Agreed. While I find minimum price thresholds and sin taxes personally annoying, there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism, which has high costs in terms of healthcare and individual suffering.
I hate it. It just more of Canadian government paternalism, taking away people’s agency: “you cannot be trusted to make the right decision, so we’ll make the wrong decision more expensive to do.” The worst thing isn’t even the paternalism, it’s the hypocrisy. “This tax is to protect you and everyone around you” but in reality “oh yeah please don’t stop drinking because it’s bringing in so much tax revenue.”
Sure, agency and personal responsibilities are important values. But if you were the lawmaker here, would you remove the sin tax?
Empirically, you should be pretty confident that removing the tax will cause deaths, illnesses, etc. to go up. Keeping it costs some people some annoyance, and reduces everyone's agency.
At the end of the day, you have to make a judgement on:
value(agency) + value(tax annoyance) > value(deaths, illnesses, etc., externalities of these on others)
So what do you do? You might think it's obvious. I'm genuinely not sure -- and I think `value(agency)` is pretty high. But am I confident enough in just how high it is /really/ to live with the possibility of being wrong? (And the, in this case pretty concrete, blood on the hands?)
(What I'm really getting at here is a way to think about this, not the actual problem. Things are extremely polarized these days. Calling something paternalistic/etc is asking for an emotional response. But if what this really means is just that someone thinks `value(agency) > value(X)`, and I don't... well, there's no immediate emotional response there. How confident am I in `value(agency)` and `value(X)` really? That seems like a path to much healthier discussion, at least to me.)
I agree. Lotteries and Gaming are even worse; they warn you one sentence "please play responsibly" and then with the next sell you "this is how all your dreams come true"
Legal weed is the next one. They could have just decriminalized it but instead play this game to maximize how much they can sell it for without creating a black market.
We're saddled with these vestiges of the early 20th century because of Prohibition. But that period has long since passed. The new reason for keeping them is the revenue stream. This is often justified by the "societal cost" of alcohol because it is more fashionable to use that as the excuse, rather than money.
Yes, that's what libertarian paternalism (see: Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein) is meant to do. Legal and abundant alcohol imposes high negative externalities on the rest of the population. Sin taxes reduce consumption because economic incentives usually work.
It's when things are outright illegal (see: prohibition, narcotics) or the cost of ignoring the law is de facto lower than the legal price that things become quite dangerous for consumers, like the sale of narcotics laced with cheaper, more potent compounds like fentanyl.
For better and worse, a regulated market that pushes prices upward is usually better than an unregulated market or a criminalized one.
> there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism
Would you mind linking your favorite papers concerning this? Most of the ones that I could find did not include an evaluation of the prices.
I would only assume that such laws would have the biggest effect on people who are already alcoholic, lowering their quality of life as they would have to spend much more on alcohol and potentially having to avoid spending money on meals or rents.
In Chile, ersatz wine costs $2 a bottle, at the vineyard. That's what Concha y Toro (for one) pays vintners who sell excess supply that is undifferentiated in the wine market. Perhaps without taxes it would be cheaper, but it's somewhat more expensive to make than soda.
Not even in theory. I live in Germany and can get 500ml of average beer for around 0,50€. That's cheaper than soda in a lot of cases (ignoring the cheapest soda). We can also drink in public legally, and it is socially acceptable.
>there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism
Do you believe that you'd be an alcoholic, were it not for the high prices on alcohol, or the monopolies controlling sales in most provinces? This likely says more about you than it does those who are merely annoyed by the high prices.
Whether or not that individual person would have been an alcoholic is irrelevant. We have data to prove that raising alcohol prices reduces the number of alcoholics.
Do you believe you are immune to addiction? Because that says a lot about you, too.
pmalynin|6 years ago
jmoss20|6 years ago
Empirically, you should be pretty confident that removing the tax will cause deaths, illnesses, etc. to go up. Keeping it costs some people some annoyance, and reduces everyone's agency.
At the end of the day, you have to make a judgement on:
So what do you do? You might think it's obvious. I'm genuinely not sure -- and I think `value(agency)` is pretty high. But am I confident enough in just how high it is /really/ to live with the possibility of being wrong? (And the, in this case pretty concrete, blood on the hands?)(What I'm really getting at here is a way to think about this, not the actual problem. Things are extremely polarized these days. Calling something paternalistic/etc is asking for an emotional response. But if what this really means is just that someone thinks `value(agency) > value(X)`, and I don't... well, there's no immediate emotional response there. How confident am I in `value(agency)` and `value(X)` really? That seems like a path to much healthier discussion, at least to me.)
ticmasta|6 years ago
Legal weed is the next one. They could have just decriminalized it but instead play this game to maximize how much they can sell it for without creating a black market.
csours|6 years ago
noarchy|6 years ago
AaronFriel|6 years ago
It's when things are outright illegal (see: prohibition, narcotics) or the cost of ignoring the law is de facto lower than the legal price that things become quite dangerous for consumers, like the sale of narcotics laced with cheaper, more potent compounds like fentanyl.
For better and worse, a regulated market that pushes prices upward is usually better than an unregulated market or a criminalized one.
daniel-cussen|6 years ago
AnaniasAnanas|6 years ago
Would you mind linking your favorite papers concerning this? Most of the ones that I could find did not include an evaluation of the prices.
I would only assume that such laws would have the biggest effect on people who are already alcoholic, lowering their quality of life as they would have to spend much more on alcohol and potentially having to avoid spending money on meals or rents.
njepa|6 years ago
daniel-cussen|6 years ago
s3krit|6 years ago
noarchy|6 years ago
Do you believe that you'd be an alcoholic, were it not for the high prices on alcohol, or the monopolies controlling sales in most provinces? This likely says more about you than it does those who are merely annoyed by the high prices.
fwip|6 years ago
Do you believe you are immune to addiction? Because that says a lot about you, too.