I suppose you’ll want some context for that headline. Back in December (12/9/2011) I explained why New Hampshire should continue lowering tobacco taxes. I suggested we adopt some kind of schedule by which we would sunset tobacco taxes over the next decade based of the long term decline in sales. Why, after all, would you risk the states ability to invest in anything, including the left’s rhetorical “neediest residents in their most desperate hours (or something),” using an unreliable source of revenue in decline?
OK, what I actually said was
“Only a progressive zipper-head would rely on more revenue from something they want to get rid of. Increasing the tax on a declining market will only accelerate the unreliability of the revenue stream. That creates the opportunity for bigger budget holes that must then be filled on the fly.”
As if by magic, Sylvia Larsen, Democrat super-minoirty leader of the New Hampshire State Senate, in the face of declining unit sales, as fewer people smoke, after a decades long trend indicating that tobacco purchases will likely continue to decrease in the future, thinks we should increase our reliance on cigarette taxes in New Hampshire.
Zipper head. (doofus, goofball, goober, dunderhead, maroon, doh!) see note#2 below
Here is the Larsen quote:
“It is a mistake to ask every citizen of our state to make sacrifices given the current budget while we offer giveaways to big tobacco companies that provide no actual tax relief to New Hampshire citizens and businesses,” Larsen said. “It’s fiscally irresponsible, morally questionable and just doesn’t make sense.”
Before we continue, I have to ask. Giveaways to big tobacco? Did I miss something? Is Senator Larsen implying that charging customers a lower state tax–while sales are declining–is a giveaway to big tobacco? Correct me if I’m wrong here but, if tax revenue is down because of declining sales then big Tobacco is making less. That’s a takeaway. The only other likely scenario is that we just gave 13 million dollars back to the people who smoke. So which is it Senator? Are we cutting into big tobacco’s evil profits or redistributing revenue back to the lower income people who smoke, while encouraging them to spend their money on other parts of our state economy?
(Ancient Left Wing Secret: It’s not your money, Larsen and Democrats believe it is the government’s money. So anytime you make the government smaller they get a little more crazy.)
More from that previous post…
Cigarette taxes should be sun-setting over the next five to ten years, not because we want people to smoke more, (or less) but because we can’t count on them. Odds are good that this revenue is going to dry up, and only a “zipper-head” would try to take it the other way. But until that happens, lowering these taxes on our side of the border will attract what commerce there is and slow the decline of sin-tax revenue, while helping to stabilize other forms of retail commerce from which New Hampshire draws more reliable revenue.
And here to help us out is Deval Patrick, governor of the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts, who has just included a 0.50 cent per pack increase in the Bay State’s cigarette tax. If that passes it will add and additional $5.00 to every carton sold in the PRM. Other New England states, similarly trapped in the contradiction of over reliance on declining revenue from tobacco, are looking at similar increases.
Without re-writing the entire 12/9 post here, or any of the other fabulous essays on this issue that have proceeded it, just how stupid must you be not to see the best way to go forward?
If cigarette sales are destined to dry up or bottom out, if it is in fact our intention to reduce or end smoking “in our or anyone elses lifetime,” is it not in New Hampshire’s best interest to optimize our share of a dwindling pool of revenue while it is still at hand? By managing that decline, instead of playing victim to it, we both mitigate any steep drop–by inevitably attracting remaining smokers to our lower tax rate–while simultaneously providing time to decrease any budgetary reliance on what will eventually be an almost worthless line item.
The zipper head alternative is to increase the tax in the same race to the bottom mentality that dominated Democrat majority rule from 2006-2009, which only proved that smoking couldn’t balance a Democrat budget, as if anything ever could. The end result of their Rube-Goldbergian budgeting was just more of the same voodoo-left-wing-dissapearing-cabinet accounting tricks and budget holes you could drive John Lynch’s House through.
This is not how stewards of the peoples finances should behave. And adding taxes willy-nilly just to pretend there should be more revenue later on is not how you run a proper government.
But don’t tell that to Democrats like Larsen who are as addicted to tobacco taxes as any smoker is to tobacco itself. She’s Jonesing for a tax, any tax, and there is no “patch” to reduce the urge. We just have to put up with her constituents persistent desire to send her ilk back into the huddle no matter how badly she tries to run things.
As for the cigarette tax…we could keep raising it every year like Larsen wants until only a few smokers left in the state are responsible for all the revenue, or we could accept the inevitable goal of not having as many cigarettes to tax and develop a plan to break the habit. One of these ideas is looking forward, the other one is just scrabbling in the couch cushions on your hands and knees like a junkie.
Note to the Liberty minded: Smoke em if you got em.
Note #2: growing up, a zipper-head was someone who opened up their head and took their brain out. A moron. A doofus. A gullible fool. I realize it has other meanings. Most things do. You’ll just have to get over it.
