fudge it: part II, or do-gooders propose a stupid idea

this from the IT about the first ''national seminar on taxation, health and tobacco''(1)

Ash Ireland is campaigning for the Government to follow other European countries and remove tobacco products from the basket of items which are used to measure the CPI.

Ash argues that if tobacco products can be removed from the CPI - as has been done in other EU countries - the Government will have greater flexibility to increase tobacco prices because related inflation increase will not be an issue.

i wrote about this before removing tobacco (or anything else) from the CPI means that any tax increase will have no effect only on the reported inflation rate not on the actual inflation rate. the whole point of a CPI is to attempt to give the central bank and government some information on the actual inflation. so this idea is immensely stupid.

if we were to follow the logical stupidity of Ash Ireland in say, measures against climate change , we could remove CO2 from the list of greenhouse gases. this would allow us to pump out as much CO2 as we liked and it wouldn't affect the climate. if we say it doesn't have any effect then it doesn't have any effect!! wooo hooo!!!.

what a bunch of assholes.

now for rhetorical sleight of hand...

Ash Ireland chairman Professor Luke Clancy said raising tax on tobacco would be easy to administer, easy to justify on public health grounds and would guarantee an increased tax take while reducing consumption

public health grounds used to refer to dangers that were a public danger, in other words that affect anyone involuntarily like communicable diseases. now apparently it means anything that affects the health of an individual member of the public even if it can't affect anyone else.

"It is important for the Government to remove tobacco from CPI if they are serious about tobacco control and the denormalization of smoking," he said.

(emphasis is mine) good to see social engineering and manipulation is still around to make sure we make the right choices(2)

(1) a national seminar, makes it sound official and wide ranging, however it's not exactly non partisan...

The event was organised by Ash Ireland in conjunction with The Irish Cancer Society, Irish Heart Foundation and the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society.

(2)the right choice is whatever do-gooders tell you it is, not what you think it is. just thought i'd clear that up for you.