taxes is so widespread, not to mention the health costs, why not simply make it illegal? Oh no, my bad—we can not have that, too mush money into the profligate federal coffers to throw around, exasperate the problem and shake down the private sector. We cannot have that, besides, who will pay for the health costs of the “children?”
In France, where I have lived for a month now, the government has, at least legally, a monopoly on cigarette sales. This is nation wide. Only licensed “Tabac” stores are allowed to sell cigarettes.
A typical government cartel pack of smokes cost between 6.50 Euros ($8.84) for Winston’s and 7.00 Euros ($9.52) for Marlboro’s.
And the average French citizen just cant afford this.
So this has created a vibrant black market for cigarette sales in certain spots in Paris, in particular.
They are smuggled up from Egypt and Libya (where you can buy a pack for 70 cents american), floated north in boats to southern Italy and then driven up to Paris.
On the streets I buy a carton of Marlboro reds for 45 Euros (a little more than $6 american a pack). And I haven’t bought a bad pack of smokes here yet. They all have Arabic warning labels and in one case they had “Duty free Egypt” printed on them.
You just go to a metro station and wait for a guy to say “Marlboro”.
You then hold up your fingers indicating how many packs you want and then he holds up fingers indicating a per pack price.
If you agree you follow him and do the purchase while walking down the sidewalk.
It actually works out quite well.
It is estimated that 25% of all cigarette sales in Paris are transacted in this way.
The statism - it burns. How does smuggling "cost" a state? How do they spend money on smuggling?
The whole tone of this article is nauseating.
Smuggling - the good old American pastime. Isn’t that how we got around the British?
This mindset drives me up the wall. It doesn't "cost" the states a damn thing. It's simply money they can't steal from the citizens.