RALEIGH – With the North Carolina General Assembly having recently jacked up the state’s excise tax on cigarettes, and seriously discussed higher alcohol taxes to boot, I’ve been reading up on the sin-tax issue. Unfortunately, we’ll be hearing more about in the future, not less.
Rev. Robert Sirico is a Catholic priest who runs an invaluable Michigan-based organization called the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. I just read a column by Father Sirico on the subject of sin taxes, and his conclusion really hit the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned:
The question often comes down to the means of discouraging sin, not whether the sin itself is harmful. We must be careful not to confuse opposition to sin taxes with moral relativism. Rather the question is: Do we want to charge politicians and bureaucrats with sanctioning sins in areas that are morally ambiguous? Or should this task be left to community, family, church, and tradition – social institutions that are often more trustworthy in determining the limits of nonviolent behavior?
I assume his question was meant to be rhetorical, but perhaps to some the correct answer is not so obvious. Let me state it clearly – the second alternative is best – and explain.
Just like every other state in the union, North Carolina imposes taxes for reasons other than raising revenue to fund the necessary functions of government. That’s bad. Taxation is the most basic function of the state – indeed, the power to tax is one of the core elements that distinguishes governments from other kinds of institutions – but should not itself be a government program designed to bias market outcomes in one direction or another.
What’s even worse than simply using taxation to shape economic outcomes, however, is to attempting to use it for moral instruction or punishment. That’s not to say, as Sirico points out earlier in his column, that private choices can’t have broad and deleterious social consequences. My libertarian friends who promote the concept of “victimless crimes” need to find a more apt term. Abusing alcohol and drugs can impose significant harm on family, friends, and co-workers. Illnesses related to smoking, overeating, or lack of exercise can rob spouses of their loved ones and children of their parents. Perhaps these and other voluntary acts shouldn’t be crimes, but they do impose costs on others. They have victims other than the actors.
Or at least that’s my opinion. Which is the point: who decides? Taxing tobacco products, alcohol, or (perhaps soon) fatty foods means establishing a categorical treatment of activities engaged in by a variety of different people, to different degrees, with differing effects on themselves and others. What one person does carefully, doing little harm, may be done recklessly and harmfully by someone else – or by the first person at a different point in time, to his or her regret.
I think that North Carolinians should be free to make these decisions for themselves – without the governor and state legislature attempting to steer the outcomes by imposing punitive taxes. Freedom means that you can, as I do, abstain entirely from alcohol, smoke a pipe once in a blue moon, and follow a strict salami-sub-and-Sundrop diet. It means others can make strikingly different choices I neither understand nor approve of.
Sure, freedom can be inconvenient or infuriating. Feel free to say so, but no more.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.