From: [m b tst 3] at [pitt.edu] (Michael B Tierney)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Free Press for "Ain't Nobody's.."
Date: 4 Oct 93 13:52:21 GMT

	Hi all!  This was an editorial column that appeared in last 
Tuesday's USA Today, touting the great ideas in Peter McWilliams' "Ain't
Nobody's Business If You Do".  I was playing around with a text scanner
here and scanned this in.. I figured I may as well post it.  Too bad it
doesn't look like the Clinton Administration is going to do anything about
the immoral consensual crime situation in the U.S., seeing as they
recommended AGAINST medical mj just a few days ago.  BTW, anyone know when
"Ain't Noboy's..." is coming out on paperback??  I'd love to read it, but
$20 on a hardback isn't quite in the budget.  Enjoy!
-me

----- USA Today text follows -----


If we're going to tax sin, go whole hog
by Joe Urschel

Tobacco and alcohol are just
the beginning; think of the
revenue in taxing real sin.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have toyed with the idea of using "sin taxes" to fund 
their health-care plan. At one point, they figured they could raise $20 
billion a year with taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.

A lot of Americans may not consider smoking and drinking to be sinful, and
we'll leave the question of whether the government ought to get into the 
business of taxing your sins to another day.

Nevertheless, if we are going to tax sins, why are we starting with such 
minor infractions? Why not raise even more money by taxing real sins like 
prostitution, gambling and recreational drug use?

Not to diminish the vice president's efforts, but Peter McWilliams has come up
with a "reinvention" of government that would bring us closer to the ideals of 
the Founding Fathers, increase our personal liberties and save an impressive 
amount of money in the process.

His idea is simple. It is that you should be allowed to do whatever you want 
with your own person and property as long as you don't harm the person or 
property of another.  (You thought you already had that right?)

In his book Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do, McWilliams argues for the 
decriminalization of what he calls "consensual crimes." They include the 
practices mentioned previously, along with laws against vagrancy, loitering 
and not using things like seat belts and motorcycle helmets.

Many of those practices we consider bad or immoral. But McWilliams' point is
that just because the noble "we" wouldn't do them, why should we make it a 
crime if someone else does? There may be moral and religious reasons for 
fighting those practices, but there isn't a civic duty to fight them. Unless, 
of course, we consider the USA a religious state.

"If that's the case. Iet's just he honest and say the job of government is 
to regulate morality," he says.

But that's a theoretical argument libertarians and others have been making for
decades. In the '90s, we like our debates focused on practical solutions. And 
money.

"A true vice tax can pay for a lot of stuff," says McWilliams. For instance, 
instead of spending our money to prosecute Heidi Fleiss, he'd have us 
legalize her business and collect taxes on it.

"This woman should be written up in Inc. magazine or Entrepreneur," he says.

McWilliams estimates that each year the government spends $50 billion putting
people in jail for things that hurt no one but themselves. According to 
McWilliams, we lose another $150 billion in tax revenues because these 
things are conducted in the underground economy.

The average American pays $800 a year in taxes to pursue these persons.

On the other hand, if these activities were decriminalized and taxed, we could
wipe out the national debt that's the $4 trillion debt, not the meager $266 
billion deficit in 20 years.

Now that is a sin tax worth having.

Here's to your health.
 


--
Mike Tierney     "Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad laws 
[m b t] at [pitt.edu]     bring about worse."     -Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
[m b t] at [pittvms]
CIS:70604,1512