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Puffs of smoke This story is bizarre: China is ordering folk to smoke to boost the economy? Maybe the Chinese authorities figure that with air pollution already so bad, what could be any worse?
It goes without saying that being a good liberal that I am, I consider it as outrageous for a government to encourage smoking as to use invasions of property rights and censorship of things like adverts to stop it. This sort of issue cuts both ways. What next: forcing folk to get hammered every evening?
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Like anyone NEEDS forcing to do that.
When one considers that smokers live, on average, several years less than non smokers, the lifetime cost of health care for a smoker is less than that for a smoker, even considering the costs of medical care to a smoker. When the state in addition makes money from the sale of cigarettes as here and presumably in China the idea is clearly to both make money now and save money in the future.
Strange that the Chinese Government ruthlessly pursues its own self interest at the expense of the people, whilst Western Governments lie in the hope of benefitting their people.
I dare the government to force me to get hammered every night! I dare them!
Seriously though, like any totalitarian regime, the Chinese government is seriously misguided.
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i think with a state run health care system this makes economic sense. same with forced abortions. it is all so progressive don’t ya know
this reminds me of a satirical book, written by an Australian, called ‘The year of the angry rabbit’. Australia develops supermixometosis, and blackmails the rest of the world into doing what it wants. All wars stop. The world economy slumps, so nations are allowed to make armaments- which are then dumped into the sea! Everyone is happy!
Perhaps I’m missing something here, but all the reporting I’ve seen or heard about this says it applies only to the province’s civil servants and teachers. In other words, an employer is laying down the conditions for continued employment.
Given this group’s committment to freedom of association*, and particulary the idea that an employer should be able to sack an employee for no better reason than not liking the colour of the employee’s hair, I can’t see the problem.
Why, of course, the provincial government didn’t simply tax its inhabitants an equivalent amount and redistribute the money to the cigarette firms is a mystery. It’s no less appealing an idea to libertarians, of course, but at least it avoids the associated health risks.
* A committment I share, I feel the need to add in order to avoid accusations of trollishness.
Even ignoring the higher tax revenue that the provincial government claims it will get from the cigs, the whole thing makes perfect sense from a Keynesian point of view.
For example, once one has employed people in a “public investment scheme” (say digging holes and then filling up the holes again) there is the “terrible danger” that they will save their pay rather than spending it all (thus “limiting the multyplyer effect”).
So one compells them to spend lots of money – and on something that can be checked without great difficulty.
This leads me to something that American leftists should be happy with.
Lots of Americans are reacting to very low interest rates for savers by taking out their money and spending it.
The left should be very happy with this – but there is a reason they are not happy.
The type of spending that has gone up the most is the spending on firearms and ammunition.
And, no, I am not making this up.
For some reason the left feel pesonally concerned that so many ordinary people are stockpiling weapons and (especially) ammo.
I wonder why the “friends of the people” are so wary of the people.
Actually, they’re just being told to buy cigarettes. If they choose to smoke them or throw them away is up to them, I would think. Perhaps they can build decent housing out of them?
I have already volunteered to get hammered every night.
For the public good, doncha know.
When I was a smoker, I would joke around about it being stress management that prevented death.
If I don’t get a smoke break, somebody DIES!!!
LOL
A state-mandated stress management system?
China’s policies of encouraging rampant fertility, then see-sawing back to the One Child Policy, worked so well for them. I’m sure this will too.
In fact, China should be encouraging its old age pensioners to smoke. Their inverted population pyramid is the bigger problem.
All those excess men (thanks to the One Child Policy) should be encouraged to smoke, too.