What, were poor people somehow not allowed to vote on this?
I think you should probably focus on something that’s really regressive. For instance, where I live there’s a sewer/wastewater tax that comes due once a year. (Yes, it’s a tax.) So let’s say it’s $100. You can fork over the $100, or you can do two payments of $55 each. So your penalty for not having $100 now is an extra $10. Well, now, ask yourself, who doesn’t have $100 now for this? Rich people? No, they have it. It’s poor people. (Poor homeowners; I’m sure landlords just build this into the rent as they do all other expenses.)
There are thousands of things like this, that cost more for poor people to buy than they do for rich people to buy. And yet they are things that poor people also have to have, like car insurance. Maybe you could work on those?
We have had similar in England for about a year now (Scotland have been doing it somewhat longer) and it works great. Larger retailers have introduced Bag-for-Life schemes where a somewhat thicker bag costs twice the minimum charge, and can be exchanged at the store for free when they wear out. The stores send the old bags for recycling. People who buy large amounts of groceries equip themselves with more substantial bags which should last years, they also have the advantage of being larger and easier to pack. Public reaction is generally positive and we are using 80% fewer plastic bags.
People aren’t just going to walk out the door with unpaid for merchandise (well, no more so than they do already) because of a lack of bags. What should probably be happening is the way garbage collection is handled in South Korea and Japan: all garbage, other than wet garbage/kitchen waste, must be disposed of in specified plastic bags labeled as waste collection bags. In Tokyo, the bags must be clear and also have your address on them (unless that law’s been repealed); wet garbage is disposed of in specifically labeled waste containers which the garbage collection crew empties into the collection truck. The garbage collection service is paid for by the purchase of the garbage bags. It didn’t take me long to get used to that system and separating my garbage once the local code enforcement officers warned me of the high fine involved for noncompliance. While living in those two countries, I simply purchased the garbage bags and used them to carry my other groceries.
This is not a tax on the poor. It’s simply a way to get people to take care of the environment. Expecting enough people to care enough to not require such a method obviously does not work. Even here in China, one has to pay extra for the plastic shopping bags. Get your act together and quit whining.
Abuelita probably already has a mesh shopping bag in her purse. I’ve seen Mexican ladies carrying them for years. Trendy versions adorned with icons like Frida are now sold to gringas; I have a couple in my fine collection of shopping bags. They’re much easier to use than those nasty little plastic bags–especially while commuting by bus or train.
Is the OP male? If he doesn’t carry a purse, it’s harder to carry a shopping bag or 2 neatly. Of course, drivers have no excuse.
Doesn’t matter. You admitted that you don’t really care about this and are just here to hurt the OP. That attitude, of thinking it’s okay to hurt people just for fun, is a good part about why Trump was elected. We’ve lost that sense of right and wrong in this country.
And you’ve joined in on the conservative tactic of calling other people’s concerns “whining.” You’ve even pulled out the grade school “whambulance” line.
You want to attack the OP for your own twisted pleasure, then don’t be surprised when he attacks you back.
Then make that argument. No one else has. They are all just jumping on how they can shit on the OP, or bringing up stupid conservative-style arguments of calling him a whiner or insinuating that he must have an ulterior motive or using anecdotes instead of data.
The only good question being asked is what the actual numbers are, costwise, which no one seems to be able to provide. If you can show that poor people will wind up better off, then you’d refute the OP’s argument. If not, then you don’t.
The OP makes a valid argument, that this is a regressive tax, and thus by definition affects poor people more. So the only way to refute it is to show that the good it does offsets the bad that it does.
Not treating him like a whiner because he’s upset about something you aren’t.
You do realize you just confirmed my point, right? That’s how Trump responds when someone calls him out. BigTard is certain posters’ version of Lying Ted or Crooked Hillary. And, in your edit, you admit it made you feel good to hurt someone else.
If you have a valid counterargument, you can make it. If you don’t, you’ll fall back on stupid shit like this. Either way is not my concern, as you confirmed I can now ignore everything you say from now on.
Yes, but you have, indirectly, paid property taxes because if they go up your landlord raises your rent. So raising property taxes is still going to impact poor folks. If you live somewhere like I do, where the taxes on rental property are twice what they are on non-rental housing, it will impact the renting poor even more than those folks who do own their residence.
I’d rather have the bag ban - that one I can easily avoid by having my own bags. Raise property taxes and my rent goes up permanently.
Seriously, get over yourself - you’re whining over something the very definition of a “First World Problem”.
“Meaning you need to bring your own bags anywhere to shop, and if you don’t have bags with you because you forgot or whatever, you now have to pay a fee (at my local grocery store it’s 10 cents per bag) for a ‘reusable’ plastic or paper bag (they are thicker than the ones that were provided for free before).”
This is something that is very, very common in Europe. I love it. And it doesn’t ‘fuck over the poor.’ On the contrary. No one needs to forget or not have a bag of their own. You can get a cloth bag really cheap and use it for years and years.
The plastic bag ban has been in place in Scotland for a couple of years now, and there’s been a noticeable increase in the number of man-bags being toted.
I don’t have strong feelings on this topic, but what’s the evidence that single-use plastic bags are causing enough of a problem in this country that it needs fixing. Vs giving myself a good long green wank without accomplishing much.
Regressive taxes with the purpose of discouraging undesired behavior are fine as long as they are compensated by progressive taxes or subsidies elsewhere. California has an especially progressive state income tax, and offers better social services for the poor than most states.
Toothpaste sales are regressive.
Underwear sales are regressive.
Sales of beans, rice, macaroni are all regressive.
Perhaps stores should only be allowed to sell caviar and lobster.
I love the bag ban. I hate, hate, hate when I go to the drug store and buy a soda or other single item and they automatically bag it. That stupidity doesn’t happen with the ban.
Wrong about Japan, of course, although the sloppy writing allows for the possibility that some parts are just Korea but it’s impossible to tell what was intended.
In Japan wet garbage in not collected separately. They do that here in Taiwan, though.
The idea of having names and addresses in Japan never took off. Too many complaints and it was never a law.
The “garbage collection service is paid for by the purchase of the garbage bags” must be a Korean thing. Not Japan. Likewise the high fines.
They charge a few cents for bags here in Taiwan as well. People remember to bring their own bags.
This is not a tax on the poor. It’s simply a way to get people to take care of the environment. Expecting enough people to care enough to not require such a method obviously does not work. Even here in China, one has to pay extra for the plastic shopping bags. Get your act together and quit whining.
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I often keep a plastic bag tucked into my pocket, just in case. I also routinely say “no, I don’t need a bag” and stuff my small purchases into a pocket.
Well, my town just passed a local bag ban, and that’s my complaint.
I was already routinely reusing bags, because out seemed like the right thing to do. But I kept an eye on how many disposable bags we had at home. Because I use the box-bottom paper bags as trash cans to collect recyclables in the kitchen, and I use the plastic ones to line the litter box trash can, and to collect the chicken bones and such when I strain broth, and for other messy tasks around the house.
When the law passed, I though we would have to start buying bags for some of those purposes. It turns out that I buy enough stuff from other towns that I haven’t had to, yet. But if it were a state law I expect I would.
Still, if I need to buy bags to line the cat trash can, or whatever, that’s not going to be a big deal.
You’re absolutely right about this. Isn’t it odd that liberals, who claim to be the champions of the poor, are often so contemptuous of them, as in this thread? How many of the sneering posters here have been in a position where 10c matters and its lack can mean the difference between buying something you need or going without it? Stupidity tax indeed! Fucking unfeeling assholes.
Ummm… They enacted this in the town I do my grocery shopping in. It’s a very progressive County. We have free bus service.
So I have a few cloth bags in my car for grocery shopping. No big deal.
But we do use those plastic bags for other stuff. We would re-use them all the time. So I bought 1000 of them on Amazon. :eek:
The real irony here though is that the County wide re-cycling program may be going away. We have nice specific facilities that are easy to get to to drop off you recyclable stuff. It’s a complicated story - a budget problem that needs to be fixed.
This will probably quadruple the stuff that ends up in our landfill. :smack:
When this was enacted in one of the towns in the County I live and work, there where many, many free re-usable grocery bags passed out.
I frankly feel sorry for the baggers. The re-usable bags are all different shapes and sizes, and while they hold a lot, they are a bit of a bitch to load (compared to the plastic bags that are on the stand ready to go)