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Originally Posted by Mavdog
uh, no, it isn't because they are "unhealthy" (do we tax people who eat too much vs people who don't? nope. how about people who don't exerise, no proposal to tax them either...) but rather an added tax on the consumption of a product to offset the increased costs to society from that consumption, as well as a deterrent to those who would begin use of an addictive substance.
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your increased costs are from the unhealthiness. You are talking about costs related to health, right? How else could someone's smoking bother you? People unhealthy for any reason cost society just the same as people unhealthy for smoking reasons. You could easily argue that drinking costs society more. Some people argue that McDonald's costs us more. I'd say domestic violence costs us more. Why not legalize domestic violence and tax it? Your arguments still do not separate smoking from eating bad.
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nope, it has nothing to do with "how much they sell it for", it has to do with a level playing field with corporate entities which the private capital competes with, entities that do assume the same risk/reward as the private capital. so if the private capital groups don't add more benefits to our society, nor take on more risk, why should they get favorable treatment on their gains relative to the corporate entities?
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Your mumbo-jumbo means nothing to me. I am a simple man, and when you wrote of "profit margins" "how little they pay for the right to pull oil out of the public lands" I interpret that simply as a difference between what someone pays to get something and what they receive when they sell it.
if you want to make a fancy-pants argument with more complexity, please make sense.
As for the deal someone struck to get the oil out of the ground, why is it the federal governments job to come along and tax the crap out of one party or the other in order to make that deal line up with what you think is right?