Propositions 86 and 87 are two birds of a feather. The premise is simple: identify an unpopular segment of the population and tax their behavior to fund other, tangentially-related programs.

Prop 86

This proposition seeks to add a $0.13 excise tax on every pack of cigarettes solid in California. It goes on to outline in pretty specific terms what the money generated by this tax is to be spent on.

(+) Smoking is bad, mmkay?

(+) Smokers are smelly

(+) If we thought we could round up the smokers into special concentration camps, California probably would.

(-) By anchoring this tax to a specific spending formula, there is no “wiggle room” later for legislators to adjust and account for new information about what kinds of programs are most effective or beneficial to the public.

(-) This is a regressive tax, applied directly against a bunch of addicts. Any benefit to society that this $0.13-per-pack tax hike will get will likely be offset by the kind of hardship that paying over $4.00-per-pack will incur on folks that have a monkey on their back. I personally stopped smoking a year ago, and I can personally attest that a pack of cigarettes is very easy way to make a few bucks disappear out of your wallet without giving it much thought. Over the course of a month, it adds up, but at the check-out-counter it doesn’t seem like much. Especially when you’re really like a cigarette.

Easy “no” from me. If you want to outlaw cigarettes, outlaw them. I’m rather strongly against formulaic spending, preferring to have our elected representatives do their jobs. Bonds should go to specific projects. Taxes should go to the general fund. Maybe I’m just simultaneously naive and old-fashioned? I suspect this one will pass; I live in a city where only one candidate for the city council is against a ban of smoking in publicly-owned open areas. Smokers are to modern California as Jews were to Germany in the mid 1920’s.

Prop 87

This proposition seeks to add a tax of up to 6% on the gross value of oil pumped in California. The proceeds from this will go largely to a little-known and practically-forgotten bureaucracy that seeks to develop alternative energy sources.

(+) Oil companies make money. A lot of money.

(+) Oil companies are evil. You don’t like evil, do you?

(+) Every other oil-producing state in the USA has a similar tax, in addition to the various income and excise taxes already in-place. This includes states like Louisiana and Texas, which are generally considered to be friendly to the oil industry.

(+) Energy efficiency and alternative fuels seem to be two portions of the economy in which the market doesn’t appear to be working. Not yet, in any case. The availability of cheap gasoline (even with all the taxes added on, it’s cheaper than folks pay for little plastic bottles of water) makes the rather expensive research and development costs for efficient ethanol, bio-diesel, and hydrogen fuels difficult to justify in a for-profit business.

(+) Tax what you want to discourage. Don’t want folks to pump oil in California but don’t want to ban it? Tax it.

(-) Tax what you want to discourage. The end-goal here is supposed to be energy independence. I recognize that, at least in theory, a brief up-turn in dependence on foreign oil can be funneled into a longer-term down-turn in dependence on foreign oil, but the political climate right now makes importing from places like Venezuela and the Middle East pretty unattractive. An extremist oversimplification of this is that Prop 87 puts money in the hands of terrorists.

(-) Oil companies will not be allowed to pass this cost directly on to the consumer. If the oil companies were allowed to directly pass the cost to the consumer, there would be some kind of control on how much the price will bump as a result of this tax. Instead, the price will go up by some amount that the oil companies will vaguely describe as offsetting operational and development costs.

(-) Again with the taxes anchored to a specific program or set of programs. What was it we have a legislature for, again?

Southern California has historically been a rather oil-rich part of the world. It’s easy to forget that sometimes, as California has no oil exports to speak of, and is a major point of entry for foreign oil. Every once in a blue moon, the topic of off-short drilling comes up, but the local hippies and beach enthusiasts have been pretty effective at staving that off. If 87 discourages some local production, shunting some of that burden to foreign oil fields, so be it. I’d rather save that oil under our feet for the future production of plastics, what petroleum should really be used for. We can get our fuel just about anywhere, plastics on the other hand…

My anti-spending-formula curmudgeonly tendencies are really butting up against my general principle of leaving California’s resources alone unless strictly necessary here. I’ll be voting “no” on this one. The market hasn’t worked to produce viable alternatives to gasoline because of how we subsidize and coddle the auto industry, and because petroleum is actually pretty cheap for what we get from it. I suspect this will pass, in which case I’m glad I drive a reasonably-efficient car.