▶ Your Answer : Currently, the government requires a high
tax on tobacco products. In the reading passage, there is ample support for the
author’s claim that the high tax on the tobacco products give the country a lot
of advantages. However, the professor in the lecture gives several reasons as a
rebuttal to the author’s point.
First, the professor contends that it is
not true that increasing the tobacco tax is helpful for decreasing a ratio of
young people who will start smoking. This is due to the fact that young people
often buy cigarettes from Black Markets. In the market, they can buy the
cigarettes less than formal markets since they can avoid the tax. Also, the
market doesn’t require their social ID card. This casts doubt on the reading
passage’s claim that the increasing the tobacco tax helps young people to be far
from cigarettes since they tend to buy expensive things and avoid them.
Second, the professor argues that the high
tax will not be helpful for repairing damage inflicted on the environment. To
be specific, if the government increase the tax, the government will not get
less taxes than before since the ratio of people who buy cigarettes will decrease.
Therefore, they won’t have enough money to reform the land. This counters the reading
passage’s claim that the high tax will make the government be able to solve the
environmental problems since it can be provided enough money to combat the
problems.
Finally, the professor insists that the
high tax cannot be helpful for reducing poverty. This is because since there
are a lot of jobs related to cigarettes, such as farmer, if the government
increases the price of the cigarettes, they will lose their jobs. Also, since
the government cannot get the tobacco tax, they will not be able to support
people financially. This refutes the reading passage’s claim that the
government can solve poverty issues by the revenue increased by the tobacco tax
since the government will result in higher tax, which allows it to support
social welfare programs well. |