Nanny Statists: Speaking Of Vice Taxes

*Why is the **Vice** President always so boring?*

I mentioned vice taxes in the title of last Friday’s post, but over the weekend I realized that I actually hadn’t said anything about them in the post itself.

I only really talked about outright bans.

And vice taxes are related, but different.

When the State bans a thing, it’s completely forbidding it; vice taxes are when the State adds additional (often ludicrously high) taxes to a thing to discourage citizens from buying it.

Cigarettes, booze, sugary drinks.

The State taxes these more because the people in charge of the State want you to not have them, but can’t get an outright ban together.

One side effect, of course, is that the rich don’t even notice these extra taxes so really it’s only the less-wealthy who are affected.

So far, so normal.

But while outright bans are the State making a choice that usually should be the citizen’s right to make, vice taxes are much more insidious.

Vice taxes are there to convince the citizen to choose the way the people in control of the State want them to; they exist to change your mind.

And the State should never be allowed to even try to influence the opinions of the people.

The people tell the State what to be; the State should never tell the people what to think.

About anything.

Because that gets the relationship between the people and the State backwards.

And once you start allowing the State to try to influence public opinion in any way, there’s no clear place you can then draw a line and say beyond that is too far.

All vice taxes have always been justified with the claim that they’re for the peoples’ own good.

But it’s each person’s right to make the decision of what’s for their own good for themselves.