Reply #118: let's say that is true [View All]

[William Z. Foster]

If what you are saying is true, then smoking should be banned or the use controlled in a similar way to firearms or automobiles - for public safety. That has already happened for the most part. That still does not address the regressive taxation issue. You are saying that regressive taxation is OK if it achieves good social ends. But that is always the argument used to defend regressive taxation.

Taxation is not about generating revenue? Then it is about punishing people? Micro-managing people's behavior? Controlling them? Deciding what is best for them? I support your crusade to stop smoking. I do not support your recommended method - regressive taxation.

I really do have to object to the argument that "the public is footing the bill for people's bad choices." I argued with representative Stupak about this the other day in regards to the health care bill. He defended it and said that the purpose was to solve the problem of poor people not having insurance, and therefore being a burden on the rest of us when they got sick or went to the emergency room. It is the damned poor people who are the problem - they aren't pulling their weight and aren't making the right choices like we nice middle class people are!! In other words, rather than the social problems being immigration, or smoking, or lack of access to health care, or lack of access to the best food at affordable prices being seen as the problem, we are to see the individual people as the problem - they are obese, they don't have health care, they are drinking soda pop, they are smoking, they don't have their documents in order. That leads us to pass legislation aimed at the people, always the poorer people, rather than attacking the problem.

If you want to blame, control, and punish the working people, that is fine. Many people do, and that is the main reason that Palin's phony "get the government off our backs" populism resonates with the public. Let's dispense with the "it's for their own good!" hypocrisy, though, and don't then be surprised when this all leads to a police state that may some day bite YOU in the ass, when the Republicans are back in power, and don't be surprised when the strategy of trying to be "just as tough as the Republicans!" leads to the Democratic party being out of power.