[skybrian]

This is a general-purpose argument against charging for anything. Someone won't be able to afford it, so we should make everything free, right? Anytime you charge everyone the same price it'd going to be regressive, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have prices, because prices are what prevents overconsumption and shortages.

The key is that the money from charging for "sin taxes" needs to be given back in a way that's progressive. Either give everyone the same amount or overweight giving the money to poor people.

(Price discrimination also helps; often you can figure out how to charge more for people that can afford it.)

[BoorishBears]

>This is a general-purpose argument against charging for anything. Someone won't be able to afford it, so we should make everything free, right?

No.

You extrapolating a very specific argument to the nonsense degree and it not making sense anymore doesn’t mean the original argument was invalid.

Nor does it mean the original argument was an endorsement of your extrapolation.

[skybrian]

My point is that when you say "X is regressive" - well, lots of things are regressive. That's how prices work. If you want to fix it, you have to look at income.

[kodablah]

There are levels. You can't just say well all same prices are regressive, so dismiss any attempts to prevent exacerbating it. Also, it's foolish to say income is the only place it can be fixed. Reducing poor public spending, subsidizing preferences, acknowledging taxing as punishment isn't always the best solution (even if it works), encouraging public awareness, etc etc are all there.

[skybrian]

Yes, I agree that there are a lot of different things we can do.

However, sometimes, charging different prices based on income is impractical. Gas needs to be more expensive to discourage its use (to combat global warming), and it's not practical to ask people their income when they buy gas.

This is especially true when we're talking about prices that aren't charged to consumers directly, but will get passed on to them.

So, to avoid affecting poor people too much we need to compensate for that. The idea is that if you spend less than average on the things being discouraged then you come out ahead.