Re: virus: Health and Medicine (from Sexuality and Monogamy)

KMO prime (kmoprime@juno.com)
Mon, 16 Sep 1996 14:45:28 EDT


On Sat, 14 Sep 1996 13:00:01 -0400 konsler@ascat.harvard.edu (Reed
Konsler) writes:

(in the context of a discussion of "silly surgeries")

>Alright, maybe I wouldn't make it [cosmetic surgery] ILLEGAL...how
about charging a sort
>of
>"sin tax" that would be directed toward research in the field
>(Mmmm...more
>money for the chemists! Yeah!).

There wouldn't be any more money for chemists. With the sin tax in
place, the bugeteers would use that in place the normal modes of funding.
From the chemists perspective, the research budget would remain the
same. The politicos would be the folks with more money to play with.
How much have teacher's saleries increased in your state as a result of
the state lottery which was supposed to pump much-needed money into your
public school system? School budgets haven't increased in direct
proportion to lottery revenues because as funding from the lotteries was
added to education budgets, state funding was redirected leaving funding
from the perspective of any given teacher or school administrator
unchanged.

I lifted the above argument from an NPR interview with author Mario Puzzo
(The Godfather).

Take care. -KMO