Let’s drop the soda ban and go all out with a fat tax
Kelly Brownell, who directs the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, is a longtime proponent of the fat tax as a solution to the obesity epidemic. “The principle is simple,” he wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. “Cigarettes, alcohol, and some foods have negative consequences and hence high health-care costs, and taxes are a way of recovering some of these costs. Consumption goes down as taxes go up.”
But some experts warn that these so-called “sin taxes” can present a classic conflict of interest for the state, even if they always result in additional revenue…
There’s another problem with sin taxes, like levies on tobacco and junk food: they tend to be regressive, because poorer people spend more of their income on food relative to wealthier people.
But Brant Hellwig, a professor of taxation at Washington and Lee School of Law, said: “If the revenue from a junk-food tax were dedicated to expanding health-insurance coverage among low-income individuals, then what may appear to be a regressive tax on the revenue-collection side would be far less so when both sides of the equation are considered.”
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We need to put a sensor on people’s rear ends. When it detects weight being applied, a meter starts running. The more you sit on it, the more you pay in tax.
crosspatch on June 9, 2012 at 8:09 PM
First they came for the smokers…. no one cared. Now they are coming for your potato chips… Twinkies… all the fun stuff…
You all opened the door… enjoy!
( when I mean you all…most people of HA do not count in that of course. )
watertown on June 9, 2012 at 8:10 PM
what’s amazing is that the same website just ran a Newsweek cover story by Gary Taubes arguing that saturated fats are good for you
commodore on June 9, 2012 at 8:12 PM
How about we keep the govmint out of our lives.
Just like seat belts. Insurance co.s can write in the policy that if you are injured in an auto accident and are not wearing a seat belt they won’t pay. There’s an incentive.
Likewise obese.
davidk on June 9, 2012 at 8:12 PM
Mandatory calisthenics before mandatory two minutes hate. See you at the ministry of truth Winston.
tom daschle concerned on June 9, 2012 at 8:13 PM
davidk on June 9, 2012 at 8:15 PM
Can we impose a tax on annoying busy-bodies?
John the Libertarian on June 9, 2012 at 8:16 PM
How about no.
rbj on June 9, 2012 at 8:18 PM
HA! I’ll just lay on my stomach!
El_Terrible on June 9, 2012 at 8:18 PM
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
—C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
xkaydet65 on June 9, 2012 at 8:22 PM
Is this a parody? After that we can start taxing the disabled. All the people with Down’s Syndrome get to go to
worksummer camp. Yay for cost recovery!Fenris on June 9, 2012 at 8:22 PM
If ALL of body care was user pays, this wouldn’t be a govt problem.
OldEnglish on June 9, 2012 at 8:23 PM
I think this idea is one letter short. Instead of a “fat tax” why not have a “fart tax”? We could charge people every time they pass gas. I’ll bet that way Michael Moore would pay the IRS a hell of a lot more than he does now.
radjah shelduck on June 9, 2012 at 8:27 PM
If high health care costs are the concern, the obviously better solution would be just to take the health care freebies away from fat people. Better, but still incredibly cruel and stupid. Libs are just fixed on taxes and will push them under any angle.
theperfecteconomist on June 9, 2012 at 8:31 PM
Yep — every time someone makes a suggestion like that, it costs them $10,000. And have a 350-lb. IRS agent collect it.
Mr. D on June 9, 2012 at 8:32 PM
This stuff is just sick. They don’t care at all about health and frankly the math doesn’t add up. Fat people, like smokers, die at younger ages than others on average. That means in the long run they cost less. 60 years ago everyone was fat, drunk smokers. Why wasn’t health costs breaking the bank? Mostly because those people just up and died mostly. They weren’t lingering for years requiring constant expensive, maintenance drugs.
These “sin” taxes aren’t about health. They are a cynical way of taxing people who are being taken of the income tax roles. They should do away with these taxes and have them pay income taxes instead. If they really wanted to help the “poor” they would only tax they when they earned income instead of every time they put something in their mouths.
Rocks on June 9, 2012 at 8:34 PM
Let us have a tax on children born out of wedlock and on people who don’t know how to avoid STDs….
let’s go for broke and make life perfect. Screw rights, freedom, and responsibility. Just do it damn it.
CW on June 9, 2012 at 8:35 PM
Okay, so the oppressive-left can understand that you get less of a behavior that you punish.
Why can’t they figure this out in regards to income taxes?
Chip on June 9, 2012 at 8:42 PM
Ehh, every time I read one of these I have to go buy a huge fountain diet Dew from Quiznos. It’s like the dinner bell. Think I’ll get a giant cookie this time to just out of spite.
WeekendAtBernankes on June 9, 2012 at 8:50 PM
Isn’t this fun? And it’s the kind of fun that never, ever ends.
Rational Thought on June 9, 2012 at 8:56 PM
Such taxes have been the ultimate objective all along. It’s the Socialist Way.
Next there will be fines for not participating in morning calisthenics with the neighborhood health commissar.
farsighted on June 9, 2012 at 9:07 PM
If it’s true, as the William Davis MD, author of ‘Wheat Belly’ says, that the true cause of obesity in America and westernized countries is the consumption of modern genetically modified wheat – which has less in common with ancient wheat than chimpanzees have with humans – then the solution is to go back to flours made from spelt and kamut, and to stop eating modern wheat. Punishing Americans by taxing them for eating “whole grains” which turn out to actually cause obesity, is to address the symptom, not the cause.
chotii on June 9, 2012 at 9:37 PM
And we have a winner!
Capitalist Hog on June 9, 2012 at 9:43 PM
or a black market is created. Or it gives people another reason other than cigarettes and gas to drive to Indian reservation.
Caper29 on June 9, 2012 at 10:21 PM
And as, when always happens in these situations, the “revenues” raised from these “sin taxes” come in well below projections (because greedy tax-and-spend leftists always budget as if the excess tax rates will not affect purchasing behavior), the parasites will always go after some other “revenue source” to fill the yawning chasm. What’s the next freedom they will go after? Time to stand up once and for all to these obnoxious leftist tyrants.
fitzfong on June 9, 2012 at 11:49 PM
How about an idiot tax? Why the “revenue” from the Daily Beast alone would be quite substantial.
Rip Ford on June 10, 2012 at 12:23 AM
So if a person is overweight, they should be penalized, taxed and marginalized.
However, if a skinny person is promiscuous, has eating disorder(s) and unhealthy lifestyle choices, but LOOK more attractive (and therefore intelligent), they should make more money and be thought of in a more positive light.
O.K…..got it…..
KMC1 on June 10, 2012 at 12:47 AM
FIFY.
trigon on June 10, 2012 at 1:21 AM
Haha, let’s do it.
Out: Income brackets.
In: BMI brackets.
Let’s make it happen.
jhffmn on June 10, 2012 at 1:25 AM
Somehow these idiots don’t see how using their logic, one could pass sodomy laws again. Nope, free rubbers, pills and abortions for all and death to the twinkie eaters.
oryguncon on June 10, 2012 at 3:02 AM
Now if only they’d realize higher taxes not only reduce the consumption of “junk” food, but reduce the number of jobs, income, etc.
I’ll pay a “fat tax” the second they start taxing condoms and birth control under the belief that higher taxes will reduce sex and, therefore, the need for medical treatment related to STDs, etc.
In other words, the day after never.
englishqueen01 on June 10, 2012 at 7:03 AM
Why don’t we just tax the overweight by letting all people pay for the consequenses of their lifestyle? To say that I have to pay more taxes in order to protect the disfunctional from themselves pretty much goes against all that “fairness” blabber the libs never shut up about.
tommyboy on June 10, 2012 at 7:24 AM
If you want to make something scarce, just place price controls on it. Bloomberg should have said, “From now on, all 16 oz drinks will be no more than 25 cents.
Remember the gas lines when the government tried to cap gas prices?
Uniblogger on June 10, 2012 at 12:12 PM