Raven wrote on Jan 16
th, 2018 at 5:41am:
UnSubRocky wrote on Jan 13
th, 2018 at 5:35pm:
Ban smoking altogether. Save the country billions of dollars in lost revenue, due to smokers wanting to burn away their money in the form of cigarettes. Save the medical costs.
The government will never ban smoking. They make too much money out of it.
The tax on a pack of smokes is about 70% but the government announced that it would implement annual increases in tobacco excise of 12.5% up to and including 2020,
But lets just say it stays at 70%.
A pack a day smoker buys cigarettes at, lets say $30
So they pay the government $21 for the privilege to smoke. Every day.
Now lets say they smoke for 30 years. They have paid, in tax, $229,950 (not including the leap years)
Coupled with the tax on their salary, Raven would argue their medical costs are covered. Also, if we ban smoking altogether we could potentially lose billions of dollars in revenue.
I think you need to think about what you wrote. $30 a day for 365 days a year is $10,950 per year in total. But going by the tax only is $7,665. Either way, that is $10,000+ that could have been saved by the smoker by NOT SMOKING. I have a post about how I quit drinking alcoholic drinks for a year in 2015. I saved enough money not buying alcohol or even junk food for hangover cures that I managed to pay off my credit card ($4000 in debt) inside a year because of the extra repayments I could afford.
The $229,950 from tax smoking over 30 years is money that could have been SAVED and spent on constructive other things. $229,950 is the cost of a very decent home, My parents own a home worth $150,000 in today's terms, and the house is much better than the basic fiberglass home it once was in the 1980s.
If a smoker, somehow, smoking $30 a day in cigarettes instead decided to quit smoking and buy another house to rent out, he or she could be rolling in rent money in the years enough to retire and still get an income. Perhaps retire earlier and live longer. Or buy a new car to replace their old car much sooner. Or travel more often and live a full life. Someone smoking $200,000 worth of cigarettes in 30 years would be KICKING THEMSELVES with the amount of money they spent wasting on cigarettes.
I dwell on the money I wasted on alcohol. Between 2006 and 2015, I must have spent an average of $30 a week on booze and junk food. That is $1500 per year. $13,500 in the 9 years, which is about half my income for the year in my current circumstances. And here I was complaining about being in debt $4000.
Forum
Pages: 
