Thursday, November 8, 2012

Exercise 5-3: Law of Diminishing Returns

"The Diminishing Returns to Tobacco legislation" article made think about how much governments do to make people quit smoking. At first, it worked - a lot of smokers gave up. (They where ready for it) But then the numbers started to slip down no matter how much restrictions where introduced or how much they will pay for their habit. I agree with the author that law of diminishing returns was working in this case.
To make more people quit smoking governments have change some other variable or use other methods instead of increasing taxes. In my opinion, who wanted to quit - they quit already but today's priority has to be teenagers who will start smoking. There are a lot of restrictions but not enough for them not to start.
Another aspect of this - taxes. Governments use them for lots of different things. What if everyone quits, no tobacco sales?(if this was possible) And tobacco taxes is a big piece of pie...

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