Paying for Freedom: It's the Capitalist Way

Repugs love to whine about "freedom" and how commie liberal socialists are destroying their "freedom" by restricting their destructive behavior.

How dare gubmint deny their gawd-given right to put their cheap plastic shit from walmart in walmart's cheap plastic bags that end up decorating roadside trees like billowing fungal growths?

OK, assholes, you wanna do something detrimental to society? Fine, but you gotta pay for it.

And it works. Paul Glastris:

A year ago, the city of Washington, DC imposed a 5 cent fee on disposable plastic and paper bags. The idea was to discourage litter and give people an incentive to switch to reusable bags.

SNIP

The bag fee is, of course, a version of a "sin tax." And in the wake of Barack Obama's call last night for overhauling the tax code and reducing the deficit, I thought it worth passing along news of how well this particular one has apparently worked.

"City officials have estimated that there was an astounding decrease of some 80 percent in bag use," notes the Washington Post today, "from about 270 million a year before the fee was imposed to around 55 million bags in 2010."

The fee didn't bring in quite as much revenue as anticipated -- $2 million rather than $3.5 million -- but that of course is the flip side of its astonishing success at changing behavior.

A national debate about tax reform is about to kick into high gear, and as it does I hope the advantages of various kinds of sin taxes are at the center of that debate. It makes enormous sense to increase taxes on things that do us and society harm -- from soda and cigarettes to petroleum and financial transactions. Doing so will increase desperately needed revenue while decreasing dangerous behaviors. And while we won't like such taxes at first -- indeed, we may hate them -- we'll eventually get used to them, and maybe even feel virtuous for having imposed them on ourselves.

The key to the success of this particular tax is that there is an easy way to avoid it by bringing your own reusable bags. That option prevents it from being the regressive tax on poor people that is the case with toll roads and gas taxes.

Sin taxes often fall too heavily on poor people; yes, poor people probably shouldn't waste their money on booze and gambling and cigarettes, but that personal choice costs poor people proportionally far more than it costs rich or middle-class people.

Conversely, we fail to tax society-harming "sins" committed primarily by rich people. Taxing high-finance games that endanger the economy is a good place to start, but there's so much more luxury bullshit just begging to be taxed into submission. Particularly luxury bullshit that allows the obscenely wealthy to avoid the everyday annoyances we working shlubs must endure.

How about private planes? That's our airspace, protected by tax-supported air traffic control systems, providing runways at tax-supported airports. I'll suggest a Benjanim per mile flown, plus a flat $10,000 for permission to land.

Then an annual surcharge on mansions: ten percent of the assessed value above the county median.

And sky boxes and private suites at tax-payer subsidied sports stadiums and arenas. Want to avoid rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses in the grandstand? It's gonna cost you an extra grand.

The richer you are, the more you benefit from the many public services provided through taxes paid by people who are less rich.

Far past time that the rich pay their share.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?