[The Gaijin]

Taxes will always be with us. Public funding of heath care (but it's for the children!), may or may not be a good idea. But this thinking is just bad mix of our first 100 years of puritanism and our last 100 years of being influenced by Marx. The political class robbing a bad Peter (tobacco, booze) to pay a good Paul (heath care and schools and infinity...) is just plain wrong. We are a free people in supposedly a free land. Sales taxes should be flat and "sin" taxes should be nonexistent. Let people consume what they want. It is not the governments job to promote, discourage, penalize or otherwise influence personal behavior.