Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
Subsidies for things like hybrid vehicles [or less taxes on them] make sense. Pollution isn't morals it is a deadly, harmful negative externality which isn't dealt with fully by the free market. Pollution from petrol and diesel vehicle exhausts especially in big cities causes immense damage to non-users of those vehicles. By taxing polluting vehicles more than non-political vehicles the government is nudging the pollution away while letting the consumers in the market choose the winners and losers.

Similarly for tobacco. Since the government spends a fortune on healthcare [your government spends a higher proportion of tax dollars on healthcare than ours does on our NHS!] it makes sense to capture some of that back by the heaviest users of healthcare. Tobacco and gambling taxes are voluntary taxes anyway, don't be a fucking moron and you can avoid all of those taxes. If we could fund our entire government with voluntary taxes we could easily avoid I'd be happy.
I recall that tobacco users actually cost the government less money due to them dying off faster.