It is hard to realize how deep is American Puritanism. (Puritanism is the fear than somebody else, somewhere else, is having fun. They are sinning.)
As a consequence it is hard to understand the Lefty desire to punish poor people. The two are the same. Poor people are sinners; we are justified in taxing them heavily. Of course Lefties ostensibly claim they want to help poor people. But ‘help’ is usually stopping them from sinning.
Californians are preparing to add new taxes on cigarettes with an initiative next year. ‘We never tax the poor enough.’
The environmental movement is just part of a larger Lefty-Puritan belief that poor people are immoral. ‘Punish them’ is the urban Democrat mantra. And the environmental mantra.
Evidence that poor people are immoral and deserve punishment:
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they smoke more than others, tax cigarettes heavily and ban e-cigarettes.
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they drink much more alcohol than others, tax it heavily and limit the hours it can be sold.
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they drive old cars so we should tax gasoline heavily and we should require lots of expensive smog checks on their old cars, subsidize electric cars because poor people never drive electrics,
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they don’t maintain their housing so we should make them pay for rich people’s solar and electric car subsidies with high utility bills and high water and sewer rates;
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they enjoy junk food; let’s raise the minimum wage and put junk food restaurants out of business.
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most importantly they have children without getting married. Sinners. We should punish them any way we can.
The bonus to this Lefty, environmental , Puritan thinking: When we tax poor people we are just getting back the welfare and other subsidies that we give to them with our taxes.
Listen to the Lefty-Democrat-Environmentalists: ‘The poor are sinners anything we do to make their lives more difficult is really to stop the sinning.’