Second-Hand Smoke Tax, Fart Fee: Revenue Sources to Relieve Deficit

Tea Party Republicans have gone to Washington with a pledge to cut no less than $100 billion from the federal budget as a starting point. However, climbing out of the fiscal abyss may require more than budget cuts. It requires additional revenue.

Here are two new sources of revenue to kick off an ordinary person's contribution and motivate fellow humans around the world to chip in before our various nations and states fall are eaten up by the Deficit Monster.

1. Tax On Second-hand Smoke (TOSS)

Enlightened Americans and Europeans know far too well what second-hand smoke costs societies. Nonsmokers who inhale second-hand smoke (SHS) suffer from health and medical damages including cancer, heart disease, disability, and premature death. “In 2004, an estimated $2.6 billion was spent on the medical care of nonsmokers suffering from lung cancer or heart disease caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.” (Source: Actuary.org)

It's an easy call: There should be a fee (in addition to cigarette tax) on anyone who emits second-hand smoke. This is similar to someone who pays a sales tax on plastic bags but then litters the streets with those bags. Just because the person was taxed on the plastic bags does not lets him/her off the hook for littering. Emitting SHS is littering the air with harmful chemicals.

The Tax On Second-hand Smoke or TOSS should be double whenever the smoker puffs cigarette, cigar or marijuana around a minor who cannot confront the human chimney.

2. Fart Fee (FF)

How often and how much does a normal person fart each day? “On average, a person produces about half a liter of fart gas per day, distributed over an average of about fourteen daily farts.” (Source: Fart-Sounds.net)

There should be a Fart Fee for every time someone breaks wind. (The only exceptions should be infants through middle school.) This would not be the first time government has passed a law targeting farting. “Emperor Claudius even passed a law legalizing farting at banquets out of concern for peoples' health. There was a widespread belief that a person could be poisoned or catch a disease by retaining farts” ( ibid ). By the way, medical science has debunked the myth that holding fart in is harmful to a person, though refusing to fart at all cost may have some negative impact, perhaps mainly in terms of gaseous discomfort. But even if farting does not harm health, it should still cost the farter or fartist (as in fascist) because of the stench that smellers suffer.

The government should a pay a whistle blower fee to the person who suffers the indignity and reports the fartist. Imagine tens of millions of fartists paying FF into their governments' coffers. For teenage fartists who do not have the financial means to pay, their fart points should be added up over time; they'll pay FF as back taxes once they become wage earners.

What is really neat is that the Fart Tax lacks the bigotry of a Fat Tax. Besides, smart politicians can find ways to make the Fart Tax a Flat Tax to be fair to all.

When it comes to how ordinary citizens can assist their governments bring down the budget deficit, we have only scratched the suffice here. In fact, the Obama Administration asked federal workers to propose ideas to cut the cost of government. The TOSS and FF represent only two small steps to cut wasteful spending that may usher in balanced budgets for local, state, and federal governments the world over. ~mogama~