I am in favor of using whatever methods are needed to get people off their fat butts and start getting healthier so I won’t have to pay for their bad habits with my premiums and taxes. If that takes $100 per pack cigarette tax and a $50 per Twinkie tax, that’s fine. It won’t raise MY taxes. I’m not in favor of raising all taxes, just fat people’s and smokers’. That not totalitarian.
I’m sick and tired of paying my good money for someone else’s bad habits.
Is that you, Obama?
I think you are missing the basic point of liberty.
Here’s a hint:
Stay the f__k out of my life.
Yeah, it is. That's how they get into power. They divide and conquer. First it's cigarettes and twinkies, then it's guns and ammunition. Then it's gasoline and cars. Then carbon taxes which tax everything else, electricity, water, food, clothing, housing, everything. Remember tax money means power in politicians hands.
Do you really want to give politicians the money to buy the influence and votes to give them totalitarian power over your life? Cause thats what you are doing. It always starts by taxing or banning other peoples habits and lives, but it always ends up effecting everyone. Always, no exceptions.
“I’m sick and tired of paying my good money for someone else’s bad habits.”
Cigarette and Twinkie taxes are not going to keep you from doing that. If anything it will take even more of your money. Taxes do not modify behavior. If taxes become prohibitively high, then people will just buy black market cigarettes and twinkies. You could even ban cigarettes and twinkies and people would still find a way to buy them.
What high taxes and bans do is provide criminals with a lucrative new business opportunity. Just think of the hundreds of millions they could make if they become the sole suppliers of cigarettes and twinkies?
Heck, they would be richer than the drug kingpins of South America. Think of all the judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers they could buy with that kind of money?