Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Yes, It's the Broken Window Fallacy ...

... but some enterprising business types are set for celebration (and profit).

Buried in the ginormous spending bill the House just passed is a national prohibition on sales of tobacco products (and non-tobacco e-cigarette products) to persons under 21 years of age.

Which will, of course, create a new "black market" segment numbering several million Americans.

It's not creating new wealth. It's just redistributing wealth from "white market" sellers, and from sellers of other things those 18- to 20-year-olds might have bought if they weren't spending more of their money on nicotine, to "black market" sellers.

But those "black market" sellers will presumably be grateful to the Republicans and Democrats for screwing everyone else on their behalves.

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