A group of people will always burden others for the sake of themselves.
Sadly, there are so few smokers as a percentage of the population we have put them to slave status and will tax from them anything we want.
People should e proud of themselves for figuring out how easy it is to take from others.
It seems to me a people who would burden others for the sake of themselves can not sustainably have self-government. Like a lot of Americans I see if they could legally rip other people off they do it. Like selling shady mortgage products.. or lawyers taking jackpot settlements, or the countless people on the government doll. Our politicians are just as shady, rarely above taking money from lobbyists. Ceo’s selling out their employees for stock options etc..
At some point a majority of people need actual morality that they actually follow...or the society breaks down.
The only way I can see holding together a nation of people who couldn’t care less about the society’s well being, only thinking about ‘I got mine, screw you’.. is an iron fisted dictator, who keeps people’s greed in line with fear.
“A group of people will always burden others for the sake of themselves.”
And then these people will call themselves “socially conscious” and inform us all that the complaining folks forced to pay the tax are “greedy” as revealed by their complaints.