Posted on 12/16/2008 5:15:40 AM PST by shortstop
Today we get our first “obesity tax.”
In New York, the governor is going to wheel out his new budget, a document that is hoped to somehow, through miraculous means, balance the state books.
There is broad-based support for across-the-board cuts, but the teachers, government employees and welfare queens are screaming that their money is sacred, and it remains to be seen whether the governor will side with the taxpayers or the tax hogs.
That’s the big story.
But hidden away in the details is a small story that will come back to haunt New Yorkers and all Americans.
It’s the obesity tax.
If the governor’s budget is approved, there will be an immediate 15-percent tax on every can or bottle of non-diet soda. The rationale for the tax is that regular soda pop is bad for people – because it contains “empty calories” and makes them fat – and therefore its use must be discouraged by a targeted tax.
That is, of course, mostly horse crud.
This tax is being put soda pop because the state wants the many tens of millions of dollars that it would raise.
Which is fine. If it’s do or die time, and everybody’s feeling the pain, then fine, tax soda pop and dig us out of this budget hole.
But that rationale – even if it’s not honest – is devilish. Because it sets a precedent.
If New York levies an obesity tax on sugared soft drinks, it establishes the precedent that government can target tax food and drink which it considers bad for us.
All of a sudden, Big Brother gets to tell us what to eat. More specifially, Big Brother gets to lay a heavy tax on the staples of the American diet.
Put another way, you just lost the right to decide for yourself what you eat.
Because soda pop is just the beginning of things which could be scapegoated for obesity. For example, if they are looking at refrigerated bottled drinks with a lot of calories, I hope they don’t read the label on orange, apple and grape juice – any one of which are just as apt to make you fat as soda pop.
Ditto for milkshakes.
And cheese and ice cream and almost anything you can buy at a drive-thru. And kiss meat good bye, and eggs and whipped cream and peanut butter.
Same goes for your Honey-Nut Cheerios and Lucky Charms.
And if they had passed the law while we were doing through that lo-carb crazyness, bread and pasta and grains would have been targeted.
All of a sudden cherry pie is politically incorrect. The same goes for cheesecake, casserole, potatoes, roast, steak and shrimp cocktail. Restaurant dining would be frowned on – even my favorite, Chinese buffet – and bakeries would be declared public enemies.
The simple fact is that anything you eat can make you fat. There are no good foods or bad foods, there are only good habits and bad habits – and even then, it being your body and your food budget, it’s none of anybody’s business what or how much you eat.
The obesity tax must be resisted.
While the need to balance the New York budget is real, the obesity tax isn’t about money, it is about freedom. A regular tax wants to take away your money, this tax wants to take away your choice.
It wants to put the latest political correctness in charge of your family food budget, it wants to change the basic American budget, and in the name of “helping” people, it wants to suck off a share of their food budget.
The government will put heavy taxes on the foods people eat – and which have made Americans the biggest, strongest and healthiest people on Earth – and claim that it is doing those people a favor.
It enriches government, empowers the crazy environmental vegans, and kills freedom. It is a dream come true for the big government types.
But it is fundamentally un-American.
He wants to put a sin tax on Coca-Cola.
Next he’ll come after cheese burgers.
Then apple pie and ice cream.
And none of that is acceptable. If they take our money, we can make more money. If they take our freedom, we only get that back at the price of blood.
The obesity tax is a bad idea, because it is an attack on freedom.
The “sheeple” will never say “enough” because this is all done through incrementalism. These taxes creep up on people so they don’t notice. As far as their “freedom being offended”, most don’t realize what freedom is.
I work with Sheeple who would read this story and say, “I don’t care, I only drink diet soda.” They are so lacking in the skill of reasoning that they can’t see two steps down the road when something they DO eat or drink will either be banned or taxed. It makes me crazy.
Non-diet soda.
When it moves to non-light beer it’ll be revolution.
NY offends just about everything.
“I work with Sheeple who would read this story and say, “I don’t care, I only drink diet soda.”
...there is a definite “if it doesn’t affect me, who cares” attitude. Bread and circuses are supplied on a local level to keep people’s head in the sand. Government education doesn’t help.
RE The obesity tax must be resisted.
NYS is mostly government jobs, disability and service sector like grocery store clerks that service those other groups. Hillary promised to create jobs but generated only government jobs, federal spending, losing any private sector jobs. NYS already has socialized type health insurance, forced recycling and bottle deposit law. This seems pretty unimportant. I also notice the Asian immigrants in NYC that own businesses ignore the taxes and rules, make their own rules. Apparently the NYS socialist empire requires voluntary compliance.
I was just thinking, how is this anything new they’ve been doing it with cigarettes for for 30 years or more.
Once we have universal health care the gov’t will have a stake in how well you maintain yourself. You can expect all sorts of coercive taxation then.
Simply put, this isn’t an “obesity tax.” This is a tax on “unpopular foods.” If it were an obesity tax, it would tax fat people.
I wonder if there’s anything that big government leftist don’t think is fair game for additional taxes?
Mark
How many jobs will be lost in the soft drink industry when people are buying less of it? Unemployment will go up and then Paterson and the rest of the politicians will blame it on the Bush legacy.
More unintended consequences from the great unwashed.
Less people will drink soda so the city will bring in less sales tax from soda.
Just like cigarettes. Couple of billion dollar a year industry for people who are “pro choice” and choose to smoke and they take the choice away and along with it all the tax revenue.
We The People agree that the government has a vested interest in what we put into our bodies. This tax is just the logical extension of that.
When Upstate votes for its own state.
Put him in town square for flogging.
He is just retaliating at people who laughed at the skit that SNL did making fun of him.
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