Doreen told me about an article in
the paper this morning reporting that in Denmark they are beginning a fat tax;
a tax on food with excessive amounts of fat, like hamburger etc. The idea being
that it’s bad for you so to encourage folk not to eat bad food, tax it.
Can’t you just hear the Tea Party
types going into convulsions about now? What a intrusion into individual
rights. If we want to be fat it’s our right as stupid human beings to be so.
Damned government has no business messing with my fat choices…
A typical definition of freedom is
that we should be free to do whatever we want as long as it doesn’t adversely
affect someone else. Seems good to me. So, I agree with Denmark’s fat tax and I
would add more taxes like it.
An old argument of this nature is
mandatory helmets for motorcycle riders. If you don’t ride with one you chances
of serious head trauma goes way up in an accident and you likely don’t have
enough insurance to cover it, so others have to pay your huge medical bills.
Wear the damned helmet or be taxed.
Hell, let’s tax fat people. We know
that this obese generation is going to cost society scads of money in health
related illnesses throughout their lives; they will miss more work costing us
productivity and the like. Chris Christie, I fella I find most jovial and
pleasant should lose weigh before running for office; he’ll never make it
through the campaign, let alone the presidency because he’s fat. He’s admitted
it as one of the reasons he’s not ready to run. I hope he takes his own advise
and weights, oops waits for a future election where a slimmed down Christie
could run for the presidency.
I can think of lots of others taxes
that are applicable here. CEOs who just came up with the $5.00 monthly fee on
debit cards, all those white collar criminals who were never punished for
messing up the economy; tax them, a lot; putting them in jail, just increases
our taxes for their upkeep.
Did you watch the special on Prohibition, part 1 of 3 last night. The tax on booze before Prohibition was the third or fifth largest source of revenue for the government - can't remember which but anyway, when they made booze illegal it became the beginning of organized crime and speak easies allowed women and thus began the increase of alcoholism (as known) in women. We all know that women were by and large "secret alcoholics" as are a lot of men, but the point being that if you legalize something you can tax the hell out of it and have it be a source of revenue and keep the crime out of it. it was a huge mistake - because it just went underground.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting documentary -- the money that was made by the fat cat crooks was tremendously huge. And the government really screwed itself -- at least till years later and many millions lost, and many people shot up, and the prohibition act was repealed.
And that is why weed should be legalized, too.
Its there - people use it - legalize it and tax the h out of it like we do booze and tobacco.
Right weapon, wrong target. A sugar, sodium or refined carbohydrates tax would pay much bigger health dividends. The science behind the fat tax is horribly outdated. Fats, even saturated fats can be quite healthy if they have a good omega-3 content (i.e. from sources such as fish, grass-fed beef, organic milk, free-range hen eggs, etc.)
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