Men who dress up as women are called “cross dressers”. They pretend to be women but we know really underneath they are men.
Likewise taxes are not always called taxes. They can be called laws or regulations but if they force you to spend money the way the government insists they are in effect taxes, just dressed up to look different. You know, like a man in a dress.
A prime example of a cross dressing tax is Illinois liberal elitist nanny state’s silly new carbon monoxide law recently passed by the Democratically controlled house and senate in Springfield. Obviously there are too many people in government with too little to do if they come up with laws like this one.
The new law requires all households to provide a carbon monoxide alarm for each bedroom. There are approximately 10 million bedrooms in Illinois and at a cost of at least $45 per alarm this is in effect a $450 million tax on Illinois residents.
And what exactly are we protecting ourselves from? Well according to a US Consumer Products Safety Commission study in 2005 (the last year studied), there were exactly 22 carbon monoxide deaths in the entire country from natural gas furnaces, the kind of furnace used by the vast majority of Illinois residents. That’s about 1 death in Illinois based upon population. There were also 10 deaths from charcoal grills and 52 from gas powered tools mainly electric generators. If you visit Home Depot and look at generators you will see each one has several large, brightly colored labels warning not to use them indoors because they can give off lethal amounts of carbon monoxide. My guess is if you are going to ignore those big warning labels then you are probably going to ignore the law requiring carbon monoxide alarms.
For comparison there are an average of 90 deaths per year from lightening strikes, which means you are 4 times more likely to die from lightening than you are from your furnace. Why not a law mandating lightening rods for all homes, parks and golf courses?
If you spend $135 on carbon monoxide alarms for your 3-bedroom home, and you do not grill burgers in the living room, it will likely be a complete waste of money since there is only about one gas furnace carbon monoxide death per 14 million people. You are much more likely to save a life if you spend that money on new tires to replace your bald ones (we could buy 10 million tires for the cost of this tax) or a snow blower for your grandfather so he doesn’t drop dead shoveling his driveway. We could buy a million of those. How many lives do you think we would save if we did that with our $450 million? A lot more than one I bet.
However, elitists think they are smarter than you. I mean they tell you things and tell you things and if you don’t listen, well then, they will get their blue state politicians to pass a law forcing you to do what they think is best for you whether you like it or not. Obviously if you are too dumb to decide whether to go to a tavern where people smoke (smokers being, of course, the dumbest of the dumb), too dumb to decide whether to eat a cookie with trans fat in it, then you are certainly too dumb to decide whether to spend $135 on a 1 in 14 million chance of saving your life. Better elitists decide for you.
Ironically, elitists do think you are smart enough to decide to abort a fetus; meaning once you are born they will pay up to $450 million to save your life but prior to that you are on your own. Go figure.
Educate don’t regulate should be the rule. But in order to educate you would have to present people with all of the relevant data and choices not just selected items that fit your political agenda. That’s tough for elitists to do.
