Incentives matter. Nowhere is this more evident than in states that have instituted ridiculously high cigarette taxes, especially New York. The Utopian socialists who believed that individual behavior wouldn't change when faced with $9.00 a pack cigarettes, have created a new profit center for organized crime and terrorists, made criminals out of law abiding citizens and succeeded in generating less tax revenue in the process.
And what is government's response to all of this? Would they lower the taxes in recognition that these schemes are endangering everyone by cracking down on a minority's use of a legal product? Of course not. They want to compound the problem by spending more tax dollars in order to further enforce these moronic policies:
New York Rep. Peter King admits:
"Officials estimate that, in total, cigarette smugglers are sending millions of dollars to dangerous overseas terror networks annually. The more than $50,000 from one contraband load would be enough to fund as many as 10 USS Cole bombings."
What's his solution?
"By collecting taxes on the resale of cigarettes at Indian Reservations, the state could stop the terrorist pipeline, cutting off the smugglers’ supply of illicit cartons. I have also called on my colleagues on the Committee on Homeland Security to hold a Congressional hearing on smuggling in the United States."
And that will accomplish absolutely nothing while wasting even more taxpayer dollars trying to solve a government created problem.
Another brilliant solution is to create more federal laws and further criminalize the individual behavior these taxes have encouraged and further erode freedom:
Congress is considering bills that would increase the penalties for smuggling, bar the shipment of cigarettes through the mail, and require all tobacco products to carry a high-tech federal tax stamp that would enable law enforcement officials to spot counterfeits and identify packages that have illegally crossed state lines.
Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., a sponsor of one of the bills, called it a "great mystery" why New York hasn't done more to crack down on bulk purchases at Indian reservations. New York's reservations sold nearly 304 million packs last year _ nearly a third of the state's recorded total.
"You go stand in front of the Shinnecock Reservation on Long Island, in the Hamptons, and you can see people loading boxes and boxes and cases into their trucks," Weiner said.
These geniuses are obviously immune to common sense and the lessons of history. New York had high taxes relative to price in the 60's and 70's and responded to the same problem with equally useless solutions:
"State and city officials responded with mandatory prison sentences and expanded police powers of search and seizure. But in 1973 a state commission found the crackdown to be "completely ineffective and a failure." Desperate state officials formed a special task force that proposed abolishing the city's cigarette excise. Gov. Malcolm Wilson embraced the idea, explaining: "One major incentive to organized crime is the high New York City cigarette taxes, piled on top of the state tax, which have made that city the promised land for cigarette bootleggers."
"Politicians continue to use the health of smokers as their excuse for higher cigarette taxes. This view is myopic. As Gov. Wilson argued three decades ago, high cigarette taxes are bad public policy because of their effect on the rest of us. In the 1960s and '70s, organized crime exploited high cigarette taxes at our expense. Today we face an even deadlier adversary."
That's true. It is also true that these taxes are easy to pass with the support of the short-sighted non-smoking majority, many of whom are repulsed by the habit. They fail to see that the same arguments can be used to take their freedom away. New York now has a trans fat ban. Congress is telling all of us what kind of light bulb we can buy. The common thread is a subordination individual rights to that of a collective. There's no end to the government's power to coerce changes in private behavior when you accept the premise that government has that right at all.
"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." - Ayn Rand
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