A minor inconvenience to you; a bigger one to someone else. It’s still the wrong way to do policy.
Would you be OK with the fee being a direct percentage of your income that’s equivalent to what a person in poverty pays? Because that’s some math we can do right now. For an individual, that’s $11,880/year as of 2016. I don’t know what your income is of course, but if it’s $100K, are you OK with paying a dollar per bag every trip instead? (and also I’m sure you bring your bags every time, but let’s just pretend for a minute you end up having to pay the fee a great deal of the time for whatever reason)
It’s really not a big hassle. I’ve been trying to cut down plastic bag usage by bringing my own bag for groceries for a few years now, even before a plastic bag tax was introduced where I live last year.
If you’re using a car then bringing your own bags isn’t an issue. If you’re walking, then having a decent carrying bag is actually much more preferable than using plastic bags. I remember countless times in the past carrying several laden plastic bags of groceries home, trying to bear out the pain of the thin handles cutting into my fingers.
A jute bag like this is very strong and the thick handles means its very comfortable on the fingers, even when its heavily weighted. I usually roll it up when taking it to the store. I also take a strong plastic bag folded up inside it, which takes up little space, for extra carriage capacity.
It feels so much nicer walking home with my jute bag than with plastic bags and, for that reason alone, it’s worth it.
The main issue is going to the grocery store when I’ve been somewhere else first, in which case I take the plastic bag hit. If one had to do this regularly, such as when returning from work, then there are fold-up bags that can fit in a pocket.
At the chain I work for, it’s automatic - the POS terminals are programmed to waive the bag fee if the payment method is EBT. Zero thought involved on the checker’s part. I imagine it works the same way with our competitors, and unless your grocer of choice is still stuck in the Stone Age, I can’t imagine any reason it wouldn’t work that way.
Honestly, I thought the bag bans were pointless meddling myself at first. What changed my mind was a visit to Pacific Science Center a few years back, where one of the exhibits was of a big pile of junk that had been extracted from the stomach of a beached whale. A massive part of the pile was plastic grocery bags, and a pretty big portion of them were bags from my company. It really made me feel guilty to see the evidence that the company my livelihood depends upon was partly responsible for that.
In the long run, you adjust. You bring your bags with you or you pony up the five cents for a paper bag, and you find yourself using fewer bags overall in the long run.
By that logic, any governmentally-imposed fee that’s flat regardless of income is “regressive and wrong”. Car tab fees are wrong. License fees are wrong. Sales tax is wrong. Late charges at the library are wrong. Notary fees are wrong. Bridge tolls are wrong. Parking meters are wrong.
The operative question shouldn’t be “is it regressive?”, but “does the societal benefit outweigh the financial burden?”. I believe in this case that it does.
It is technically regressive, yes. It is also a very minor burden in the grand scheme of things and worth it from an environmental standpoint. Call me a Ivory-tower elitist if you must, but as annoying as it is ( and I actually agree it is mildly inconvenient ) and regressive though it may be, IMHO it is worth the price.
Every once in awhile decisions have to be made for the greater good that may hurt a segment of the populace. We’ll have to agree to disagree on whether this crosses a line.
Well, sales tax is wrong. I’d be happily in favor of elimination (or at least drastic reduction) of sales taxes in favor of higher property taxes and much higher progressive income tax and capital gains taxes.
Well that’s really the crux of it. I don’t think it’s worth the price, and furthermore would argue that any policy of this type that works in this way is a terrible idea, because it could lead to more policies of the same vein (with the implicit assumption that they could be much worse).
I also think it’s further alienating the working poor from the Democratic party and liberal mindset (and yes I know it was a direct referendum the people voted on, but it’s still going to be associated with liberal policy), which is a great danger in and of itself (see my references to how this attitude turned off so many impoverished Americans in this election and drove them to vote for a candidate that is actually contrary to their interests). Not that California specifically is in any danger of turning red, but there are still plenty of conservatives that live here and there’s a national/global stage where all of this stuff comes to a head in the long run. Point being: it does matter.
How’s it fair that any fee is regressive? You think the gas station cares when you put 50¢ in the air pump that you are poor or rich? Nope. But if you want air for your unicycle you pay the fee.
At some point in life people need to adapt to incentives.
So not only is charging for paper bags morally wrong and taking food out of the mouths of the poor, it’s going to directly lead to the mass election of right-wingers and the death of liberalism in America?
No it isn’t. Bags now have value. Planning, like a primate or some birds, now has value. I grew up very poor. And I scavenged cans and bottles that people, including other plots, had to pay a “regressive” deposit on. They didn’t care about that 10¢ bottle or that 0.7¢ aluminum can. They throw it on the ground because that deposit and the environment didn’t matter to them. It mattered to me. We used that money to buy dinner sometimes. Now with deposits on things I notice a lot less trash on the ground.
I honestly think more things should have fees. People learn to respect that which has cost instead of taking it for granted.
The bag fee is a tax and it’s wrong because the poor are affected. More than they or their children will be affected by a deteriorating environment.
The poor are stupid and will never learn to bring reusable bags to the market.
Rigamarole is also stupid, because he\she cannot learn to bring reusable bags.
Rigamarole doesn’t care about taxes that do not affect him\her personally.
I suspect this is more about Rigamarole being personally affected than his\her concern for the poor.
The poor you champion will learn to bring their reusable bags. They will learn pretty quickly. More than likely, they will buy the dollar reusable bags that hold 3 times as much and last a long goddamned time without breaking. This will help them get their groceries back via the bus. I learned to do this pretty quickly and I don’t pretend to be smarter than the poor. (I am lower middle class)
Will the environment be better off? Probably, but I’ll take a wait and see attitude.
