Researchers Propose Calorie Tax

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.

They should tax cigarettes too, because that will surely make people stop smoking, lower our healthcare costs, etc....

Tax alcohol too, because that will reduce rates of alcholism, decrease DWI, lower our healthcare costs, etc....

Oh yeah, tax gasoline because it will lower pollution, force development of more effecient cars, reduce our reliance on OPEC, etc...

They should tax hotel rooms because...

They should tax telephone service because...

They should tax electricity because...

/sarcasm

Researchers Propose Calorie Tax

When did calories become a vice like cigarettes or alcohol?
When the federal government says it is. Anything done to excess is a vice by definition, otherwise not; even cigarettes. Common sense.

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.
No one ever said that an overbearing government is internally consistent or rational. That is precisely why the government that governs least governs best.

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.

That is arguable. I am always reminded of context, as with everything else :
Miss [Florence] King on smoking: "It's this: I think suicide qua suicide is weak and shameful, but maybe, if I just keep smoking, I can hasten my exit from this Walpurgisnacht called America and escape the mephitic cultural collapse that Nice-Nelly conservatism is powerless to stop.

"This is probably wishful thinking in view of my family's medical history, but it points up another benefit of cigarettes we no longer hear about: consolation. Even the word is gone from the language now, but it was what came through in World War II newsreels showing weary soldiers and refugees lighting up. In their most despairing moments a cigarette was all they had, and increasingly I feel the same way."

The fundamental underlying issue is choice --- and the personal responsibility necessary to make the concept function in s free society. Unfortunately, these were decoupled decades ago, which created a government with no limits to intrusion into personal behavior. Identical to sharia law.

Once Big Brother grabbed the "health" issue away from individuals, it could justify unlimited authority to control those individuals, albeit selectively.
"Lifestyle" choices no longer pay a price for egregious lapses in judgment. Gays and other perverts get a free ride.
Parasites living entirely on the tax paid by working Americans get a perpetual free ride.

The ordinary normal citizen does not.

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