Here they go again, the politicians, looking to capitalize on human frailty.

With his tax proposals this week, Gov. David A. Paterson joined a long line of New York leaders who have counted on self-wounding, even self-destructive, behavior to help them dig out of budget holes. Mr. Paterson called for a huge tax, 18 percent, on sugary sodas and juice drinks. It’s a public health measure, his lieutenants said — you know, to counter the obesity epidemic.

Sure. The $404 million tax haul that the governor expects next year is merely incidental, right? State budget planners are so confident that New Yorkers will keep guzzling sugar-laden soda that they figure the tax will pull in even more money, $539 million, the following year.

“If the governor is really insistent that we’re levying this tax because of a public health concern about obesity, that leads me to ask: O.K., where’s the fast-food restaurant tax?” said James Parrott, the chief economist and deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group.

Although the institute has taken no official position on the sugar tax, Mr. Parrott said an argument could be made that “there’s a public health cost associated with the consumption of sugary drinks.” So weaning people from Coke or Pepsi or whatever could save taxpayers money in the long run. (Of course, in the long run we’re all dead.)

Still, “if we’re going to levy a sugary soda tax, why aren’t we levying it on doughnuts and all sorts of other things?” Mr. Parrott said. “There’s a question about consistency in that regard.”

The same might be said about other taxes that government imposes and activities that it encourages. Many are based on human weakness.

Smoking is bad for you. But if no one smoked, the city and the state would be out a few hundred million dollars every year.

Drinking alcohol more than a bit can be harmful. But government profits from that, too. Mr. Paterson wants to make even more money, an estimated $105 million, by expanding the opportunities for New Yorkers to imbibe. He recommended this week that grocery stores and drugstores be allowed to sell wine — after they pay for licenses to do so.

Gambling is a losing proposition for anyone who plays; the deck is stacked in the house’s favor. Gambling addiction is a scourge. Yet the state happily runs a numbers racket. It’s called the lottery. Now, Mr. Paterson proposes raking in still more money by expanding the number of Quick Draw outlets and installing hundreds of video slot machines at Belmont Park racetrack.

Make no mistake, the last thing that government wants is for everyone, right this minute, to stop smoking, boozing, gambling and downing those nutritionally empty supersweet sodas. Too much money is at stake. Heavy taxes on cigarettes are a case in point, said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the conservative Empire Center for Public Policy. The goal is not necessarily to make a bad habit disappear, he said.

“If your program succeeds,” Mr. McMahon said, “you not only directly affect your tax revenue, you contribute to the day when the major tobacco companies, whose revenues are underwriting the tobacco bonds you floated a few years ago, go out of business. And then the taxpayers have to underwrite their bonds.”

Even Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — though he is “the truest true believer” on the evil of smoking, in Mr. McMahon’s words — likes the money to be made. Three months ago, his administration filed a federal lawsuit to stop stores on nearby Indian reservations from selling cigarettes in bulk to bootleggers. It’s all about the bucks. The city is losing about $195 million a year in tax revenue, the mayor said.

By absolutely no coincidence, the New Yorkers who pay these particular taxes tend to be those who can afford them the least. Poor people spend disproportionately on smokes, booze and unhealthy soft drinks, not to mention on the prayer that God will drop everything else and shower lottery millions on them.

These are “habits that are more common among those who have the least amount of political power,” said Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a liberal but nonpartisan research center in New York. “To do something in the most politically efficient way is to tax or hike the fees of those who have the least power,” she said.

Somehow, this brings to mind “Everybody Knows,” by the poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen. It goes in part: “Everybody knows the fight was fixed/The poor stay poor, and the rich get rich/That’s how it goes/Everybody knows.” If you have an iPod, you probably can download it. But remember, if the governor has his way, you’ll pay a new tax to do it. That, too, is how it goes.

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