Or folks who do business with "bad people" or spend their money on "bad things" find their transactions taxed more heavily.
I think we can all picture what the moralizing pro-social left and religious right incarnations of that look like.
I think we can all picture what the moralizing pro-social left and religious right incarnations of that look like.
You don’t really need absolute control of a currency to moralize above-board business.
all normal sin taxes still apply.
Do we have taxes on gluttony? sloth? lust? anger? I never noticed.
What we have are taxes and other limitations on health-harming substances, like cigarettes, strong alcohol, and even on excessive sugar in certain places. This is not because the nicotine high, or inebriation, or feeling the sweetness are morally objectionable. This is because inhaled smoke, large quantities of alcohol, and large quantities of sugar lead to health problems, and treating these problems is expensive. It's more like a road tax, higher on heavy vehicles that damage roads faster.
This all assumes that the cost of medical expenses should be socialized.
Were the costs not socialized, there'd be a bit less of a point to tax cigarettes so much: you want to get lung cancer and you are ready to pay for it, go ahead and smoke three packs a day! But this is not how it works today.
A phenomenon which affects a large fraction of a population has effects on the entirety of the population, ergo, it is socialized.
IME few people genuinely care about the poor beyond micromanaging them for their own good or getting them to be out of sight out of mind.
Sin taxes, generally speaking, are how the HN class incentivizes the landscaper class to behave more like them (to varying degrees and with various pretexts as needed per issue).
Currently they are mostly limited by the middle class's ability to exempt itself. Finer targeting will enable them to go hog wild.