November 7, 2009
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Should America Tax Junk Food At A Higher Rate?
Not just no, but HELL NO!!! Like most debates, this argument is really about money, and power. It is also about dividing America by pitting the poor against the rich. Many people with lower incomes cannot afford to buy what some call healthy food, and are too busy working to barely scrape by to bother with the extensive preparation that is required when you buy fresh fruits and vegetables. The Government wants to control as much of our lives as it possibly can. We need to be taxed, and regulated, less, not more.
Those who support the "junk food" tax claim to be doing it to encourage people to eat a healthier diet. I'd like to point out a basic flaw in this argument. If you are supposedly trying to get people to eat healthier food, why do want to profit from it if they eat food you deem to be unhealthy? If you suggest that taxing "junk food" will raise revenue to subsidize healthy foods, you are then depending on those who do not eat "healthy food" to lower grocery prices for those that do not eat "junk food". Those who eat healthier foods tend to already be richer, so once again you end up taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich.
Comments (18)
I'd cry and jump off a balcony.
@Manstration - Lmao I was thinking the exact same thing
That would just be sad. =
people tend to buy junk food because they are junk. they are cheaper by the mere fact that they are junk. if you tax the junk food it is tax on the poor. (like you stated) stupid polticians.
Great point. I agree.
why don't they just make organic food more affordable?
@TheBigShowAtUD - Organic food is more difficult to grow and produce. Without pesticides and growth promoters, it takes more care and nurturing, which equals more human labor. Therefore, until a more efficient way of producing organic goods is found, the prices will be a little higher than junk foods, and even other (non-organic) vegetables and supposedly healthy foods.
I don't understand your flaw. It seems to be poorly worded and circumlocating. If the government were to subsidize (and it doesn't now) local, organic farmers instead of an abundance of junk food and cows, it would really help the environment. organic farming encourages a larger labour force and a recyclable way of farming (introducing natural nitrogens to help the food grow in the soil after planting soybeans and the like). also, supporting local farmers should be enough incentive, what with wal-mart becoming a monopoly in the market now.
Junk food is SHIT. That's why people buy it; tastes good, makes them look crappy, gives them health problems BUT it is cheap. A pretty damn big percentage of Americans are obese. They're fatasses. And we want to encourage this behaviour? Give those big corporations ability to hoard in the money from our unhealthy, fatty lives? Why? If we can discourage being fat, by all means we should seize the chance and help the environment. In China, meat and dairy products (cows) is not a basic suppliant of their diet (that's why they're relatively skinny) because it's for the rich. Obviously there's a difference of economy between China and the US but the idea is the same. The majority of Chinese people (aka the poor ones) have only farming food to supply their diet. It consists of mostly grains and wheats etc. Not fatass meats and too much animal protein. So they're skinny, and healthier than Americans. Take after that.
Basically, intead of just taxing junk food, SUBSIDIZE LOCAL FARMERS AND BUSINESSES! Give back to the ones who are struggling and trying to resist the big hand of corporations.
People cannot buy healthy food food because it costs more than the junk food
@TheBigShowAtUD - That could be the question of the year!!
Why don't they just live with the amount of money they already have? The rest of us do that. The government doesn't need more money.
Its more of Obama and his Idiots and their wise ideas for a "Changed" America.
all they're doing is taxing us for their mistakes. They don't understand that they can't fix a wrong with another wrong. In other words, Two Wrongs Don't make a Right!
@TheBigShowAtUD - Organic has nothing to do with health, check out this picture, it's pretty sweet.
Food taxes are all about the government trying to make more money and nothing about health.
Nor is healthy food more expensive, healthy food is actually cheaper. If you're going out to McDonald's to eat on a regular basis, you're already fairly rich compared to most poor people I've known. Make some good old fashioned beans, rice, eggs and bananas and you can feed four or five people at the same price as feeding one person at McDonald's.
Making America healthy has nothing to do with taxes and everything to do with education on how to eat better. For all the problems Arnold Schwarzenegger has as governor, that's one thing he's done right: he's gotten kids out exercising. We should take what he's done with that and expand it to include healthy food.
@ShamelesslyRed - Healthy food is cheaper if you cook for yourself. A whole grain, low meat, low fat diet is one of the cheapest diets you can get.
@snapeful - The problem with subsidizes is that 1) they don't create growth but only redistribute wealth and 2) the government never hands them out fairly. Wealth redistribution is the biggest creator of inequity and only benefits people connect to the politically powerful. Case and point, two local farmers, one spent a decade struggling to build up a soybean processing business, the other secured a state grant worth millions and was competing practically overnight without the overhead costs. That's a true story that is repeated over and over again.
They could compensate by making healthier foods more affordable...there are already extensive farm subsidies. I think that crap food needs to be taken out of peoples' diets. It causes heart disease and early death. So it's between costing the poor a few more dollars on one end as opposed to letting them die of a diseased ticker on the other.
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