{"id":1674,"date":"2009-05-08T07:52:56","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T11:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2009-05-08T07:53:15","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T11:53:15","slug":"smoke-your-way-through-the-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/08\/smoke-your-way-through-the-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke your way through the recession"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I&#8217;m just reposting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2009\/05\/08\/chinese-provincial-g.html\" target=\"_blank\">Boing Boing<\/a> content, but this is so ridiculous I just had to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Government employees have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/howaboutthat\/5271376\/Chinese-ordered-to-smoke-more-to-boost-economy.html\" target=\"_blank\">ordered to smoke 230 000 packs<\/a> of locally produced cigarettes in order to boost the economy through taxation.<\/p>\n<p>Um, what?\u00c2\u00a0 We want you people to smoke these cigarettes, NOW!\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Get started, your lungs won&#8217;t blacken themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 The article mentions that about 1 million people die each year from smoking related illnesses in China, placing this effort squarely in the &#8220;short term solution&#8221; category.\u00c2\u00a0 Not sure if they have done any rudimentary math on the inevitable increased <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Public_health_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China\" target=\"_blank\">health care costs<\/a> of this strategy, but it seems like a net loss kind of a thing to me.\u00c2\u00a0 They have actually imposed a smoking quota to make sure people smoke enough of these things.<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely bat-shit insane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I&#8217;m just reposting Boing Boing content, but this is so ridiculous I just had to&#8230; Government employees have been ordered to smoke 230 000 packs of locally produced cigarettes in order to boost the economy through taxation. Um, what?\u00c2\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/08\/smoke-your-way-through-the-recession\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[120,119],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apocalypse-soon","category-stupidity","tag-cigarettes","tag-insane"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piGNU-r0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1676,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}