View Full Version : The FAT TAX is coming!
belgareth
01-13-2006, 09:32 PM
The Fat Tax: A Controversial Tool in War Against Obesity By Alan
Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
Wed Jan 11, 2006
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 11 (HealthDay News) -- In
America's ongoing battle of the bulge, one strategy to combat the nation's obesity epidemic has generated more
than a decade's worth of attention and controversy.
Popularly known
as the "fat tax" or the "Twinkie tax," the concept first gained widespread attention in 1994 when Yale University
psychology professor Kelly D. Brownell outlined the idea in an op-ed piece in The New York
Times.
Addressing what he called a "dire set of circumstances,"
Brownell proposed two food-tax options: A big tax, in the range of 7 percent to 10 percent, to discourage the
purchase of unhealthy processed foods while subsidizing healthier choices; or a much smaller tax to fund long-term
public health nutrition programs.
"The American food system is set up
as if maximizing obesity were the aim," Brownell told HealthDay. "So the idea was to tax either certain classes of
foods -- like soft drinks or fat foods -- or to just tax specific foods high in calories or low in nutrition. Then
you use the income from such a tax to subsidize the sale of healthy foods in order to reverse what is the
unfortunate reality now: that it costs more to eat a healthier diet."
The tax, said Brownell, would be a pro-active response to a food industry and consumer culture that
increasingly promotes high-fat/low-nutrition products as the cheapest, tastiest, most convenient and most available
dietary options.
Brownell emphasized that, if properly implemented,
fat taxes could yield major benefits. For example, slapping a single penny tax onto the cost of soft drinks across
the country would generate almost $1.5 billion annually -- a figure that far exceeds the budgets of current
government-sponsored nutrition programs, he said.
The non-profit
Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports that, in recent years, levies of this kind have, in fact,
been imposed -- with states such as Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington creating "fat taxes" on soft drinks
sold within their borders.
Other states such as California, Maine and
Maryland have also experimented with hefty "fat-tax" legislation, Brownell said. However, all the levies were
ultimately repealed, highlighting several practical problems with the fat-tax concept identified by both Brownell
and the IOM.
One big problem is that money collected through fat
taxes has typically not been earmarked for obesity-prevention programs or healthy food subsidies; instead they were
often used to cover budget deficits.
Concerns have also been raised
that such a tax is inherently regressive, meaning it punishes poorer people who must spend much of their limited
income on food.
And although the fat tax appears to have gained
popularity as a theoretical approach to weight management, deciding exactly which products are unhealthy, taxable
foods is a tricky practical matter.
Nonetheless, while the IOM has
remained neutral on the fat-tax issue, some legislators across the country are moving full-steam ahead to get
food-related levies on the books.
New York State Assemblyman Felix
Ortiz, a Democrat from New York City, is one such proponent of the fat tax.
For three years Ortiz has championed a bill that would ding any foods high in calories, fat or carbs --
including perennial favorites such as potato chips, candies and french fries. The bill would also add a one-cent
surcharge on video games.
The taxes would generate an estimated $50
million a year, and all the money would be used to augment the state's $1.5 million budget for the Childhood
Obesity Prevention Program. The program, established in 2001, is designed to promote healthy eating habits among
children and adults through family physician interventions and after-school dietary and physical activity
workshops.
"We have a very chronic epidemic regarding obesity," said
Ortiz. "And we think the food tax is part of the solution. This will be a vehicle to fund the obesity prevention
program that can provide the services needed to assure that our children and the working families of the state of
New York will get the proper information on healthy lifestyles. It will save lives and the next
generation."
Icehawk
01-14-2006, 07:46 AM
I like it. Everyone knows
dieting dosent work...
belgareth
01-14-2006, 07:58 AM
Neither does government
taxation/regulation. If you want proof look at prohibition or the drug laws or prostitution. It also opens doors to
harsher, more intrusive methods down the road.
They make a few good points though. Healthy eating is more
expensive and harder to do. Go to the grocery store and walk down the aisles. Row after row of fast, easy and cheap
fat and salt laden foods. Go out to eat almost anywhere, same thing. And guess what? People buy that trash like
crazy.
Changing the laws, taxing and adding more government has never worked and will not work now. There's
also the obvious question of how does the government have the right to force people to be healthy? They don't. You
can educate and offer the best options but so long as the government is forcing people to eat, act or believe in a
certain way it is wrong except in the case where the person is harming another.
DrSmellThis
01-14-2006, 03:08 PM
People are indeed free to choose their diets, and should be.
This natural state of humanity gets spoiled, however, as huge corporations produce, market and manipulate human
"needs", artificially creating needs, only for the short term maximization of profits ("brute force cybernetics").
It's sort of like giving rats cocaine. You can get any rat to kill itself, very reliably, by giving it an easy and
unlimited supply of the white stuff. That's just the reality of the way rats are. Humans are similar, and
reality-based policy is always best. There are other aspects too in this case, of course, such as teaching the
subject to believe it needs the unhealthy stuff, encouraging it to abandon the healthier alternatives, and
restricting these alternatives.
Corporations have an extraordinary amount of power over culture. So there is a
responsibility there, which goes along with the unnaturally huge power and priviledge that corporations can and do
have -- the gift of "artificial personhood".
For me the solution is perhaps for communities to expect some
responsibility from corporations in return for the power and priviledge. After all, that was the original idea when
corporations were invented.
The moment where that exchange takes place in our society is the chartering process.
That is the precise, logical place.
To the extent corporations get huge and rich, and enjoy powerful lobbies,
they owe the communities that grant them all that something in return. It's not just a matter of, "they earned all
that wealth and power fair and square;" and are providing jobs to the people. The fact that people get a wage when
you use them as a human asset for your corporate profits is not enough to give back. The fact that people get more
"choices" (in terms of absolute numbers of them) of goods and services, when they give you their money is not
enough. Those are just the minimal benefits that accrue to the community by default. That default model, which
requires no values other than wealth maximization, is not working.
It cannot be just a matter of "maximizing
shareholder wealth" as the corporate world's only value. There has to be a yin and yang there, where wealth-seeking
is balanced with the needs of the community. Otherwise corporations become cancers, and will eat forever,
unsatiated, until they kill their host and ultimately, themselves. (It's no accident that cancer is the disease of
modern life.)
In this case, reasonably priced alternatives and community education might be expected. Otherwise
they lose their charter, or have their power and priviledge reduced incrementally. Otherwise, they are still free to
pursue their business ideas without the legal protections, powers, and privileges of incorporation. Or they can
have their "artificial personhood" reduced incrementally to reflect their willingness to share community
responsibility.
Artificial persons are granted freedom by their creator-god, "we the people". But freedom is a
two way street. We are free as communities too, and are not obliged to grant that power of "artificial personhood"
indiscriminately. This is where our system has a hole in it.
This is a case where "absolute responsibility" does
not in practice, in reality, fall just on the consumer who is presumed to be "absolutely free" to choose, without
examining the practical realities of the situation. There is a shared responsibility, where people are mutually
interdependent; and we must work together to change the reality in question; through a policy based in reality.
belgareth
01-14-2006, 04:42 PM
We agree until we get to the
discussion of corporations. A corporation is no more than a legal entity, a fabrication that is nothing in and of
itself. Every action of a corporation, every rule and every policy is an action of one or more individuals.
Certainly, many people surrender their conscience to the corporate mentality but that too is their choice. Making
law2s to hold corporations accountablle mean little until you start focusing on the individuals within the
organization. The same applies to government,, when you get right down to it. They are much alike except governments
tend to be a bit more transparent. In either case though, it is the leadership that makes decisions and who should
be held accountable for their actions. In the case of (our) government it is the president and congress. In a
corporation it is the upper management, board of directors and shareholders.
A corporation or government is
inherently neither good nor bad. It is the people making the decisions that make a corporation and a government what
it is, good or bad. We need to focus on those people if we wish to make changes in how they do business.
DrSmellThis
01-14-2006, 05:01 PM
If you disagree with me, then
I guess I disagree with you. I should take your word on that.
But I agree with most of what you just said. I
guess I have to work on feeling more diagreeable. ;) None of what I just said implies you don't hold corporate and
government leadership responsible for their part.
But we create corporations as a community and have the right to
choose how much of that priviledge to grant. It's not completely accurate thinking to think of it as "adding laws
(regulations)." Incorporation is nothing but laws in the first place. You are just being more careful over what laws
you are already adding, by definition. You are reforming law that is already there. Is it possible there was a
misunderstanding here?
I guess I have to disagree that a corporations are "nothing" in and of themselves. We
create them to be something, and they are. Systems have their own reality beyond the bits that make them up.
Icehawk
01-14-2006, 09:13 PM
I guess I
have to disagree that a corporations are "nothing" in and of themselves. We create them to be something, and they
are. Systems have their own reality beyond the bits that make them up.
Agree here as well. It's like
god, or paper money, everybody believes in it therefore it exists...:box:
As for the fat tax in itself. Its a
counter culture idea to the junk food culture of US. The government is thinking on jumping onto the bandwagon as
well. Makes em seem important and necessary.
belgareth
01-14-2006, 09:25 PM
I think you already know the
point of disagreement but I'll amplify. Despite legal structures imposed on corporations the real villians, if
there are any, are the humans making the decisions. They need to be encouraged or taught to make different
decisions. Every action taken within a corporation is taken due to rules, policies and decisions made by real
people.
The point of the thread however, had nothing to do with the evils of corporations so let's take it
back to the original track. It was about the idea of taxes on foods to force different eating habits. In the end, it
will create more government and more rules and open the door to additional rules later on. It's the same pattern
we've seen time and again. The concept may be well meaning but the implementation is doomed before it starts.
Education is the best tool. The way I see it is that tossing a bunch of veggies and a little meat into a pot can
generate a wholesome meal for about the same price as an equivilant quantity of hamburger helper. One takes a little
more work but not all that much. As a result people feel better and have more energy and healthcare costs can be
reduced in the long term. Education is a good investment in that case. More rules, more taxes and more government to
support is not.
DrSmellThis
01-15-2006, 04:16 AM
I think you
already know the point of disagreement but I'll amplify. Despite legal structures imposed on corporations the real
villians, if there are any, are the humans making the decisions. They need to be encouraged or taught to make
different decisions. Every action taken within a corporation is taken due to rules, policies and decisions made by
real people.
The point of the thread however, had nothing to do with the evils of corporations so let's take
it back to the original track. It was about the idea of taxes on foods to force different eating habits. In the end,
it will create more government and more rules and open the door to additional rules later on. It's the same pattern
we've seen time and again. The concept may be well meaning but the implementation is doomed before it starts.
Education is the best tool. The way I see it is that tossing a bunch of veggies and a little meat into a pot can
generate a wholesome meal for about the same price as an equivilant quantity of hamburger helper. One takes a little
more work but not all that much. As a result people feel better and have more energy and healthcare costs can be
reduced in the long term. Education is a good investment in that case. More rules, more taxes and more government to
support is not.Sorry. I thought the thread was also about the problem of the American diet and what we could
do about it, not just whether taxes were the answer. You had first mentioned that broader issue yourself.
I
didn't mean to derail you. I was agreeing that taxes weren't the answer, and offering that incorporation is a
priviledge that needs to be managed more carefully in the case of the food industry.
Who is anyone to
tell my community that we owe it to some big food business to grant them all the powers and priviledges of
corporation and artificial personhood; if they are not going to benefit our community? Then they are going to tell
us we can't even manage that priviledge? What arrogance. They are free to take their business elsewhere or
operate without all the priviledges of artificial personhood.
Incorporation is a priviledge enjoyed by
real individuals, by virtue of a community's good will; a priviledge that goes far beyond the right to do
business. You are hitting those individuals by managing that priviledge in response to any refusal to
contribute to the community. It's consistent with what you wrote.
So I have no idea whether you really heard the
point. But I'll happily bow out, if you want to drop it. I hope someone else found the idea interesting.
belgareth
01-15-2006, 09:17 AM
I found the idea interesting
but don't know if it would be workable. However, is that really on the topic of dietary issues or taxes to force
dietary compliance or the possibility of worse and more stringent legal issues resulting from those laws?
Corporations and their evils or structures and problems are a whole area of discussion well worth taking up and
I'd be happy to discuss it with you. But, doesn't it really impact on a much wider area than just the local
community and food prices?
tim929
01-15-2006, 11:48 AM
Corperations are for the most
part a method of creating what is typicaly known as "abstract wealth." Corperate board members,CEO's and so forth
earn substantial sums of money.But the greatest sum of money is made by the "corperation," where these folks have
access to,but not ownership of the wealth that is created.In this structure,it is possible for someone like Bill
Gates to live in a fabulously expensive house,fly around the country in a well appointed corperate jet and so
forth...while making a modest paycheck.The modest paycheck means that they can stand up and say "look at how poor I
am!" Despite all the neat bennies they are getting.
In addition,because thier wealth is abstract,they can
influence politics,other businesses,scocial matters and so forth while not looking like "they" are the ones doing
it.
Hence,we get large sums of money deposited into campaigns to tax the living crap out of things like
cigarettes,fat foods,gas guzzling cars,yachts...Corperations that have to pay for the costs of these things use
taxation as a method of generating cash through government to help them to pay for the cost of doing business.Health
care providers and insurance companies,who make enormous sums of money anualy,campaign to jack up cigarette
taxes,then bill the state and federal government for the cost of treating lung cancer,in spite of the fact that we
are all paying high premiums for health insurance.Sort of "double dipping."
It's realy a cool way of doing
business.What happens if the McDonalds cashier demands a gratuity to help supliment thier income?Your double cheese
burger cost you .99 cents,but the gratuity cost you a dollar.Two bucks for something that was supposed be be less
than a dollar.Thier minimum wage job just became a six figure salery and the state only gets to tax a small portion
of it.Corperations do this by demanding that in order to continue providing health care for the masses,they need a
government subsidy in addition to the three or four hundred a month they charge you.They were making a reasonable
profit just from your primiums,but now they are making a very comfortable additional profit from government programs
that you also pay for.
If thier effort to curb whatever activity they are campaigning against succeeds,then
thier cost of doing business goes down but the premiums and subsidies they collect dont.Automobile insurance is a
classic example.Traffic fatalities are down,injuries are down and hospital costs in relationship to traffic
accidents is down...but the premiums keep going up,even though the cost of repairing cars has long ago stabilized.
Health care is and even stickier situation.Lawyers sue health care providers,health care providers charge insurance
companies exorbitent rates,drug companies over charge hospitals and insurance providers and patients,insurance
companies over charge patients and the government,the government taxes the patients and the hospitals and the drug
companies and the lawyers and the insurance companies,then the lawyers sue the drug companies,and...well...you get
the idea...its a sickening example of "abstract wealth" gone very,very wrong.
taxing fat foods is just one more
link in the chain.
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