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Saturday, 16 September 2017

Sin (taxes) of poor

re: "Crackdown on alcohol, cigarette hoarders" (BP, September 14)


Dear editor,
Whilst the do-gooding excuses for increasing "sin taxes" are admittedly all very communist, that does not make these taxes just. Just because something is unhealthy does not justify the Big Nanny state interfering to control the choices of adults, however foolish those choices might be. In particular, these taxes hit hardest the poorest in society, which does at least comport with the anti-democratic notion so popular with the PDRC and those colluding with them that self-deemed "good" people must control the poor, uneducated peasants who can't be trusted to be responsible. This ugly prejudice is as baseless factually as it is base morally.

It is as acceptable to inflict additional costs on those whose pleasures come in part from cigarettes, alcohol or gambling as it would be to impose similar extra costs on those whose pleasures come from reading classical literature (one of my own favourites) or enjoying the greenery in Lumpini Park. Of course, if people's bad decisions result in self-harm, the state is also under no obligation to bail them out.

The only acceptable level of taxes on anything is to offset, and nothing more, the harm to innocent bystanders, and that is much less than what is already raked in by the current exorbitant "sin taxes" about to be worsened still more to control the personal choices of adults, especially of the poor, who are thus punished for the "sin" of being poor by rule of law made up by self-adulating nannies of conspicuous affluence.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on September 16, 2017, under the title "Sin (taxes) of poor" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1325471/sin-taxes-of-poor
  

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