Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Fat tax for America?
What would the United States come to if it were to place a tax on junk food or soda? Daniel Engber, author of the article "Let Them Drink Water!" explains how junk food is effecting the health of Americans. Although junk food is eaten by almost everyone in the world, people that are poor and obese are the one's who would be affected. Why is this? Well, people that are unable to afford junk food will not be able to eat it, and if there obese then they may find it very hard to eat anything else. But there are plenty of people that are rich and obese, so by implementing this tax they would not be affected. The idea of making America healthier by placing a tax on junk food, in this case, would not work. Another argument in this article is what if they placed a tax on an actual obese person? They would charge them by how many pounds they were over weight. In my opinion by doing this you are targeting specific people. That is just mean and rude. What if the people are happy being obese? You can't just place a tax on them because you want them to be healthier. It is important to make sure everyone in the world is healthy. But although we may feel by doing this we have to create a tax on certain food, may not work in that favor. Obesity is a problem in the world today, but by changing this we have to make the obese people want to change themselves for the better.
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I couldn’t agree more with what you have stated above. I too think the idea is a little too much. People know that junk food is bad for you, but really comparing what junk food can do to your health with cigarettes just seems a little out of hand. Also, by taxing just obese people is rude. People who are obese know that they are obese, there are so many things they can do to lose weight too, so to me it’s their choice. Taxing obese people more because they are obese is extremely wrong. I mean where do we draw the limits to this? I too understand the concept behind this fat tax, but like you said, we can’t really change people; obese people will have to want the change too. If tax was put on junk food, I personally don’t think I would have much of a problem to spend a little more to drink a soda, or grab a chocolate bar. Candy is delicious, and a little extra tax will not seem to faze me. Being healthy is extremely important but people too have to want to be healthy it’s not something a country can enforce on people.
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