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If The Democrats Made Food Products…

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Wealth Spread

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 2:22 pm by Nick, and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “If The Democrats Made Food Products…”

  1.   B.J. Williams Says:
    March 17th, 2009 at 8:17 pm

    Nick: I saw your column in today’s E-N.

    I can’t understand your objections to the plastic bag tax.

    Under the tax, those who wish to use plastic bags may continue to do so, for a price. Just like cigarette smokers can continue to smoke, if they wish to pay the extra tax.

    With bags, the tax collected can be used to pay for their cleanup. With cigarettes, the tax collected can pay the health care costs of smokers. That is not too much for society to demand. And it gives bag toters and smokers the “freedom” to continue doing what they do, if they are willing to pay.

    Don’t conservatives favor freedom?

    As for using taxes to modify behavior, that is standard practice. If not, why is mortgage interest tax deductible? Why are capital gains taxed at a lower rate? Why can we deduct charitable contributions? It’s because the state is trying to modify our behavior. And what’s wrong with that?

  2.   Nick Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am

    DJ: The reason given for taxing the bags is because they do not biodegrade in landfills, and so putting the bags in the landfills is bad for the environment. If this is the problem you are trying to solve, it makes more sense to stop the flow of plastic bags to the landfills, thus a plastic bag ban makes the most sense.

    Don’t conservatives favor freedom?

    Yes, we do, but we also like practical solutions to problems more than taxation.

  3.   ea Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    You are totally stupid. If you believed in the harm that plastic bags do to the environment, then you wouldn’t be twisting Rep. Anchia’s ideas into some sort of right wing propaganda campaign. You would be working with him toward the ban that you promote.

  4.   Nick Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    ea:

    • The problem is that Anchia isn’t working to pass a ban. He just wants our money.
    • Please refrain from the personal attacks (i.e. “You are totally stupid”). I almost always allow comments to stand unless they contain personal attacks or extremely foul language.
  5.   Mike Thomas Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    Banning plastic bags would be highly impractical. First, there are many things that go into landfills that are not good for the environment and plastic bags are just a small part of the problem, so why pick on them?
    So in that sense, Nick is most likely correct that Rep. Anchia’s real purpose is to create a revenue stream to support recycling projects. But that doesn’t mean it is necessarily a bad idea. As commenter B.J. Williams noted, the government manipulates tax laws all the time to modify behavior in the public interest.
    A 7 cent tax on plastic bags would certainly encourage a lot of people to go back to paper and/or to start re-using their old plastic bags. But trying to impose such a tax in the midst of an economic recession is probably not going to be a popular initiative and will likely never makes its way through the committee process and into law.