You may have missed the point of that line of reasoning. If we were running massive surpluses sufficient to lower sales taxes, why could we not have lowered direct and invasive income taxes or lowered the extra tax on artificial persons.

I think our income taxes should be lowered next time we run massive surpluses instead of reducing sales taxes.

Or, maybe we can end the tax on artificial persons.

welllllllll i wouldn't go quite so far.

pot taxed at the rate of tobacco or booze comes out to about $90 billion nationwide in saved revenue and taxed income. and pots the cheapest of the bunch of recreational drugs. that is not an insignificant amount of money by any means. It wouldn't replace normal income tax, but it would help alot.

Save the Fed. End the Drug War; it is "not worth a continental".

California does not produce anything significant, so it's economy is just like one huge soap bubble.

We could be upgrading our infrastructure instead of wasting money on an extra-constitutional drug war.

Ah, $90 billion is, just as I said, a miniscule portion of current direct taxes.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

I think pot could be taxed at the fifty percent rate and still be a bargain over that same product on the black market.

and like i said dude it wouldn't replace anything, but it would supplement it rather well.

you just gonna turn down 90 billion dollars? plus think of all the guys with petty possession convictions that'll be able to get jobs and not have to spend all their money on court cases.

California's problems are much larger than a petty drug war. Funny how you guys focus on that all the time. Is that all the stoners think about?

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A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
- George Bernard Shaw

Most of our State problems are currently due to a poverty of money in our money-based, mixed-market, political-economy.

We may not have a deficit, if Commerce within the State was regulated and taxed, in the most statist of manners.

In case you haven't heard, some our elected representatives to government would rather cut social spending than end our current and extra-constitutional drug war.

Save the Fed. End the Drug War; it is "not worth a continental".

Ah, yes, the answer is always more taxes, huh? What ever happened to only spending what you make? How about you stop wasting money on illegals? Hell, I watched Pelosi say that she wants to give tuition assistance for illegals to go to college. Until you get rid of her and like minded individuals you will continue to lose all the people you want to tax more and go further into debt.

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A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
- George Bernard Shaw

We could be spending what we make, if we were not wasting it on a useless drug war that has never worked, in the history of our republic.

Why is it that, the answer, for those of your point of view, is always more coercive use of force of the State?

We aren't fighting a drug war. We are fighting a drug conflict. One of the reasons we aren't "winning" is because we aren't really doing much of anything effective to stop it. The money problem could easily be solved with we took all the druggies in jail and put them to forced labor while they were encarcerated. This would give the state an at-cost labor force that would save the state millions. If every state did it, it would save billions. Prisoners should not be allowed to just sit around and do nothing at the cost of law abiding citizens. Problem solved.

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A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
- George Bernard Shaw

no one is saying its their only problem Prohibition lad, just one of their easily solvable ones.

another easily solvable problem would be to get rid of the illegals that infest their system. another would be to ease up on a whole lot of their social programs until theyve got the dough to pay for them.