A few days ago I wrote about the proposed increase to the Federal gas tax, Maintain roads? Let?s raise taxes!!. Today, here’s the most absurd tax I have ever heard of from CBS2Chicago.com, Alderman Wants To Tax Bottled Water:
As CBS 2’s Kristyn Hartman reports, Ald. George Cardenas (12th) wants to slap a tax of up to 25 cents on the cost of every bottle to help close a $217 million budget gap.
“People enjoy jogging or driving with a bottle of water. There’s a cost associated with this behavior. You have to pay for it,” said Cardenas, one of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s staunchest City Council supporters.
Luckily this is a local Chicago issue but I believe it is a good example of the tax everything mentality that more and more politicians seem to have. By the way Mr. Cardenas, we do pay for the “behavior” of having a bottle of water and I am also sure that the city of Chicago gets a small cut in the form of sales tax from our “behavior”.
While this seems pretty crazy, we really have no one to blame for politicians finding more and more things to tax except ourselves. When a majority of the population thinks a tobacco tax is justified because they view the product being taxed as “evil or bad” this kind of crap happens. There will always be someone out there who doesn’t like a product for whatever reason and a politician will view that product as a new revenue stream. You’ve been hoodwinked America, you let the cat out of the bag and now there is no turning back.