In the US Democrats have proposed hiking tax on cigarettes to pay for increased coverage of child health insurance. As the article points out this is a regressive tax because more low income people smoke than high income. As per NZ.
Apart from the gems of irrationality contained (increasing cigarette tax will stop people smoking therefore reducing the revenue stream required??) what caught my eye was the amount of federal and state taxes collected from cigarette sales - $21 billion.
Without going into elaborate calculations about demographics and the very latest revenue figures, it is immediately obvious that New Zealanders are paying a s..tload more tax on cigarettes than Americans.
In 2004 NZ smokers paid $819 million (which by the way is estimated at around 3-4 times more than their associated health costs).
Multiply that by a factor of 75 and you get $61.425 billion - nearly three times what the Americans pay.
Instead of treating smokers with disdain we should be making a point of, each time we brush past one shivering outside, thanking them for subsidising government services.
And it's a joke that we pride ourselves on caring about the poor in this country. We make them pay through the nose for what is often their only 'luxury'.
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Except that I'd wager that people on benefits are disproportionately smokers, hence its just another form of churn. Tax goes into welfare that is spent on cigarettes, that generate tax that goes into welfare....
Just under a million NZers smoke.
For argument's sake, even if all working-age beneficiaries smoked, you'd be left with over 700,000 non-beneficiary smokers.
Plenty of workers in that lot.
Young women and lower socio-economic men most obvious to me.
Are smokers inhalers or suckers?
Thanks for the stats, Lindsay.
My experience is based on my company, where out of around 350 employees, there are only around 10-20 that I know of who smoke (well; smoke at work - there may be more social smokers). Each morning I walk past the local correctional facility, and see people queueing for Periodic Detention. My estimate is that normally around 80% of them are smoking.
Plus - I guess with WFF, there are a lot more beneficiaries than the 300,000 that you claim! ;)
"We make them pay through the nose for what is often their only 'luxury'."
We pay through our 'noses' as well.
Todays Trivia fact:
The rate in a prison wing is about 90%
What you also get is something not usually seen on the outside- the recycling of cigarette butts.
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