Smokers pay less than non-smokers cradle to grave; alcoholics also are questionable in their net burden as many have to be dragged into a doctor’s office or rehab; gamblers rarely have effects on society generally except for those who build rackets based on the activity; the obese are simply those who eat too much for whatever reason and can’t be fitted into a niche among the pantheon beyond cultural traditions related to traditional celebrations or family influences.
In short, taxes are a poor form of behavior modification and motives of the modifiers are made highly suspect by this ongoing rearranging of targets.
What makes schemes such as this attractive is the notion that good ideas deserve funding and every tyrant knows that to make it work it must be mandatory; since no one has to smoke or drink booze or gamble but everyone has to eat, a tax on food will guarantee funding regardless of the outcomes.
Now comes the hard part and that is selling the idea that such a tax on a need is really only a tax on excess so look for exemptions for certain foods in the beginning with escalating taxes and broader coverage for those items taxed as the movement gathers steam.
You’d think that after being shafted so many times that more people would quit bending over to pick up the pieces.
>.You’d think that after being shafted so many times that more people would quit bending over to pick up the pieces.
History shows the opposite usually happens until some cataclysmic series of events causes change, usually at some very high cost and not always for the better.
We simply get used to it, as currently, our personal sphere shrinks and the public one increasingly encroaches upon ALL facets of our lives.