If that means fewer bear traps and less rat poison in our national parks, it's a win as far as I'm concerned.
>Second, vice taxes tend to be regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes. Some of the "education lotteries" (state lotteries that benefit education) are basically mechanisms for transferring wealth from the poor to the rich(er). Poor people buy the lottery tickets and the tax revenues go to fund college scholarships for middle and upper-middle income kids. That's not socially healthy.
There's nothing wrong with taxing stupid.
For example, if you gain >$price of a Powerball ticket worth's of entertainment from musing about how you'd spend the prize, it's a rational purchase.
On the other hand, buying two tickets isn't rational. You get no extra dreaming, and your expectation of winning hasn't moved essentially at all.
> There's nothing wrong with taxing stupid.
That or they just 'waste' $2 on a long-long-long shot knowing that they won't win but don't care because, really, it's only $2 and how much does the average American pay for their coffee?
Now people who dedicate significant portions of their resources to scratch and lotto tickets have a different problem than either wasting $2 or innumeracy. It's called poor impulse control.
I strongly believe people who put down the lottery just can't let go of their super-rational minds and just enjoy an irrational thrill every once in a while. Sure, the people who spend $100 a month on Lotto when they only make $400/mo... that's a bad decision. But just $2 once every couple of months when the jackpot is some insane number? Why not? It's just $2 bucks! Yes the odds of you winning are smaller than Plank Length[1], but just let yourself go every once in awhile and enjoy a thrill and imagine "What If...". The Lottery is not a scam; assuming you understand the chances of winning is as close to zero as can be without actually being zero. People actually do win & get the money. Now, if someone can prove to me that all the winners are fake and nobody ever gets any of this money... then that's another story.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length
EDIT: Downvoted. Not surprised; I just tried to make an argument about letting go of rationality on HN. That's probably the most offensive thing I can say here. :)
I just think that it is a battle to fight another day. It is hard to argue that the poor are worse off buying marijuana legally rather than illegally, especially when the prices start to fall below what you would pay on the streets which it will as soon as the supply is able to meet the demand. Supply is pretty low because the only companies who have licenses are medical marijuana companies that already had a license, more companies will become licensed soon.
Added to the fact that in Colorado I think anyone is currently allowed to grow a small number of plants for themselves without being licensed and they can end up not paying any tax.
It's also a high risk business. You might invest millions on growing a crop only for the Federal administration to change policies in a few years and come in and blowtorch your crop.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/22/feds-destroy-1-billion-in-...
http://calcoastnews.com/2011/07/feds-raid-sanger-pot-farm-de...
Either way, you won't get it back and your investment is gone.
Just like how legalised gambling just made it legal for the mobs to run casinos?
Except that's not what happened. Investors came in, bringing real managers, real security, and real regulation. They turned the seedy, Las Vegas strip into Disneyland. And those old mob run casinos, you'll find their demolition videos on youtube.
Agreed, but legal cartels are (marginally) better in that they are forced to operate under the "light of day". This doesn't automatically solve all the problems in se, but it's an important step.
> First, that number is apparently fixed (based on your wording, I'm not familiar personally), but the there is, presumably, no upper-bound on the actual revenues, so as revenues increase, a smaller percentage goes to education.
Yes, I'm just pointing out that the motivation for the tax was not the same as the motivation behind your typical "vice taxes". It was proposed by the people who wrote Amendment 64 (proponents of legalization).
Naturally there's a tradeoff to be made, as you point out, but IMHO, it was a clever attempt to construct the amendment "defensively", to mitigate the risk of people trying to repeal it.
The size of the tax, and what to do with any excess revenues, are where one has to make a value judgement, and it really comes down to whether one thinks income should be redistributed from rich to poor, poor to rich, or neither. That's a separate discussion, though - I think almost anybody would agree that it's better to be debating the exact structure of the tax, than to be stuck debating whether or not we should force the drug trade to happen in a completely unregulated, untaxed, underground market.
Plus, they have much less need to kill people and that.
The tax revenue thing is also kind of misleading. First, that number is apparently fixed (based on your wording, I'm not familiar personally), but the there is, presumably, no upper-bound on the actual revenues, so as revenues increase, a smaller percentage goes to education.
Second, vice taxes tend to be regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes. Some of the "education lotteries" (state lotteries that benefit education) are basically mechanisms for transferring wealth from the poor to the rich(er). Poor people buy the lottery tickets and the tax revenues go to fund college scholarships for middle and upper-middle income kids. That's not socially healthy.
Given the two points above, there's a real danger that marijuana taxation will be used to transfer the overall tax burden from higher income people to lower income people.