Quote:
|
If something is truely bad for you, ban it. Making a profit off of your citizens' poor decisions that your actually believe is a cause for poor health or increased death rates is sick and wrong. You are abdicating the use of it as long as you get a little action on the side.
|
Banning it would be pretty unrealistic. We see that banning drugs has not solved the problems associated with them, so I highly doubt it would help with unhealthy foods.
I didn't start the thread being totally sold on the idea of sin taxes, but it does seem like a more non-coercive way of encouraging healthy behavior, and helping to pay for what they may cost the rest of us.
Quote:
|
Smokers and the obese cheaper to care for, study shows - International Herald Tribune
|
That study surprises me a little bit and is the best argument I've seen against such a sin tax. We tax gasoline because the people who burn more generally put more strain on the road, but maybe the same principles do not apply to healthcare. Considering that the study uses a model, and not a more expensive and more convincing longitudinal study of actual patients, I am not thoroughly convinced. The model could be missing variables necessary for the simulation to work properly. Also aside from quality-of-life considerations, the study probably does not measure productivity of workers and other hard-to-define-or-know variables.
Quote:
When the government starts telling me what and when to eat is when I start fighting back.
There are better ways of doing things then taking all the freedom of life away from people by sin taxing them to death. No one should be telling another how to live so long as they aren't hurting anyone but themselves it is none of your bloody business.
|
I think as long as the tax isn't too high it wouldn't be very coercive. Many libertarians believe we should legalize drugs and tax them to pay for what they cost society. The two reasons I can see for such sin taxes include encouraging (but not forcing) positive behavior, and paying for extra money they may cost us. As pointed out above, only the first reason may be valid for bad food and cigarettes, so I am a little less sure about such a sin tax now.