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Would legalization create enough revenue via taxes, to help solve the deficit?
Instead of spending millions fighting the illegal sale, would legalization provide an untapped source of revenue? While also putting the common dealers out of biz?
2 Answers
- anonymousLv 77 years agoFavorite Answer
The deficit comes from these decade-long 'wars' in foreign countries (Iraq and Afghanistan currently). Those cost *billions*, not just millions. Where is that money flowing to? Into the military-industrial complex corporations like Raytheon and, interestingly enough, former Vice President D. Cheney's Halliburton Corporation. (Have you noticed that D. Cheney still attends the behind-closed-doors meetings in the Senate even though he is no longer in office? ;)
You don't even say what you are talking about legalizing, but obviously it is marijuana. It's theoretically legal now here in Washington state and in Colorado. The Feds don't like it ~ now it's sort of a battle between state law and federal law. It's been over a year now in Washington, and there is still no place to buy it besides a 'common dealer'. (I no longer smoke the stuff, although I did for many years.)
I also tend to think that the Feds *like* to incarcerate people. The USA has, percentage-wise, the highest number of incarcerated people than any other country in the world. Our jails are filled with people whose 'crime' was having weed in their possession. (Of course, if a celebrity is found with weed, they don't get 30 days in jail. Double standard. ;)
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Tax revenue from legalization of whatever (and of course the usual threats of cutting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid) are of course a 'drop in the bucket' compared to all the money we spend/waste on military stuff.
1,000,000 ..................... that's a million
1,000,000,000 ............... that's a billion
A billion is a thousand times greater than a million ... and it's all going to military-industrial corporations (and even the 'jail industry'). And we're not talking about one billion here, we're talking lots of billions.
So no, legalization is certainly not going to solve the deficit.
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Cost of Afghan war to date:
Since 2001. Cost to date: $682,607,127,218
682 billion dollars (sigh)
(And of course Congress can't even fund our own national domestic mail service USPS)
Umm ... has anything changed really?
- Anonymous7 years ago
No but a step in the right direction