Monday, January 2, 2017

The Economically Innumerate in Government

In 2010, the New York legislature raised cigarette taxes to $4.35 per pack, the highest in the nation. It did this, it said, to raise more revenue for the state. Since that time revenue from cigarette taxes has plunged by $400 million. Organized crime is happy, though, as smuggling now accounts for nearly 60% of the cigarettes sold in New York. Anyone smart enough to review the history of prohibition in New York could have predicted this. Apparently you don't have to be very smart to be in the New York legislature.

When I lived in Chicago in the early 1970s, the city council banned detergents containing phosphates. Now what do you think happened? Sales of Tide and other phosphated detergents boomed in the suburbs around Chicago and nobody bought the phosphate-free detergents left on Chicago store shelves (maybe because they didn't clean very well).  The City Council of Chicago said they took this action to reduce Lake Michigan pollution from sewage in the Chicago Sanitary Canal. Since the canal actually flows out of Lake Michigan, not into it, I guess you don't even have to be as smart as a New York legislator to be on the Chicago City Council. 

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