Comments on: Californians Strongly Oppose Plastic Bag Taxes http://bobmccarty.com/2008/07/30/californians-strongly-oppose-plastic-bag-taxes/ Humor, Politics, Culture & Capitalism @BobMcCarty Sat, 19 May 2012 01:24:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: cb http://bobmccarty.com/2008/07/30/californians-strongly-oppose-plastic-bag-taxes/comment-page-1/#comment-6478 cb Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:20:19 +0000 http://bobmccarty.com/?p=3925#comment-6478 Plastic bags can be recycled, but it doesn't pay to recycle plastic like it does to recycle aluminum (Penn & Teller brought up this important point in one of their show's episodes). If the government deems it such an important issue, then taxing the offending recyclable material is backwards. One sould pay people to recycle plastic, which government at some level no doubt already administers. Now you've made picking up litter a revenue stream for bums, hobos, kids, and small animals. That sounds like a win on multiple fronts: if the problem is mainly litter, then a program that gives incentive to remove litter makes sense. If, instead, the problem is the idea of people being convenienced by technology, then the tax makes sense. Plastic bags can be recycled, but it doesn’t pay to recycle plastic like it does to recycle aluminum (Penn & Teller brought up this important point in one of their show’s episodes). If the government deems it such an important issue, then taxing the offending recyclable material is backwards.

One sould pay people to recycle plastic, which government at some level no doubt already administers. Now you’ve made picking up litter a revenue stream for bums, hobos, kids, and small animals. That sounds like a win on multiple fronts: if the problem is mainly litter, then a program that gives incentive to remove litter makes sense. If, instead, the problem is the idea of people being convenienced by technology, then the tax makes sense.

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