How our state is ripping us off! (income, income tax)

[tamiznluv]

BTW, Thanks M22. The thought was there!

[LeavingMA]

Originally Posted by meltinjohn

Great point. I only want them to raise cigarettes to 20 bucks a pack if they could. Their doing a good deed.

I'm a firm believer in letting people do what ever they want as long as they don't harm anyone else. If someone wants to smoke, drink, gamble, then let them...but I don't want to hear any complaining that they don't have any money and have lung cancer or whatever. Remember prohibition didn't work, and the war on drugs hasn't worked either. Neither of those things stopped people. Gambling is illegal, but yet people continue to play poker online and with friends. March madness is in full swing and everyone has got their brackets and pools going. There is nothing wrong with anything in moderation.

This nation has turned into a bunch of babies where people feel they need everything to be protected and "perfect". Let people learn on their own. Sure, everyone makes their mistakes, but real people pick themselves back up, learn from their mistakes and make better lives. Not today, people now make excuses and blame someone or everyone else. If we stop this habit now, then people will look to themselves first. It is solely the person's choice to decide what they deem wrong or right. The government doesn't know any better than anyone else, and they don't know each individual while they sit in D.C. or in Boston.

So now should they start taxing chocolate, soda, and anything else people like but the government thinks is inappropriate. I'm an adult and I don't need another adult (just because they are in government) telling me what they think is wrong or right. I don't have any kids...would you want me coming over and telling you how to raise your children. Let's get rid of this socialist crap and move to the america with individualism and people living how they want to. A powerful government is a bad and dangerous thing, just look at the past and see Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, China, Japan back before World War II, etc. I've heard the expression before, "you can make things idiot-proof, but you can't make people idiot-proof. Enough is enough. Whether someone thinks it is right or wrong to make these stupid laws is not the issue...they are unconstitutional and interfer with peoples' rights.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by LeavingMA

I'm a firm believer in letting people do what ever they want as long as they don't harm anyone else. If someone wants to smoke, drink, gamble, then let them...but I don't want to hear any complaining that they don't have any money and have lung cancer or whatever. Remember prohibition didn't work, and the war on drugs hasn't worked either. Neither of those things stopped people. Gambling is illegal, but yet people continue to play poker online and with friends.

I find myself half agreeing and half disagreeing. This part I agree with. An absolute ban on anything that large numbers of people want to do will not work. But the government is perfectly able to recoup its costs in cleaning up the mess.

Originally Posted by LeavingMA

Let people learn on their own. Sure, everyone makes their mistakes, but real people pick themselves back up, learn from their mistakes and make better lives.

Agree with this too. One of the best fortune cookies I ever saw was:

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

Originally Posted by LeavingMA

This nation has turned into a bunch of babies where people feel they need everything to be protected and "perfect".

From my perpective this is backwards. It seems to me that the nation has turned into a bunch of babies who think that they are automatically entitled to carry on "living they want to" with no regard to the financial, social, or environmental costs of their preferred lifestyle. If a tax is instituted to recoup for the public costs that people engaging in certain behaviors have "externalized," so be it. Today's Americans are in some ways deprived of meaningful enjoyment of life, and in other ways the most spoiled group of people who ever lived. If this country or this planet are going to survive, the time for putting away the childish sense that we can do whatever we please is drawing near.

Originally Posted by LeavingMA

they are unconstitutional

This is clearly not true. Governments have been taxing things they wanted to discourage for centuries and there's nothing in the constitution prohibiting it. In the 1980's the Supreme Court decided a case pitting the State of South Dakota against Liddy Dole, who was then U.S. Secretary of Transportation. The U.S. Department of Transportation denied federal highway funds to South Dakota because it would not raise the drinking age to 21. SD and Louisiana were the big holdouts. South Dakota said, look, this is extortion. We get a huge percentage of our highway funds from the feds, and by withholding them they can effectively tell us what drinking age to have. It's unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (maybe unanimously?) that while the federal government could not tell South Dakota what legal drinking age to adopt, it was fine for the federal government to condition receiving highway funds on having a drinking age of 21. Technically, if not realistically, South Dakota still had the choice of persisting in the behavior the federal government wanted to discourage.

The same logic has been applied to abortion. Under Roe v. Wade, no state can make getting an abortion criminal, but the courts have upheld state decisions not to pay for abortion as part of Medicaid. The practical effect is that the person who can't afford an abortion can't get one, but the courts consider that the person's inability to pay is not the state's problem.

In other words, there is apparently no God-given, unalienable, or constitutional right to free abortion and there is surely not such a right to cigarettes taxed at a lower rate.

[TomDot]

Originally Posted by Brave Stranger

Lol, come on up Mass residents & spend your money sales tax free. Mass culture never changes. Tax everything that moves

If it weren't for the fact that your state taxes me every time I want to go to Maine, maybe I would.

[Brave Stranger]

Originally Posted by TomDot

If it weren't for the fact that your state taxes me every time I want to go to Maine, maybe I would.

Yes......I agree that is a bit much.

[LeavingMA]

This is clearly not true. Governments have been taxing things they wanted to discourage for centuries and there's nothing in the constitution prohibiting it. In the 1980's the Supreme Court decided a case pitting the State of South Dakota against Liddy Dole, who was then U.S. Secretary of Transportation. The U.S. Department of Transportation denied federal highway funds to South Dakota because it would not raise the drinking age to 21. SD and Louisiana were the big holdouts. South Dakota said, look, this is extortion. We get a huge percentage of our highway funds from the feds, and by withholding them they can effectively tell us what drinking age to have. It's unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (maybe unanimously?) that while the federal government could not tell South Dakota what legal drinking age to adopt, it was fine for the federal government to condition receiving highway funds on having a drinking age of 21. Technically, if not realistically, South Dakota still had the choice of persisting in the behavior the federal government wanted to discourage.

The same logic has been applied to abortion. Under Roe v. Wade, no state can make getting an abortion criminal, but the courts have upheld state decisions not to pay for abortion as part of Medicaid. The practical effect is that the person who can't afford an abortion can't get one, but the courts consider that the person's inability to pay is not the state's problem.

In other words, there is apparently no God-given, unalienable, or constitutional right to free abortion and there is surely not such a right to cigarettes taxed at a lower rate.

I agree you that their is now a sense of entitlement and people feel they should just have things. The government doesn't help because they bail out certain individuals or companies while the small, family companies don't get any help.

As far as something being unconstitutional...just because the supreme court and congress stand behind something doesn't always mean it is constitutional or they made the right choice. I believe many of the laws and court decisions in this country were made against the Constitution. I don't even think most judges or congress knows what the constitution really is. They use it for their own agenda. I believe this country was created for individual liberty and the government to do only what is said in the actual Constitution. The federal government consistently blackmails the states, and if the states don't go along they lose the federal money. I just simply don't believe the government should be taxing people to change behavior (you can't ever really change behavior)...even though I know they do it all the time. I don't think that makes it right or constitutional. I believe it goes against someone's rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

I really don't need the government running any more things...just look at how they run the dmv, massport, or any other government service. I think this country is going down a very slippery slope.

[oleinnout]

I used to support heavy taxes on cigarettes to raise needed revenues. However, I've changed my tune over the years. (I don't smoke). Here is my feeling about this tax. It's an insincere tax. It's classified as a "sin tax", but the government is relying on this money. Hence, they are relying on you to smoke, and this can't be a good thing. I no longer support any types of "sin tax", because the government is relying on people to be unhealthy in order to raise money. This is not sincere, and it doesn't in any way provide real help for real people with real problems regarding cigarettes, alcohol or gambling.

[LeavingMA]

Originally Posted by oleinnout

I used to support heavy taxes on cigarettes to raise needed revenues. However, I've changed my tune over the years. (I don't smoke). Here is my feeling about this tax. It's an insincere tax. It's classified as a "sin tax", but the government is relying on this money. Hence, they are relying on you to smoke, and this can't be a good thing. I no longer support any types of "sin tax", because the government is relying on people to be unhealthy in order to raise money. This is not sincere, and it doesn't in any way provide real help for real people with real problems regarding cigarettes, alcohol or gambling.

The other thing about "sin" taxes is they usually unfairly target the less well-off people. I don't think we should pick out certain items and tax something more than anything else. It isn't fair, and why should we just because legislatures decide they don't like something.

If you want to tax something, I'm fine with a normal state sales tax on it, but I think it is unjust to tax certain items at a different % just because your trying to make a political statement.

[meltinjohn]

Originally Posted by seamusnh

What happens when they want to tax something you like into oblivion? Maybe you like fattening foods, alcohol, power-boating.... The state can deem pretty much anything as "unhealthy" and then tax it sky high, couldn't they....

I dont smoke cigarettes and never did so thats where that speaking comes from. I look at it like smoking in restaurants is a problem, cut that problem out. Cigarettes go up, switch to cheaper cigars.
I dont like the state or government at all and am primarily a free thinker, but cigarette smoke is one of the biggest nuissances and it does make you look old before your time no offense.

[Stockholmaren]

Similar to the previous post, smoking does harm others and not just the person who chooses to smoke. Taxes can be used to discourage behavior and I don't see anything wrong with that since many tax policies have exactly this reasoning but it can of course be overdone. You can still smoke if you choose to, cigarettes aren't banned (even though they probably would have been if they were invented today), but you should bear the costs that are associated with smoking.