A Modest
Proposal
(Title from an 18th century
essay by Jonathan Swift)
by Bill Tope
Some critics of wearing
masks contend that their freedom is being
abridged, that the government is insinuating
itself where it clearly does not belong. If
they want to risk Covid-19, then that is their
right; not that they believe in coronavirus
anyway. It was all a lot of bunkum, created
by the bleeding heart Democrats to scuttle Donald
Trump's reelection campaign. It also serves
to regiment Americans into a mindless army of
zombies, obedient to anything the deep state
wants them to do.
With this vein of thinking
I heartily agree: it's every man for himself. (Women,
on the other hand, know their place). Moreover, I
would like to track a parallel line of thinking
on another timely issue: heroin and other hard
drugs. I am part of a cabal of Concerned
Citizens whose goal is the legalization of these
unfairly maligned substances.
Drugs such as heroin,
cocaine and PCP are ideal commodities for today's
fearless entrepreneur: they boast a steady
supply, a ready market and dependable word-of-mouth
promotion throughout the United States.
Drugs are progressive commodities in that the
longer one is on them, the more likely they are
to become addicted; users then progress to larger
amounts to get the same high, and onto more
serious, "heavier" drugs at still
greater expense. The customer will then pay
progressively more, for less product, over time.
Sort of like cigarettes or alcohol. I mean,
thirty years ago a pack of cigarettes cost around
50 cents; what are they now, nine bucks?
And the minimum wage back then was about $3.25
and has only roughly tripled since then.
There's heavy pressure on
lawmakers today to decriminalize marijuana and to
even make it legal, on a federal level.
Beautiful! If it's legal, pot will get the
hell taxed out of it. You see, if the
government gets a cut, then the "vice"
is nice. In Illinois this year, tax
collectors gleaned more than $300 million in
taxes from recreational marijuana sales.
Same with gambling. Gone are the days when the
"numbers racket" flourished underground;
today you can stop at Quick Trip and get your fix.
And you can bet on sports teams on your cell
phone. Who needs Vegas? Forty years
ago, proponents of gambling said the profits
would go to education. And so they did.
But rather than supplement the funds the state
ordinarily set aside for education, they stopped
budget allocations for education and relied on
the lottery alone to fund the schools. So
students got zero additional funding. And
lottery profits went into the general revenue.
The way I see it, hard
drugs can be treated the same way: rather
than allocate state monies for the state's share
of Medicaid, rely on the HC-PCP tax. On a
positive note, the same drug addicts who overdose
can be treated by a health plan that they
directly contributed to. Is this a great
idea, or what?
Originally
published in Children,
Churches and Daddies.
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