Fat Tax on "Unhealthy" Foods

[Kuytrider]

Originally Posted by Fazc

Ameritain.

Britica.

Hmmmmmmm or secret option number trois... The Kingdom of Faz.

Kuytland. Where everyone drinks Morgan's rum and hates Man United

[Fazc]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

The Nation of Domination.

Legion of Doom?! Or are we getting too retro?

Originally Posted by Kuytrider

Kuytland.

Lol, I like that.

[BendtheBar]

We can bring back Doom, fashionably of course.

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by bruteforce

I want to throat punch every person who doesn't take responsibility for their actions and wants to make me pay for how effing dumb they are.

But surely you do already pay for them, don't you? A proportion of your taxes goes on healthcare, and a proportion of that goes on self-inflicted health problems.

So if it could be established that food x (e.g. some variety of junk food) raises the chance of, say heart disease, doesn't a tax on that save you from spending money on people that are 'effin dumb'?

[Tannhauser]

Actually, I don't get what the general rabid reaction is all about (not from Brute in particular).

What is the objection? Is it because:

(a) there is a proposal to modify eating behaviour through taxation

OR

(b) the choice of foods that the proposal encompasses (i.e. high fat foods)




On a separate note, Star Trek 2 is on TV right now, and Kirk has just shouted 'KHHHHAAAANNNN!!!!!'

[bruteforce]

Originally Posted by Tannhauser

Actually, I don't get what the general rabid reaction is all about (not from Brute in particular).

What is the objection? Is it because:

(a) there is a proposal to modify eating behaviour through taxation

OR

(b) the choice of foods that the proposal encompasses (i.e. high fat foods)




On a separate note, Star Trek 2 is on TV right now, and Kirk has just shouted 'KHHHHAAAANNNN!!!!!'

Here's why I get enraged by it all.

in Nov 2008, I weighed in over 360 pounds, ate junk, and knew it. Doc told me I was diabetic and I cleaned up my diet and dropped 145 pounds. I did it by eating high saturated fat content meats, cheeses, and huge amounts of veggies such as spinach, peppers, the occasional onion, etc. Switching from low fat high carb (my previous life) to high fat low carb brought my cholesterol down and blood sugar down to safe ranges. Now the government wants to tell me what is and isn't healthy, but they have no clue what is healthy for me.

My other problem is that any time the government gets involved in the personal lives of people, we lose freedom. Some of these losses are acceptable, some aren't. I can't travel outside the US without documentation that is stored in an unsafe manner allowing identity thieves access to that info. I can't inject myself with performance enhancing drugs unless I pay the right person to write their name on a slip of paper. I can't pack a lunch for my kids if they go to a public school, they have to eat corndogs with a side of creamed corn.

I value my personal freedom over protection from a higher authority. Let me decide to get fat, or unfat. Stay out of my house, my kitchen, my bedroom. Protect me from foreign invasion, and leave the rest to local government. Let me own a gun and some rottweilers to protect myself instead of waiting an hour for the cops to show up to the rape and murder of my family. This is not being down on local police, but just a fact that things can happen faster than we can react.

Maybe its an American thing, but we like our freedom and our space. We don't want the less fortunate harmed, don't give a damn if two dudes (or ladies) want to get it on while wearing a giraffe costume, and aren't interested in if you're a Catholic, Methodist, Islamist, Buddhist, Taoist, or Atheist. The loud jerks on both sides don't represent us. We just want to live our lives, pursue happiness, and eat a hamburger without Big Brother telling us what to do.

[BendtheBar]

It's not about which foods they tax. It's about the system being corrupt and easily swayed through lobbyists. Once the door is open, food choices will be bought with money. Plus food should not be taxed, period.

Also the big deal is that I don't want the government involved. They are inept and inefficient, and need their hands out of as much as possible. I do not want socialism. I want small government. That's the big deal.

Government, leave us alone. I do not want a big government micromanaging my life. You may Tann, and I respect your opinion, but I do not. That's why it's a big deal. I believe in most cases they make things worse, not better.

[TitanCT]

can we tax poiticians for being assholes next?

[Goat]

Ah, more hope and change.

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

It's not about which foods they tax. It's about the system being corrupt and easily swayed through lobbyists. Once the door is open, food choices will be bought with money. Plus food should not be taxed, period.

Also the big deal is that I don't want the government involved. They are inept and inefficient, and need their hands out of as much as possible. I do not want socialism. I want small government. That's the big deal.

Government, leave us alone. I do not want a big government micromanaging my life. You may Tann, and I respect your opinion, but I do not. That's why it's a big deal. I believe in most cases they make things worse, not better.

OK, interesting one.

This is my take on this. Like it or not, all governments need to raise money through taxation. That money is spent on all the things that make a society function. So there is a choice of how that money is raised. It can be taken directly out of your wages or it can be applied to various products that are bought and sold. Either way you're going to have to pay it.

The moral problem I have with elevating individual freedom above all other virtues is that it involves a huge contradiction. Unless you live in a cabin in the woods, and consume nothing, and produce no waste, pretty soon your actions start impinging on other people's freedoms.

To give an obvious example, seven billion people cannot keep consuming the amount of fossil fuels at the rate they have been without (a) using them up and (b) creating significant pollution (I'll leave climate change out of this). Yet everyone insists it's their God given right to drive a car whenever and however they use. It's a monstrous extravagance to power 3500lbs of metal to move a 220 lb human through one mile down the road, but hey, we're lazy. The consequence of defending those little individual freedoms will be a much greater loss of freedom later on. So in the UK, we have a massive tax on fuel. It's social engineering for sure, but another way to see it is putting the brakes on our own self-destructive selfishness.

To apply this to health: the Scottish government is about to introduce a minimum price of 50p for a unit of alcohol. It will be illegal to sell it for less than that. That's deliberate social engineering, and it could be argued that it restricts the freedom of many people to get as drunk as they possible can. I'm all in favour of this, as it turns out I'm paying for them to exercise their freedom. I pay through funding the National Health Service, and I'm paying through living in a society where alcohol-related crime consumes a disproportionate amount of police resources.

With regard to food, to reiterate a point I made earlier: you are already paying for someone else's freedoms. Your taxes fund medicare, which means that you pay for a proportion of the population to chow down as much unhealthy food as they like - then you pick up the tab for their medical treatment.

And to finish on a general point:

To me, most government intervention isn't about micromanagement. It's about balancing of freedoms. For too long, we've all been playing this tune of 'So long as I've got my freedoms, I don't care.' This pervasive selfishness neglects the impact that we all have upon each other. For all its inefficiencies, corruption and incompetence, the ONLY body in any position to reign in our self-destructive selfishness is the government.