Do Not Concede Ethical Territory to Statists

There are many unanswered questions in our universe:

• Is there life on other planets?
• Do intelligent beings on other planets pay taxes?
• When is government big enough for a statist?

The first two questions are easy to answer. Yes, of course there is life on other planets. Anything else would be statistically impossible.

As for intelligent aliens and taxes, of course they don't pay taxes. They have realized that they can live their lives without a coercive entity telling them what they can eat, when they can see a doctor and how many airbags they need in their cars. Or flying saucers.

The third question is tricky. Over the years, I have asked it to many statists, or government expansionists as they should really be called. Nobody has been able to produce an intelligible answer. However, we do have some circumstantial evidence that gives us a hint, namely the ethical standards that statists apply in their pursuit of more government.

To most people there are ethical boundaries worth respecting. For example, you don't take advantage of people who are impaired one way or the other.

That includes people addicted to a certain substance, such as marijuana. Sound ethics would say that you don't build government spending programs on the backs of addicted people. Sad to say, we already do that with alcohol and tobacco taxes, but at least you could expect that virtuous thinking would keep our legislators on the right side of the ethical boundary beyond existing addiction taxes.

As we know, that is not the case everywhere. Colorado and Washington have legalized marijuana, in part for the purpose of taxing it. The pot tax has in fact proven to be popular, especially in Colorado. It is hardly a coincidence that the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Law is using pot taxes to push their legalization agenda in Wyoming.

The tendency to normalize marijuana taxes is also making its way into respectable think tanks. In a new report the Tax Foundation summarizes the pot-tax experiences so far in Colorado and Washington. In a technical tone, void of ethical reasoning, the report discusses why marijuana tax revenue in Colorado has fallen short of early predictions.

While well written and worth your time, the report inadvertently has the effect of putting an addiction tax on par with taxes on wrenches and pencils. This contributes to the removal of ethical boundaries against the growth of government. The Tax Foundation, which has a proven and impressive track record of working for less government, should be cautious about reducing the marijuana tax issue to the same ethical level as a sales tax on pencils.

If friends of limited government concede ethical territory to government expansionists, then what tax will we be discussing next?

What will the debate about pot legalization in Wyoming look like in 2016? Will it be about numbers, tax incidence, price elasticity of demand? Or will it be about ethics and the question of when government is actually big enough?