If you could, would you replace income tax with taxes on "clearly damaging things"; so stuff like gambling, cigarettes, and environmental damage, proportional to the amount of damage, and assuming the evaluation process for damage was mostly reasonable?
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The income tax should be abolished, but I don't think taxation of harmful things can make up for the shortfall however. It is a massive tax, 50% of Federal revenue.
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Both societal consensus and government technocrats have a perverse attraction to labelling clearly harmless or even beneficial things harmful.
Strongly against raising such taxes too much because of this.
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What if we do this by replacing existing outright prohibitions with taxes? It would likely raise more money while at the same time increasing freedom by ensuring that everyone who *really wants* to do something discouraged still can through normal channels
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Yes, for things that cause damage for the rest of us (environmental damage).
No, for things that cause damage solely to the transgressor (gambling).
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No but I would replace it with a progressive VAT and a Georgist land value tax. The progressive vat would be taxing things rich people buy at higher rates than poor people.
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Carbon tax is amazing and should be instituted world wide.
The issue with sin taxes in general is they're self defeating from a tax revenue perspective because they incentive not using those things. Cigarette taxes have shrunk as a % of tax revenue because fewer ppl are smoking
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Don't think you can get enough money from clearly damaging things without loosening the meaning of "clearly damaging" far enough to end up with Georgism (clearly damaging to keep all that space to yourself.)
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