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so you see, ace, it is possible to frame the argument you were setting up without the "this is what liberals do...and this is what heroic conservatives do."...problem is that the argument isn't terribly interesting. but that's more a function of the rickety premise i think, the example of the tanning-bed tax. personally, i don't see this is an interesting matter in fact: the practice seems to me goofy and the amounts that would be generated by the tax trivial. plus its a luxury item. you know, you don't NEED to tan yourself so as to resemble skin-wise a carrot.
but the relation of a mother and baby to baby formula is obviously not like the relation of some nimrod to a tanning booth.
so while the same logic **could** i suppose be applied, it's not a good parallel.
simpler, more obvious: cigarettes.
position: i used to smoke. when i rolled them, i didn't care about the tax. when i decided to switch to manufactured cigarettes, i found the tax onerous. like it's alot of money you piss away on these taxes. i quit smoking 11 weeks ago. did the tax prompt me to quit? no.
is the tax an effective way to create disincentives for potentially harmful practices?
i dunno. it wasn't for me. it wasn't for anyone i know who smokes.
what do they do then?
they slap a penance tax on practices that receive a certain social opprobrium, yes?
and they allow for a fiction to be maintained that that social opprobrium is being translated into some policy nudge.
but really, cigarettes are an easy source of revenue. the taxes punish smokers.
you wanna go down that kind of route with baby formula?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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