It's easier to locate a Hummer full of car pooling Greenpeace volunteers than it is to find a lawmaker who doesn't assert without the slightest urging that he or she is "pro-education." Candidates billing themselves as fiscally prudent loudly advocate "repairing" America's educational shortcomings with quick fixes that include eliminating head start programs, increasing class sizes by cutting teaching positions, providing private school vouchers, and continuing to reduce taxes for one and all. In reality most of these current and aspiring civic leaders haven't been inside a classroom in years; their plans for education reform usually consist of no more than pandering to the shrillest voting demographic and proposing "solutions" which consist of smoke and mirrors.
No high-profile leader in the United States who wishes to be re-elected possesses the backbone necessary to state the obvious, which is that if we want quality schools (to say nothing of a clean environment, safe and solid national infrastructure, and competent, well-equipped law officers, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel) we're going to have to pay for them. But short of charging a user's fee for every call to the police or fire department, levying a per-child assessment for school use, requiring payment for each individual based on the size of his or her carbon footprint, or erecting toll booths in front of every bridge, tunnel, and public byway in the country, the only method of creating the revenue necessary to fund what most people consider vital services is taxation.
Angry millions of entitled, misinformed, or willfully uninformed Americans feel that bloated, inefficient and wasteful government is the enemy, or at least they do until faced with a situation requiring some sort of immediate assistance. But elected officials at state, federal, and local levels wishing to retain their position(s) of significance must out of necessity respect the will of their constituents by creating no new assessments. It would be nice, though, if some innovative types would consider reformulating the ones we already have. A good place to start would be taxes on tobacco products.
According to statistics published in the March 26th edition of USA Today, Maine currently taxes cigarettes at the rate of two dollars per pack. Tobacco users in the Pine Tree State no doubt wish they lived in a more enlightened place like South Carolina, where the state treasury's share of the price of a pack of cigarettes is a mere seven cents. Missouri (17 cents per pack), Louisiana (.36), Georgia (.37), Alabama (.425), North Carolina (.45), and West Virginia (.55) are all places where the per-pack assessment on smokes must seem eminently more reasonable to tobacco users in these parts. On the other hand, things could be a lot worse; puffers in Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin all pay a more-than-$2.50-per-pack surcharge on cigarettes, and in Rhode Island the levy on each bundle of butts is $3.46!
Small but shrill "Smokers Rights" groups have long carped that such assessments unfairly impact a small but nonetheless significant portion of the population. They accurately point out theirs is a habit that, once established, is awfully hard to quit. Their good friends who run the tobacco companies willfully and furtively designed it that way.
Those who were lured into nicotine addiction's inescapable grasp half a century ago deserve a break, but the government needs money. So how about a graduated tax on cigarettes? Require a driver's license or similar form of ID for anyone wishing to purchase tobacco products, and tax each consumer based on his or her age. Tobacco users over 70 years old should pay a mere extra dollar per pack of cigarettes, pouch of chew, or tin of dip or snuff. The levy for purchasers of these commodities aged 50-70 could be $2 per product; make it $3 an item on those in the 35-49-year-old bracket, $4 per pack of coffin nails for those 25-35 years of age, and for those under 25 who, despite volumes of easily accessible information regarding the dangers of tobacco use decided to avail themselves of such products, make the levy $5 per purchase. Call it the Stupidity Tax, if you will.
No amount of higher education guarantees a home on Easy Street; just ask any social worker with a Masters Degree. But if Americans who work hard to improve themselves and make wise choices can't be assured of financial security, why not at least require those who make self-destructive, wholly avoidable poor decisions that negatively impact themselves and society pay extra for having the privilege of doing so?
Andy YoungReturn to main page
Font size: