Sin taxes don’t lead to healthier choices
You can tax people into poverty. But you sure as heck can’t tax people into good health.
Of course, the Nanny State is trying anyway with taxes on salt, fat and sugar, supposedly to force people to eat and drink better and lose weight.
Yeah, right.
This is really about raising cash, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It sure as heck isn’t about health, because every single study I’ve ever seen on this shows that these taxes DON’T WORK!
When soda is taxed, for example, some people will just pay more for soda. Others will drink less soda, but one new study shows they don’t swap their cola for carrot sticks.
Nope, they just replace the empty calories in soda with different empty calories — cheaper, untaxed empty calories, according to the study in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
So what next? Tax those calories, too? You bet they will… and then it becomes a game of whack-a-mole. Or maybe tax-a-mole — because the powers-that-be would have to keep taxing the “next bad thing” people turn to for cheap snacks.
But forget whether or not this even works, because there’s a much bigger problem here — and that’s the very idea that the government should be deciding what you should eat and drink, and PUNISHING you for making the wrong choices.
Sure, today it’s soda, which we can all agree is garbage.
But mark my words: If they get away with this today, then tomorrow it’ll be butter, cheese, milk, steak and all the GOOD foods they’re already trying to stop you from eating.
That’s why it’s critical to stand up for your right to eat and drink what you want now — and when you hear about a “sin” tax of any kind coming to your community, speak up pronto.
The time to stop this is NOW — because if you wait, it’ll be too late.
You can tax people into poverty. But you sure as heck can’t tax people into good health.
Of course, the Nanny State is trying anyway with taxes on salt, fat and sugar, supposedly to force people to eat and drink better and lose weight.
Yeah, right.
This is really about raising cash, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It sure as heck isn’t about health, because every single study I’ve ever seen on this shows that these taxes DON’T WORK!
When soda is taxed, for example, some people will just pay more for soda. Others will drink less soda, but one new study shows they don’t swap their cola for carrot sticks.
Nope, they just replace the empty calories in soda with different empty calories — cheaper, untaxed empty calories, according to the study in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
So what next? Tax those calories, too? You bet they will… and then it becomes a game of whack-a-mole. Or maybe tax-a-mole — because the powers-that-be would have to keep taxing the “next bad thing” people turn to for cheap snacks.
But forget whether or not this even works, because there’s a much bigger problem here — and that’s the very idea that the government should be deciding what you should eat and drink, and PUNISHING you for making the wrong choices.
Sure, today it’s soda, which we can all agree is garbage.
But mark my words: If they get away with this today, then tomorrow it’ll be butter, cheese, milk, steak and all the GOOD foods they’re already trying to stop you from eating.
That’s why it’s critical to stand up for your right to eat and drink what you want now — and when you hear about a “sin” tax of any kind coming to your community, speak up pronto.
The time to stop this is NOW — because if you wait, it’ll be too late.
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