Supply and demand
You have to laugh.
Cancer Society demands €1 hike in price of cigarettes.
What do they want that €1 used for?
Combat cigarette smuggling.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, we have an example of a complete ignorance of the most basic fundamentals of supply and demand.
I am currently smoking pipe tobacco that I bought in France. It cost me €6.50 a pack. If I were to buy the equivalent quantity here, it would cost me €16 a pack. Now, if I can find someone on a street corner or in a pub who will sell me that tobacco at six or seven yoyos a pop, am I going to refuse? There is a demand, so there will be a supply.
Trying to combat the sale of cheap imported cigarettes by increasing the price of the local ones is sheer madness.
But then I see that The Irish Cancer Society is one of the main sponsors of ASH.
NOW it makes sense.
I know there is a lack of basic economics in this country, that is why we have Nama, for fuck sake.
But the reason smuggling exists in the first place is the price of Cigarrettes in Ireland is too high. Increasing the price will only increase the demand for the smuggled variety. I would have thought this would be obvious to even the most illiterate & dumb in our society, so surely this bunch of Nazi Cunts can grasp it.
Lafsword – Even my guinea pigs can see the fallacy of that proposal [I know, because I just asked them. They had a good laugh]. Don’t they teach anything in Irish schools any more?
Couple of weeks back we had this story on RTE http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1027/cigarettes.html
I wonder how ASH, The Cancer Society and the rest of the eejits who think that if you make a behaviour expensive it just goes away would explain why its worth someone’s while to smuggle 120million cigarettes into Ireland?
Because the market is there for smuggled cigarettes. Who created the market? People who think that loading tax on an ‘undesirable’ product means it becomes unpopular. How the fuck these supposedly intelligent people do not realise that they are effectively transferring smoking over to the black market (where no one asks for age or ID) beats me
On the other hand I’ve a suspicion that they DO know- there’s plenty of economic and scientific data around which explains the problem. But what they are doing is pointing to a decrease in official sales figures and crowing that their plan is working- when it bloody well isn’t.
Those missing official sales are now in the black market where no records at all are kept. Genius.
Those people are directly responsible for this kind of story: Smugglers don’t bother with age checks either!
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1027/cigarettes.html
Smuggling is about avoiding paying taxes.
TT – So when taxes are so punitive that smuggling becomes profitable, do you raise those taxes further, in order to stop smuggling?
Ya but remember they will use that extra one euro tax on all those extra cigarette they wont be selling to combat the smuggling that will become even more rampant its win win ……in someones mind someone who is a retard.
its time to get off that island.
Cap’n – Just found your comment in my spam area!! You could be right. It would be typical of ASH to crow about reduction in official figures. There again, it’s hard to find logic in a twisted mind.
D – Another point they have overlooked is that if the gubmint did collect all that extra money, what are they going to do with it? Straight into the black hole of debt…
Johnie – I think so. 😐
Just o piss you off… I’m buying Marlboro here for €1.50 a pack..
No smuggling of ciggys here!