Why in the name of God do cigarettes in Britain cost over 40% more than they do in Germany and Finland, and almost 30% more than in France? Ludicrous! One of the many reasons Budget speeches have driven me mad over the years is the way every Chancellor of the Exchequer raises the tax on cigarettes with the implication that (a) they're doing something oroginal and clever and (b) it's being done for the good of our health rather than simply to maintain our grotesquely wasteful national tax-and-spend Ponzi scheme. They're as addicted to spending our money as any sixty-a-day nicotine-fiend.
The utterly fatuous and unecessary High-Speed Rail Link between London and Birmingham is likely to end up costing us £50,000,000,000 - just scrap that and stop fiddling about with our little pleasures, you fools. (And I speak as an ex-cigarette smoker.)
It was that long ago that a pack of squares was 3 bucks. Then the state figured out that people were coming from Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama to buy cigarettes in Mississippi because they were taxed at a lower rate. Instead of commenting on how great that was for people running curbstores on the border...they used it as an excuse to raise taxes on cigarettes here. This coincided with the election of Ears. He immediately signed SChip (a program that allowed the chi'ren to stay on the parents health insurance...until they are 27 &^^*&^* years old). That called for an immediate one dollar hike on cigs.
ReplyDeleteOvernight they went from 3 to five bucks a pack.
Then there were the idiots in Florida who won a huge settlement from the tobacco companies that also came with a tax hike. Immediately they began to spend the money...based on the current buying habits of smokers. As Statists they were completely ignorant of how markets work. People, who could, immediately started buying cigarettes in Georgia...completely wrecking their moronic predictions. Eventually they had to find somebody to buy the settlement at a severe discount.
But remember, e.f., they're just very nice, compassionate, big-hearted, morally superior people determined to save you from yourself. I'm just not sure who's going to wean them off their addiction to deciding what's best for the rest of us.
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