Well you dismissed the idea of defining it before the commenter had a chance, so are you really making an honest argument here? If a policymaker wanted to ban “unnecessary consumption” they would come up with a list of what that is and whether your purchase would be banned or not would depend on whether you’re buying something from that list, which they can also incrementally grow over time.
I encourage someone to try it to speed run their political career to provide us the natural experiment we can observe.
Constituents will accept taxes and other disincentives (see alcohol), they will not tolerate some political rep telling them what is unnecessary consumption and banning their desired products (broadly speaking, there are always exceptions and nuance).
Walk the pavement like you would for a day running for office, ask your potential voters if they would like this policy. I’ve canvassed multiple times for US political reps, so I have an idea what this looks like.
A small amount of fiat to offset harm is far more palatable. Look at this dashboard spin. Don’t yell at humanity, provide it better options.
Many EU governments and the UK have defined lists of untaxed goods, mostly staple foods.
The UK:
> Food and drink for human consumption is usually zero-rated but some items are always standard-rated. These include catering, alcoholic drinks, confectionery, crisps and savoury snacks, hot food, sports drinks, hot takeaways, ice cream, soft drinks and mineral water.
The politician’s career is irrelevant. We’re just talking about whether it is possible to define and you’ve been given a rational response suggesting it might be. Heck, it might be possible to ask AI to generate a list of items or criteria.
Sure. You can start by making unnecessary consumption mean “net pollutant” products where the cost of producing them and the waste they create exceed the value that customers pay for or gain from the product, so easy suspects are the types of inventory which are always left over and unsold even during huge sales and promo periods.
