Pay your taxes --- Sin more!

Having been raised a preacher’s son, I have always been aware of the wages of sin.

To keep us on the straight and narrow, preachers long have taught that certain things are sinful and therefore best avoided. The Bible even says to avoid the “very appearance of sin” but today it’s hard to know where that line resides.

The one thing we do know is that people involved in the “sinning” business seem to thrive as there are always folks willing and ready to give them money for the pleasure of imbibing on the fruits of evil.

A lot has been said about “sin” and your interpretation of what that actually means depends on your background growing up.

A good Baptist for instance, is taught that dancing and drinking and smoking is sinful. And a solid case can be made that at least two of those are bad for your health and quite possibly the third one if done with someone else's wife.

Yet some other Protestants seem to think that dancing and drinking are OK but smoking is on the line so maybe not a real sin at all.

Whatever your beliefs, the politicians in their great wisdom have decided there is money to be made by imposing “sin taxes” on certain activities in society.

For instance, when those who control gambling interests wanted to increase their presence in the USA they simply had to tell us that by taxing the gaming industry, all of our problems with school finance would be solved without raising general taxes. We all know how well that has worked out. They got their money and still need more from us.

The same is true with alcohol and cigarettes. They have taxed those to the point of ridiculous and yet there is never enough money to solve society’s problems.

This summer my granddaughter started per-school and with that came the fundraising that is to be her mantra for the next 13 years of schooling. At least with this fundraiser they dropped the subterfuge and asked for cash up front. Ol' Dutch, never one to part with greenbacks except in the case of hunting supplies, kind of got his back up when I got the request but the more I thought about it the better I liked it.

At least with giving money directly to the school, they had all of the money they collected and didn't have to pay someone for candy bars, popcorn or wrapping paper that no one liked anyway. So a person could get by with only about 10 percent outlay and get the same bang for the buck benefit.

Even Ol' Dutch can buy into that idea. He wasn't born yesterday as Trixie likes to point out. I think that's a compliment but not so sure anymore?

Well anyway, back to sinning which seems to be a popular pastime and conversation piece.

It appears that we are willing to give up about anything and everything if we think it will generate more sales tax or “sin tax.” Colorado now has decided that marijuana sales are the next big savior for our tax situation.

No matter what the method or the sin taxed, it takes a huge amount of money out of other segments of society to get the same return than if we just decided to pay our own way.

Now Ol' Dutch isn't a proponent of more taxes, no sirree, but it appears to this tightwad that paying 5 percent upfront is a much cheaper alternative thereby leaving the other 95 percent that would have been spent on such items free to be spent on necessities like fishing tackle and elk urine.

Of course most people would rather give up their money than their sin so I guess taxing them for the pleasure is the future.