Amy Phillips at iLiberty1 and Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet are both blogging against a proposed Texas law which would fund anti-sexual assault programs by adding a $5 tax on top of the admission fees for strip clubs.
Like Tracy and Amy, I’m unhappy with the idea of sin taxes. But I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in years to come. It’s an inevitable result of the growth of anti-tax ideology; when it becomes unfeasible to pay for government services through ordinary taxes, it’s natural to try targeted taxes aimed at groups that are either too unpopular, too disorganized or too poor to put up an effective lobbying resistance. So: Cigarette taxes. Liquor taxes. Lotteries. And now “tassel taxes.”
State Rep. Ellen Cohen, a freshman Democrat and executive director of the Houston Area Women’s Center, and Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, are sponsoring the legislation. […] Although she is not suggesting that people who frequent strip clubs commit sexual assault, Cohen said money generated by sexually oriented businesses should pay for sexually oriented crimes.
“We are talking about a service that does objectify women and it seems like an appropriate place to raise those kinds of dollars,” she said. “It’s apples to apples.”
It’s estimated that the $5 fee would produce $80 million over the biennium. Cohen wants to see $12 million of that dedicated to sexual assault programs. She, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault and the Texas Council on Family Violence, which are supporting the measure, are flexible about where the rest of the money would go.
But if the idea is a tax on objectification, why not tax the sale of men’s magazines like GQ — and women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, for that matter? And why not a special tax on all cable TV boxes and Texas TV network affiliates? It’s not as if strip clubs are the wealthiest or the most numerous purveyors of objectification that exist. And isn’t it dishonest to try and sell this as a tax to pay for anti-sexual assault programs, when 85% of the money raised will go to the general fund?
This is general taxation by other means. If you can’t tax the people without being creamed in the next election, then you just tax the unpopular people. So you dress up a tax that supports the general fund as a tax against sexual assault; and you don’t go after the networks or GQ or Cosmo because those things are so much more popular than strip clubs.
So what’s my take on this? If I was king of Texas, I’d use a sensible income- or wealth-based income tax to pay for government, rather than sin taxes, which are inevitably arbitrary and unfair. But it’s not up to me; in the end, it’s up to voters, and most voters want a full-service government without paying for it with higher general taxes. So the choice is either to accept the so-called “sin taxes,” or to do with fewer government services – including $12 million a year less for anti-sexual-assault programs.
If that’s the choice2 then I say, bring on the sin taxes. They suck less than the alternative.3
And with all due respect to Amy — who I like a lot — if libertarians object to this, maybe they should rethink the over-the-top anti-government, anti-tax ideology they’ve been pushing for decades, which is part of what has brought us to this state.
* * *
Amy writes:
As Salon magazine’s Broadsheet blog, Tracy Clark-Flory points out the danger of giving legislators the power to financially punish legal activities that they find morally objectionable. In this case, they’re punishing women who choose to take their clothes off for money—because that admission fee is most likely going to come out of the pockets of employees, not the club’s profits—because they don’t like the choice these women have made or the choice their customers make to patronize such clubs.
1) If government can’t “financially punish legal activities that they find morally objectionable,” then some possibly reasonable environmental policies — such as charging higher taxes on factories that pollute due to not updating their equipment — would have to be taken off the table. There are times when a middle ground between making something absolutely illegal, and not addressing it with policy at all, makes sense; usually that middle ground involves fees or taxes.
2) Who is going to pay for the increased admission fee depends on how flexible the demand for attending strip clubs is. My guess is that it’s not very flexible — that is, I think strip club patrons are not going to stop going to strip clubs just because admission is raised $5. If I’m right about that, then most of the extra $5 will be paid by strip club consumers, rather than by dancers or management.
- Amy used to blog at “The Fifty Minute Hour,” one of my favorite libertarian blogs. I’m very happy to find out where she’s blogging nowadays! [↩]
- Maybe it’s not, it’s not like I know anything about Texas politics [↩]
- Of course, I don’t go to strip clubs, drink alcohol, gamble, or smoke, so I could be accused of favoring sin taxes because they’re paid by other people. But for what it’s worth, iirc I voted for the ridiculously high cigarette tax here in Oregon, and since one of my partners smokes like a chimney, it’s quite a bite out of our shared income. [↩]
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I think that this particular sin tax is a bad idea on all kinds of levels. Firstly, in a wierd sort of way it normalises sexual assault. Drawing a link between sexual activity that is legal and does not involve unwilling women and rape…that just doesn’t seem like a smart move to me. Also, no matter how many times they say that they’re not claiming that strip clubs cause assault, the implication is there, and it’s incorrect.
There’s also the judgementalism of it, the sort of invisible line it draws between the good girls and the bad girls…icky and disturbing all around.
Also, on sin taxes in general…like you said, it’s a way for opportunistic politicians to avoid having to admit that government services are not free. It reinforces the idea held by many people that they really can get everything they actually need from their government without having to pay for it, and that’s a dangerous idea that needs to be stamped out.
Lastly, the general political climate in Texas is already dangerously prone to attempts to regulate people’s private lives. This is just another step in a direction that we should all be worried about.
As far as I understand it, strip club customers frequently have a budget for their visit (anywhere from $15 to hundreds of dollars.) Let’s say a customer brings $45. To a club with an admission fee of $5 and a one-drink minimum, that means something like:
$5 for admission
$8 for a drink
$32 for spending on the dancers
The fee won’t come out of the dancers’ pockets because customers won’t be visiting, it will come out of the dancers’ pockets because, on paying a large admission fee, there’s a sense that “I’ve already paid for my entertainment.” That sense of entitlement doesn’t destroy business entirely, but it makes it tougher on the businesswomen. Some small percentage of people will come, and stare, and not tip. The men who stay home don’t cost a dancer business. The men who come and stare and don’t tip, do.
Mind you, I’m inclined to support a tax on strip clubs just the same. I simply wouldn’t put it somewhere where it would affect consumer psychology in that fashion.
My suggestion: Tax the clubs on total revenue, not head count. They’ll respond by raising drink prices — when a customer is paying for a drink, they don’t always conflate the drink with the entertainment the way they conflate admission fees — and s0me of them would probably raise their admission fee, but if the choice is left up to the club, then that allows a certain amount of market variance and business savvy to enter the picture. If some clubs make the wrong decisions for their clientele and others make the right ones, then those clubs may go downhill, but that would not leave all dancers with a less pleasant work environment.
Not that dancing in Texas is a very pleasant work environment from what I hear, in the first place, and my familiarity with the industry may not apply there. So, caveat.
This form of tax appears to be unconstitutional because exotic dancing is, well, dancing, and that is a protected form of FREE SPEECH under the First Amendment.
Taxes or other restrictions which are based upon content (i.e. exotic dancing but not dancing at the prom), have been repeatedly upheld by the courts as prohibited.
Further, there is no proven link between exotic dancing and the conduct (sexual assault), which this proposal seeks to fund. To the contrary, a validated and affective treatment for sexual offenders is increased exposure to pornographic materials because this de-sensitizes their repressed urges. One could logically argue that making exotic dancers more available to sexual offenders would actually reduce the offenses and improve public safety.
As for safe neighborhoods? For anyone who took a moment to base their decision upon facts–read the “secondary effects” studies (that have been researched and published by academics, and cited by courts), they would find that having an adult nightclub in their neighborhood actually improves public safety. You are safer having an adult entertainment nightclub in your neighborhood than you are having a 7-Eleven mart. Why? Because of good lighting, security staff, lots of people around, and business owners who watch their Ps and Qs and who want to be good neighbors to the surrounding businesses.
Lastly, the public officials who are promoting this unconstitutional proposal could be viewed as domestic enemies to the constitution because they are seeking to undermine its protections. At the very least, they are in violation of their oath of office (which should be perjury), because they promised to uphold and protect the constitution — and clearly by this attack, they are not.
And with all due respect to Amy — who I like a lot — if libertarians object to this, maybe they should rethink the over-the-top anti-government, anti-tax ideology they’ve been pushing for decades, which is part of what has brought us to this state.
And if leftists object to it, maybe they should rethink the over-the-top pro-government, pro-tax ideology they’ve been pushing for decades.
Tax cuts are only half of the over-the-top anti-government, anti-tax ideology we’ve been pushing for decades. The public has simultaneously bought into the popular parts of your agenda (pro-spending) and ours (anti-tax), with predictable results. We’re equal partners in bringing this about.
A. J. Luxton is somewhat incorrect about higher cover charges cutting into stripper-profit. Nude clubs in most states cannot in fact serve alcohol and charge high cover charges, yet have no shortage of customers who simply bring more money to take that sort of thing into account. So high cover charges are not necessarily going to reduce overall stripper-income. If anything, low cover charges are what bring in the looky-lous, so if all strip clubs were basically pinned with a mandatory cover charge effectively, it is not unlikely it would increase overall customer spending by eliminating the customers who do not in fact spend money in the first place (low/no cover charges at topless clubs attract huge numbers of such customers).
So a ‘sin tax’ might be a good thing for the girls anyhow.
because exotic dancing is, well, dancing, and that is a protected form of FREE SPEECH under the First Amendment.
SCOTUS has ruled against you precisely on this issue. Sorry.
I agree that in the higher category of club, where the amount customers are spending in the first place is higher, things might have the effect described in that divergent viewpoint.
It would depend partly on whether stage shows or private shows are the big draw. My knowledge of the industry is informed by Oregon, where stage tips make up a fairly major portion of dancers’ income.
Hey, thanks for the plug. I wanted to clarify a few things that you said about the libertarian viewpoint. I obviously don’t speak for all libertarians, nor do I speak for my employers, but I think that your statements on taxation and on environmental legislation don’t accurately reflect the views of many libertarians.
First, I don’t think that we need to give politicians the power to “financially punish legal activities that they find morally objectionable” in order to allow, say, taxes on carbon emissions or water pollution, because I don’t think it should be legal to pollute other people’s air and water without compensating them for the harm you’ve caused them. Damaging the environment isn’t bad because it’s “morally objectionable” per se, it’s bad because it hurts people and their property, and a carbon tax system or cap and trade are ways of limiting that harm and compensating the victims (who could comprise all of us) for whatever harm is done to them. And I’m certainly not the only libertarian who supports such a system, although there’s definitely disagreement among libertarians about how to implement and enforce such regulation.
As for the libertarian anti-tax ideology, I’m not going to say that I don’t support drastically lower taxes; I do. However, I don’t think that cutting taxes is the first step in shrinking the government. Instead, I think that we need to cut unnecessary and wasteful programs (corporate welfare and the war on drug users, to name a few) first in order to lower the cost of government, then lower everyone’s taxes (and yes, I support progressive taxation, so long as everyone’s tax rates are as low as possible) once their money isn’t needed anymore. I think that especially now, during this administration that is living proof that “starve the beast” is not an effective means of getting the government to cut spending, a lot of libertarians are coming around to the view that lowering taxes alone can’t solve the country’s problems.
Would someone respond to this? Because I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.
What’s next? Taxing abortions to fund sex education programs to prevent teen pregnancy? Well, according to the radically ignorant Ellen Cohen that would make perfect sense! Duh, Ellen. Rapes aren’t crimes of passion, they are crimes of violence. Isn’t that what you tell the victims? Just pick up any pamphlet & you’ll see that rape crosses all ages, races & gender. So it’s not just hot young women out there begging to be sexually assaulted after dancing all night topless. How she equates these things is beyond logical explanation. I’d really like her to expound upon her statements to give everyone a more clear picture of exactly how adult entertainment gives rise to a need for rape crisis centers. If so, then why not start by taxing the most widespread form of sexual entertainment which is movies & printed materials. Cohen’s statement that rape is a “sexually oriented crime” shows just how unqualified she is to be involved with recovering rape victims. Study after study shows rape to be an act of violence & many times committed by impotent men & by people who use objects to violate their victims in order to inflict torture & humiliation. Rape is not merely a bunch of sexually frustrated individuals forcing themselves upon others with unwanted acts to relieve themselves. If so, the physical trauma of victims & mortality rates would be greatly lowered. After all, if that was the only motive of a rapist then these crimes would typically consist of one or two minutes of holding someone down & getting it over with. As anyone with any worldly education can tell you, three minutes to five minutes & it’s a done deal. However, sexual crimes many times last for hours or days & involve violent harm to the individual above & beyond subduing the victim & engaging in sexual activity. I’m sure Ms. Cohen doesn’t go to her local rape crisis center & counsel women by telling them they did something to encourage the crime. But yet that is the other side of the coin that she’s tossing out there for us to just accept at her word. Do you really think Ms. Cohen would tell a rape victim that sexually oriented businesses are the leading cause of “sexually oriented crimes” as she suggested. She says it’s apples to apples, but I’m just wondering if she’s thought the whole thing through to the core. After all it flies in the face of all the social studies that have ever been done on the subject. It’s clearly a step backwards for the women’s movement as well when someone goes back to that stereotypical thinking that we fought in the 60’s when rape victims were blamed for their situations because they wore mini skirts & no bras. Ms. Cohen is not only suggesting that’s the case, but she’s proudly saying she’s an authority on the subject. I’d like to see her find any science to support her statements. I’d like to tell Ms. Cohen that not only am I a rape victim but I’m a retired topless dancer & by far that makes me much more an authority on whether it’s apples to apples or not. I can tell you emphatically she’s absolutely wrong. The person who raped me wasn’t interested in anyone over 18 years old. If anything, being a rape victim caused me to go into a sexually oriented business, but it had nothing to do with why I was raped. What Ms. Cohen doesn’t call to mind before she shoots off her mouth is that her statements are extremely offensive to those of us who are rape victims by saying that the crimes we endured are apples to compare with the apples shimmying on a pole in a bar. What utter disrespect that shows to the victims as well as to the women who are not committing any crimes by engaging in consentual adult entertainment on private property. If it were apples to apples, the dancers wouldn’t make it home each night. She’s failing to see all the illogical implications her statements raise. After all, if we followed her method of doing things we’d have to have a parent tax on having children to fund child abuse. Isn’t that apples to apples? Parents are the abusers of children so by her logic all parents should bear the cost of assisting abused children. And by all means, let’s continue her logic where it actually makes sense & force parents to pay for their kids educations by themselves instead of making childless adults pay for rearing their little darlings. I mean, seriously, if Ellen Cohen wants to go down that road it could be a very disappointing trip for her if we started pointing fingers of blame at the truly responsible parties. What about all these horrible crimes being committed by kids like the recent mall shootings, Columbine incident & so forth? Who shall we tax to fund victim’s medical bills & mental health needs after something like that? Will Ms. Cohen support passing a bill to tax all parents because parents are the ones raising mentally unstable kids who go on shooting sprees? Well… it’s apples to apples isn’t it? I mean… REALLY. Maybe she’s onto something here.
I am a dancer and have been dancing for over two years. I think of this tax with a positive mind. I found this site by trying to find out what I can do about being sexually asulted in the club because just TODAY I was touched by one of the costumers against my will when standing three feet in front of him with my back turned for only a second. I got angry. I was so angry because although I know its a risk and its happened before the shock of it happening NEVER wears off. So I slapped him and grabbed his face with one hand and shaking the nasty expression off his face. After I informed the club I was asked to leave for attacking the man in my fury. But I don’t “let” anyone touch. Sometimes it happens and the truth is although I get angry Im so immune to the feeling it produces that I can’t cry about it any more. The first time it happened I cried and cried and cried til I couldn’t breath. So violated. I understand this is a business where girls get naked and dance sexually so it may appear as if they are “asking” for it. But there is an incredible difference between prositutes and strippers. And that is that although the men are aloud to look in no circumstances is it legal or morally right to touch. I first started dancing after being sexuallized in a personal relationship and then turned to being sexuallized by strangers for profit because at least you never believed they loved you. And I feel like this happens to a lot of girls. I’ve seen some well put together ladies but most of them had something pretty terrible happen to them in thier childhood that initially made them O.K. with men treating them like dirt. And in these places they are so suseptable with it that its disgusting. And the managers do nothing about. Today I watched as one of the other girls allowed to be groped all over and the manager standing next to me says, “I hope she’s charging him extra for that.” And that’s bad for me. These girls who were likely victimized at one point in various levels of objectification are now being encouraged to continue. Maybe because they never found their worth and with such crippling support from the higher ups never will. I never let any of the costumers touch me but I would say honestly its happened about four times in two years and that’s because Im careful in judging my clients and sometimes what distance to keep. My number is low but too high for me. Everytime it happens it causes me incredible emotional pain. But still I find that immediately afterwards I don’t cry to show anyone in the club how much distress I’m in because they would all think I were over reacting. This is how alright it has became. Sexual assult and strip clubs are related. So my suggestion? Charge the tax and put the girls in the program after being sexually assulted so they know how to protect themselves next time. I may not be a stripper genius but I think the suggestion is at least worth a shot. Im tired of being in the wrong for fucking up some guy who touched me first and seeking my own justice with the knowledge that nothing would be done about it otherwise. If guys want to touch girls and less of them want to come to clubs because of that then let them be the sleezy sleezy punks they are and hire a poor soul called a prostitute who at least includes it in her job description. They can be “those” nasty desperate dirty dudes knowing that they have to pay for sex straight up instead of “chraming” dancers into having sex with them by chance. Men think if they can find it in these establishments its less dirty. So let them be dirty! And improve regulations for the dancers so they aren’t so ready to accept sexual assult knowing that it happens to everyone in the trade. I don’t expect my suggestion would solve the problem and some people can’t be helped but some just need the chance. An epiphany that there is an alternative. That’s my opinion, don’t care about your’s, over and out.