Surprise, surprise

Everybody remember the famous new 5 cent per bottle of water Chicago tax? It's a real shocker, but money is coming in at less than half of projections.

Two posts in one day about how so many Democrats don't understand economics? Today's news is a veritable goldmine:

David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, responded by essentially saying, "I told you so."

Vite predicted the tax would fall far short as Chicagoans fled to the suburbs to buy cases of bottled water, along with the rest of their groceries.

"Single-bottle sales have not been dramatically hurt. It's the bulk purchase, the six-pack and the case that has just been killed. There's no reason someone is gonna pay $1.20 extra for a $4 dollar case of water when they can go to the suburbs to buy it without that," Vite said.

So when you tax something, you get less of it (in this case, bottled water purchases)? Revolutionary! If only there were people out there who understand such phenomena and implement it into their political philosophy...

By the way, I just noticed the comments at the bottom of the article. It's full of the usual stuff like, "When will these guys stop taxing everything?" Are people this stupid? When you elect an entire city council of liberal Democrats, you are going to have liberal governance! That means high taxes and spending, and you will also have high rates of nanny-state-ism such as the smoking and foe gras bans. Why not mobilize and vote some of them out? A real shocker would be to start electing conservative Republicans, but that will never happen because to too many people in the city think they are "mean". Yeah, well, how "nice" is it to tax the crap out of everything just to piss the money away on the Olympics?

I just wish people who vote for certain candidates would understand what they are getting. If you vote Democratic, this is what you will get. If you are fine with that, then that's OK. Just don't complain afterwards when the guys you vote in do exactly what anyone who follows politics at all could figure out they would do. At that point, you are just being dumb.