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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I really hate the idea of sin taxes like this one where we now take something that the law seems to view as bad (social media) and use it to fund "Social Security and mental health support".

So now something good like mental health funding is in part dependent on something bad ...

It strikes me as lazy public policy and perverse incentives.

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And I'm sure that all the revenue will go directly to "Social Security and mental health support" in perpetuity...

Taxes tend to discourage things, so that kind of makes sense. However, the California Legislative Analysts Office has produced a detailed report showing that this practice of dedicating taxed funds to specific spending has already gone badly wrong with many of these funds being forced into the general fund particularly during budget crunches such as what is going on now. The most reasonable practice is to put all tax revenue into a general fund that is allocated as necessary by representatives. This allows budgets to be balanced without breaking laws while also responding to the priorities of the day which always change.

At least it's not the states officially running/endorsing social media like they do with lotteries. Yet.

Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Money for social programs must come from somewhere.

Using tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, gambling (for example) to raise funding for socially beneficial programs seem better than not doing it.

It's a problem because once the state gets revenue from a vice, they have an incentive to promote that vice. This is particularly common with gambling, where you have state propaganda (billboards, TV and radio ads, etc) encouraging people to gamble, even portraying gambling as some sort of way to invest your money.

Gambling is also sometimes considered a tax on the poor. But my point is it can be easier to levy a vice tax than raise income taxes for example.

AND with vices people will do them regardless so maybe some social good is better than no good coming from it.

It's not an "enemy of the good" if good public policy is just a matter of a different law or approach.

What would be a good alternative then that would also likely be implemented?

A stable / consistent source of funding not connected to one industry.

Nobody is going to be better off if the funding for their mental health services is cut off because X industry is having a bad time or gets reclassified or something else.

I see this happen with sin taxes and other funding sources with education programs all the time. Programs cut, people fired because their funding is some sin tax or very specific source that dried up. Important services like mental health and etc should be funded consistently.

I don't disagree with you but where's the stable/ consistent source of funding?

It sounds good but where is it? Whom are you taxing or collecting funds from?

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