Bag Bans

Plastic bags are absolutely amazing in their efficiency. Since they’ve cut the cost of carrying food and merchandise from retailer to store, shopping is easier. It’s cheaper, too. Plastic bags cost a half a cent. Paper bags cost over a quarter.

The savings have been noted. “Those people have those bags right at the cash register, and they have money in their pocket. If we could make up some pseudo-intellectual, environmental reasons, we could tax those bags!”

So, the usual environmental hired guns were employed by cash-starved government agencies. The pseudo-intellectual pistoleros began to blaze away. “Plastic bags cause litter!” has been filling state media for years. More imaginative Imaginary Problems have been invented: “Animals are swallowing plastic bags and dying painful deaths!”

Classic Use of Environmentalism to Justify Taxes

Plastic bags will continue to be vilified until retailers and manufacturers cave in and agree to pay the desired taxes. All people who shop will be made poorer. Governments will be enriched.

The easiest way to stop the vilification of plastic bags? Approach the hired guns with an offer to pay them a penny for every plastic bag that’s not taxed. They’ll stop complaining with blinding speed, make a speedy reversal, and utilize their skills to defend the “free use of practical, safe, efficient plastic bags”.

The problem with that solution? It causes us fall more deeply into corruption. But, the bigger lies are eliminated and the tellers of lies are transformed into tellers of truth. If they switch from telling lies for money to telling truth for money, are their souls saved?

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