Posted on 06/26/2013 9:55:51 AM PDT by eagleye85
The National Bureau of Economic Research has come up with a great new idea: let’s tax calories to make people thinner! “Raising the price of a calorie for home consumption by 10 percent may lower the percentage of body fat in youths about 8 or 9 percent, according to new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research,” writes Peter Whoriskey for the Washington Post.
This is just another example of how liberals, in an effort to make a better society, abhor, and often actively confute, market forces to promote their own social agendas.
“The new research, which focused on youths, reinforces the idea that prices affect obesity and that raising fast-food prices would help, while pushing up the prices of healthy foods, such as fruit and vegetables, may hurt,” writes Whoriskey.
Why don’t we just mandate what foods that people on food stamps eat, while we’re at it? After all, research shows that the poor are more likely to be obese.
“Obesity and its related illnesses, as we know, disproportionately affect low-income communities,” reported Ginia Bellafante for the New York Times this March. “In Brooklyn, for instance, the rate of heart-attack hospitalizations among adults 35 and older in East New York is nearly twice the rate in wealthier Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope.”
So the solution is to make low-calorie food more economical? That may sound good, but not if it means that fast food is going to be the purview of the rich. Picking winners and losers in the marketplace is not the government’s job.
“The research also showed that people from different groups — males and females, whites and non-whites — react differently to food price increases,” reports Whoriskey. “The price of meals in fast-food restaurants, for example, influences the fat weight of males more than females; by contrast, females respond more to the price of fruits and vegetables, gaining more weight when those prices rise.”
“The study also found that the percentage of body fat for whites is more responsive to the price of fruits and vegetables than that of non-whites.”
“Such research in recent years has spurred an array of proposals to make food, or at least some foods — such as those with high sugar and fat content — more expensive,” he reports. “But the most direct means, economists say, is to tax calories.”
When did calories become a vice like cigarettes or alcohol? To take food directly like this would be to subsidize production (tobacco and food staples) and then punish those who consume them (cigarettes and fast food), all in the name of health policy. At least cigarettes are not necessary to life–food is. “It’s probably not politically feasible,” concludes Abigail Okrent, an Agriculture Department researcher, according to the Post.
Let’s be grateful it isn’t, for the moment.
If they are going to do it, at least do it right...tax carbs.
Man, these people have a one-track mind.
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There is but one successful solution to liberals...and we’re all thinking it.
Bwahahahahah!!!!!
They’ll just increase the EBT card amounts. Those food deserts can be quite expensive you know. It’s for the children...
F*CK THESE PEOPLE
SERIOUSLY
No shit.
At some point, you'll be taxed prorata based upon your "burden" on public services, including, for example, air conditioning in public spaces...
You're mistaking the means for the goal.
The goal isn't tax tax tax.
The goal is control control control
No dissent allowed.
Taxing is just the method they propose to do it.
With extreme prejudice.
Great idea!. 20M dead (starved) Kulaks can’t be wrong!
Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet
Taxman!
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me
Taxman!
Believe me, they think the same about us, probably even more so.
We are only about one Supreme Court Justice and another democrat presidency away from this country being driven so far left it will make France look like a conservative paradise.
I propose a "Tax" Tax with penalties and interest. Every time one of these groups come up with a tax to try to force us into their little mold they are taxed fifty percent of their earnings for the rest of their lives, for penalties they are put in stocks in the public square for a week and for interest every thing they own is confiscated.
The calorie tax is going to make FAT WALLETS for some new Gvt. Bureaucrats. The left screams about the right going into their bedroom and into their V (lady part), but what the lefties are doing is far more invasive.
Why do they hate poor people of porcine proportions?
Pinnipeds need to eat too...
Calories make sooooo little difference. We have our little science experiment at home ... twins. One boy, one girl. She eats about 4500 calories a day, is 4’ 10” and 85 pounds. He eats about 1500 calories a day, is 5’ 3” and 135 pounds. No video games, no TV, and lots of activity for both. Tax calories and she could starve to death!
How ridiculous!
Suddenly it makes my garden, laying hens and beef cattle that much more valuable. Gawd thes people are idiots, but not as stupid as the people that vot for them.
Not about a better society. It is about “revenue enhancement.” People HAVE to eat and taxing calories is a sure fire revenue stream.
Wonder what they’re gonna do when we grow stuff at home, or buy a steer and have him butchered outside the normal stream of commerce? They going to require butchers to file paperwork on every bit meat they process? Going force gardeners to record their yield and who they share it with?
It is a low order of probability, but commies (”Progressives”) will never stop looking for more way to loot the general population.
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