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Would additional taxes on junk food lead to starvation due to addiction?
According to scientists at Scripps Flordia say rats fed high-calorie junk food became addicted to the food and voluntarily starved when given healthy food instead of cupcakes.
If rats are not immune from junk food, people are definitely not.
Is junk food will addiction?
Is it a diabolical plan by the government to rid of fat people?
Well, if they don't want to pay a higher tax or, eat healthier food than tough luck to these people.
It's not like the government is forcing you to eat healthier... you're just being charged what you cost to society. If you don't like it tough luck get better eating habits
Actually, as noted before, adding extra futile and gratuitous taxes is a form of forcing people to eat healthier. What is with the cost to society?
I suppose you are completely for the cap and trade legislation. For those who drive a car, well, good, you pay more taxes because this is the charge what you own to society and the environment.
Adding taxes isn't forcing anyone to do anything... it just adds benefits to decision... it urges people to choose to eat healthy but if they don't want to they are free to do that.
And yeah, why should you expect to be able spew smog into the air not pay for that privilege.
Besides the healthy argument and good for society, why should the consumption of bad things be reduced? The healthy argument and harmful to society is a weak at best. There are many more people that would agree with my logic than yours. People enjoy junk food, and shouldn't be punished for the few.
There are many more people that would agree with my logic than yours.
You have no way of verifying that.
Those two arguments are not weak just because you say they are... you need to show why they are weak
Sure people enjoy junk food... but then they go to the hospital and cost the system money... thus the choices of the individual will harm the autonomy of others which is inherently flawed.
Really, no way of verifying that people would not have their junk food taxed.
Well, "more than 15 billion gallons of soda pop were sold in the U.S. in 2000. This works out to over one 12-ounce bottle per day for every man, woman and child." [1] And this is old data.
"Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza EACH DAY, or about 350 slices a second." [2]
This is just a few examples of what America eats that America would really not pay the extra tax.
Sure, it is a big assumption that all would be against the tax, but a great majority would oppose. Why would anyone impose more money on their desires and wants?
The best thing may be the most unpopular thing but is it the right thing. That is the discussion.
"Small taxes on soda do little to reduce soft drink consumption or prevent childhood obesity, but larger levies probably would, according to new research." [1]
5 percent tax will not curb consumption or prevent childhood obesity.
"However, if the taxes were more like 18 cents on the dollar, Sturm calculated it would make a significant difference." [1] The larger the levies are, the bigger disincentive that soda companies have to stay in business. 18 cents are getting close to the levels of sin tax on cigarettes or alcohol in some states.
To the contrary, the proposed tax increase on soda and junk food of 5% will not curb consumption, and the only way that will is high taxes such as 18% or more.
I highly doubt that many would die as a result of withdrawal from a junk food addiction. I change my eating habits every few weeks - from junk food to healthy food, back and forth over and over again. I'll go a few weeks eating chips and ice cream (getting little exercise), then a few weeks eating vegetables, fish, fruit, etc. and an abundance of both exercise and water. I never feel a need to eat the junk food during my 'switch'. Also, I am not yet dead and hope not to be for at least three or four decades more.
People depend alot on junk food... and it kind of makes me sick. D`:
I think a tax would discourage people from eating unhealthy and actually attempting to correct their bad habits.
MY friend`s family is all obese, and they blame the stuff like preservatives and stuff in food like meat, etc... But if you look at their eating habits, two bags of chips a day, ice cream at mid night, they eat frozen dinners or pre made crap, etc...
When I go over there, For a whole week, I eat just one bag of chips, and cook my own food. They look at me like I`m insane.
Yet instead of blaming their bad habits, they blame the food industry.
ut government is retarded, so when it gets big, you just have one big retard that does retarded things. It's like Lenny. You can't fight that dude, so he just does whatever the fuck he wants. Sure, he'll eventually get shot by the very person that protects him, but not until after he's done so much damage.
But government is retarded, so when it gets big, you just have one big retard that does retarded things. It's like Lenny. You can't fight that dude, so he just does whatever the fuck he wants. Sure, he'll eventually get shot by the very person that protects him, but not until after he's done so much damage.
I'll go a few weeks eating chips and ice cream (getting little exercise), then a few weeks eating vegetables, fish, fruit, etc. and an abundance of both exercise and water. I never feel a need to eat the junk food during my 'switch'. Also, I am not yet dead and hope not to be for at least three or four decades more.
Well first, junk food isn't that addictive. We all eat it, sure, but if it disappeared we wouldn't just not eat if we had the means to get healthy food.
I guess I should just point out that taxing certain kinds of vices is tyrannical.
But putting that aside, junk food is usually MUCH cheaper than healthy food. Poor people tend to eat junk food more because that's all they can afford. If you tax junk food, you're basically taxing the poor.
But government is retarded, so when it gets big, you just have one big retard that does retarded things. It's like Lenny. You can't fight that dude, so he just does whatever the fuck he wants. Sure, he'll eventually get shot by the very person that protects him, but not until after he's done so much damage. (like banning fast food restaurants from poor neighborhoods.)
God, liberals can be so stupid. I mean, Conservatives do bad things, no doubt, but it's not Double-Think type shit. Liberals say they want to help the poor, yet they tax everything the poor does (smoke, eat, drink).
1st) The reason why a burger is cheaper than a salad has to do with government subsidies. The whole agriculture subsidation needs to be reworked, but until then we are going to get meat and grain that is artificially cheaper than vegitables.
2nd) The idea behind taxing junk food is that it hurts peoples helath. When someones health gets bad they become a burden on society and they cannot produce as much. Junk food costs us all because when more people are unhealthy, more needs to be spent on medical bills, and the cost of insurance increases.
3rd) I agree that taxing junk food would tend to affect the poor more, but the idea is not to tax them for the sake of getting money from them (as your argument implys), but instead to decrease demand for unhealthy foods. This is simple economics: as price goes up, demand for a good decreases, and the demand for its substitutes (healthier food, in this case) increases.
1. you're getting meat and grain mixed up with junk food. Candy is junk food, and a grilled chicken sandwich is healthy...
2. Ignoring that people have freedom of choice and government should not be interfering with that choice. It's attitudes like that that keeps drugs, prostitution, and gambling illegal.
3. This assuming that the substitutes are adequate. How much do you need to tax junk food before it truly is more expensive than healthy food? Did you know I could go to Taco Bell and get a shit load of food for less than 5 dollars? Tax the shit out of it, I'll have to pay more, but not as much as for a fruit salad of the same quantity(which is expensive for some reason; I love fruit salads).
I mean, one taco (which is good enough for a meal) is less than a dollar. holy cock shit.
But even so, if you increase the price past healthy foods, and people start buying healthy foods, they are still paying MORE. It is always a tax on the poor when you do sin tax. Rich people don't give a fuck, and the Middle Class have more to worry about losing their jobs to Affirmative Action or getting paid less due to compensation for minimum wage workers that they don't have time to worry about the fact that everything they do is being taxed more.
It's poor people, who don't have a lot of money by the way, that get hit the hardest by sin tax. "zomg, it's healthier", like they give a fuck. This is America, not Russia. People choose what they do to themselves, not the government.
1. You name an exception as if it's the rule. Generally speaking junk food is cheaper in part because of government subsidies.
2. This is a seperate issue. Certainly where government should and shouldn't legislate are concerns, however I am trying to show you the logic behind these taxes.
3. Wrong. That's about what I can say to this. Increased price will almost always result in a decrease of demand. This is a principle that almost all of economic theory is based on. Increasing the price of soda, for example, would lead more people to choose water instead. An decrese in price results in a decrease in demand which means less consumption...that's simple.
Your final argument is that because poor people don't care about making healthy eating choices, the government shouldn't care either. I would argue the exact opposite. Because the market forces poor people into a situation where they have to choose food that will be damaging to their health (and possibly also economic well being in the long run if they have to pay for increased medical expenses), the government does need to step in and give people incentives to choose healthier food.
You also assume that the money being taken just disappears. If that money were then put to good use, the poor would still end up benefitting from the whole situation.
Okay, call me a communist because I am concerned about people's health. You said it yourself, you can buy a shitload of burritos for 5 dollars. With that in mind we can sit back while we become the country with the most fatasses, or we can fucking do something about it.
Increased price will almost always result in a decrease of demand. This is a principle that almost all of economic theory is based on. Increasing the price of soda, for example, would lead more people to choose water instead. An decrease in price results in a decrease in demand which means less consumption...that's simple.
It is not as simple as you may think. In economics, elasticity is the ratio of the percent change in one variable to the percent change in another variable.
Goods with a small Price Elasticity of Demand (less than one) are said to be inelastic; changes in price do not significantly affect demand and consumers are not sensitive to price changes. Soda and junk food has generally fallen into this category.
Goods with large Price Elasticity of Demand (greater than one) are said to be elastic: even a slight change in price may cause a dramatic change in demand and consumers are very sensitive to price changes.
Well yes, price elasticity is important, however contrary to what you imply with soda, studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between price and people's weight.
1. Or, what i'm pointing out is that there is no rule. Meat can be used for either healthy or non-healthy purposes. And candy is a pretty general junk food, not some "exception".
2. It's government interference with personal choice.
3. increasing the price of soda will only cause more incentive to buy water if it truly passes the boundaries for how much people are willing to pay. I don't drink soda, that helps me health wise and financially, but I see people continuing to buy soda no matter how expensive it gets. Now, in this case, soda is already more expensive than water (depending on where you are getting it) so poor people already are paying more with or without taxes. But soda provides people with things that water doesn't. That's why they buy it in the first place. It goes pass simple economics, it gets into elasticity of demand. Soda is pretty borderline. But, for sake of argument, soda itself is already expensive.
And it's not that poor people don't care, it's that they CAN'T AFFORD IT. Junk food is cheap as fuck, and poor people don't have a lot of money. So, they feed themselves with cheap food. If you increase the price of junk food surpassing healthy food, you are FORCING poor people to pay more for food, be it healthy or non-healthy. It's double-think. You say you wanna help the poor, yet you support legislation that will take away their money.
And overall, it's not that much about Communism, it's about Government Interference with our personal lives. Big Brother decides what's good for us because apparently we're not adult enough to make decisions on our own. Once again, how do you expect matters of personal choice to fall into the hands of the people if this is what you believe the government should be doing?
1. Vegitables tend to be healthier than meat and grain, true or false? The high fructose corn syrup used in most junk food also comes from heavily subsidized corn (which also happens to be a vegitable, but you're hopefully smart enough to realize my point still stands).
2. Once again, seperate debate on the role government should play in people's lives. To be quite honest I'm on the fence on this one.
3. Yes, price elasticity is important to consider, however studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between the price of unhealthy soft drinks and weight. Obviously other studies need to be done to test how taxes affect consumption of other goods, however, what we should not do is call them "tyranical pc bullshit".
1. Your point is that eating broccoli is healthier than eating a hamburger? sure. that still doesn't create this "rule" that you speak of.
2. okay
3. as i stated before, soda is already more expensive than water, so it's more of a vanity than an only means (like taco bell vs. green markets).
but the idea that government should force Americans to eat healthy is the biproduct of political correctness. And the idea that government will try to make it harder for Americans to get their hands on what they want (be it cigarettes, marijuana, prostitutes, or junk food) is tyrannical. When government tries to limit choice based on the idea that it's for the greater good, it's tyrannical and it's PC. whether it's bullshit, i guess, is a matter of opinion.
1. Well not rule, but what I'm saying is that subsidies have fucked up the food system, and one of the effects has been less healthy food.
3. Actually soda isn't always more expensive then water. Next time you go to a fast food place, ask for a bottle of water instead of the large soda that comes with your meal, and I bet you have to pay extra. Yes, you can get just a cup for free water at most places, but people are constantly buying bottled water which costs about the same as a bottle of coke. In other words: if we made soda more expensive more people would choose water.
1. because meat and grain are unhealthy... i don't see where you're going with this.
3. you're right, depending on where people buy their drinks water could actually be more expensive. Either way, though, if poor people buy soda because it's cheaper and you raise taxes on soda, poor people will HAVE TO pay more.
1. Forget it...my point was that subsidies are causing junk food to be cheaper, but honestly it's fairly irrelevant to the debate.
3. In America there is an inverse relationship between wealth and weight. This is unheard of in the history of humanity. On the one hand it shows how far we've progressed, that even the poor consume too much, and on the other it shows that our food system is set up in a way that unhealthy food is the easiest to get. The fact that poor people tend to be overweight shows that they can afford to consume less. When it comes to soda, a cup of water is usually free, and if soda is expensive, more people might op for that choice.
The overall point of the tax is to give a competitive advantage to companies that provide healthy food. Unhealthy food costs people in the long run, even if it may be cheaper to buy now: people don't always think about this when they are making purchasing decisions (a.k.a. the short run seems more important) and therefore it makes sense to influence people to make healthier choices.
3. Yes, obviously with our capitalist system it seems that we have TOO many resources that people use at their dispense. In effect, we've become spoiled and reckless, in ways. But if the solution to this is to have government try and force us to live a certain lifestyle just because they find it to be the "greater good" I prefer to be spoiled and reckless. Government should not make choices for us; they are not parents. Plus, human beings learning from their own mistakes is how we adapt and evolve. It's what creates innovation. If the government decides that we can't make decisions for ourselves, human beings can never progress. Even the compassionate way, in the end, is to let people eat what they want. Free country... right?
As for competitive advantage, that's a whole different kind of government interference. Sure, the liberal socialist mentality is that you're leveling the playing field, but really, it's just tilting the playing field so that the shitty team can win. Fast food and junk food appeals more to the poor; elitist and healthy food appeals more to the rich (and high brow liberals). I eat both (depending on what's in my pocket and what's available). Competition lies in the ability of the company to get their shit out there, not big brother government pushing the other kids around so his little brother can get all of his schoolmate's ice cream.
3. Now you've gotten right back to argument 2 which we agreed was the separate issue of whether government should or shouldn't interfere, not the issue of whether interference would be an effective way to achieve the goal of making people eat healthier.
I understand where you're coming from, and in a lot of cases I'd agree that government should stay out of people's lives, however, I also understand that our decisions are not made in a bubble, and when a large portion of the population is unhealthy it costs the society as a whole a shit load of money. This is probably why health care costs have sky rocketed in this country.
If it makes you feel better about the whole thing, think about it as a tax on companies that are polluting people's bodies... they cost us in the long run so they should be charged for it.
As for your final comments about what appeals to "high brow elitists"... I find it sorta funny (and very hypocritical) that you hate to be stereotyped and yet are always so quick to stereotype other groups. Believing broad generalizations about groups of people is what intellectually lazy people do because they want the world to be black and white, and make sense to them. Once you start using words like "elitists" and "liberals" I'm going to stop taking your argument seriously, just like you would disregard mine if I refereed to people as "right wing nut jobs".
So you agree that the tax would be effective at making us healthier, but you just don't think that the government should implement it, because it's not their place to tell us what we should and shouldn't eat?
No... I don't agree. I mean, if you put an extremely heavy tax that would make all junk food more expensive than all healthy food, sure. but the sin tax that we experience already (with other shit) probably won't do that.
Given, the government does do that, they might as well just ban it... right?
I agree that a heavy tax would cause junk food more expensive than healthy food, that is the essence of the debate, but the government will not ban junk food because they love the tax money. That is why the government wants tax money because if they don't tax or ban, no additional tax money and smaller government,
So now we resort to the slippery slope argument, don't we?
Well if they're going to use a proven economic method of decreasing consumption of a product which we know to be harmful to both individuals and society as a whole (through increased medical costs), then the government might as well force us at gunpoint to eat government chosen food at persribed times of day...it's tyranny I tell you! It's like socialism, facism, communism, and monarchism all roled into one package!
wait a minute, you rewrote my words to make it sound like it's a proven economic method and that it's better for society?
"FOR THE GREATER GOOD!" Hell, at least Ingsoc admitted that it's just for power.
But anyway, yes, it's tyranny. Big brother government is making it harder for us to do something that we want. You can't say government isn't forcing us to do anything by limiting our access, because that's exactly what they're doing. At least admit that you believe that human beings aren't smart or responsible enough to make decisions for themselves.
Regardless of whether you said it was, I clearly showed the prices affect consumption in fairly predictable ways.
Listen: you need to stop seeing people's positions in such black and white terms because it blinds you to understanding what they are actually saying. You know my stance that most drugs should be decriminalized, so why would you assume that I want to make junk food illegal? What is the point of having this debate if you are only going to fight straw man arguments?
Let me make it clear exactly what I am saying so there is no more confusion: certain substances, because they pose some danger to people need to be regulated. How much they should be regulated depends on both the danger and the effectiveness of the regulation. A small increase on taxes for foods that are detrimental to people's health is both reasonable and effective at curbing demand for the products. Consumers will not suffer because they will be able to substitute different healthier products for those that are taxed. The companies supplying these healthier products will benefit, and those that aren't will need to change their business in a way that allows them to be profitable, possibly by producing more healthy products.
I don't give two shits what some other debater said: would you like it if I started using JakeJ's arguments as evidence that your position is wrong on certain issues?
Your final paragraph goes right back to what I said about viewing the world in black and white. A small tax on unhealthy food isn't tyrannical and is not necessarily going to lead down some slippery slope in which the government makes all out decisions for us. The only person who is underestimating human intelligence is you because you don't think that we can use our own judgment to decide how much government interference is the right amount: either we want the government to make all our decisions for us (your version of my side) or we have complete freedom to choose anything we want (I know this isn't what you actually believe, but it's what your argument sounds like). I promise you that people are smart enough to figure out how much government is the right amount, but people like you who are going to scream that the sky is falling every time we impose one little tax are fucking up the ability for people to have reasoned debates about these issues.
It's not about what people think is right at the time, they change their minds ALL the time. You can see it with the Reagan years and the Conservative Clinton years, then the big switcharoo to Obama, and now everyone hates Obama. People, in general, just want someone to blame.
And you're acting like that the Invisible Hand theory, but this time in politics, somehow makes it right for Big Brother to regulate what we enjoy. I don't care if it's healthy or not, that's up for individuals to decide. It's alright if government forces companies to display health content, but to actually try and make it more difficult for people to buy the product, that's interference. A big fuckin' wall in the way of what we want. All of a sudden, government thinks that I and millions of other Americans are too stupid to think about long term health consequences but we will instead think with our wallets. O wait, you just said they're smart enough to decide if government is going too far...
But in the name of freedom, let's pretend that that doesn't matter. You've stated your points clearly:
1. More tax on products that are unhealthy in order to benefit society, and as you said "certain substances, because they pose some danger to people need to be regulated".
2. Increase demand for healthy alternatives, thus helping the substitutes make more money (once again, tilting the playing field so the shitty team can win).
My direct response, in order to avoid confusion:
1. Let individuals, since even yourself said that they are smart, decide for themselves what is right for themselves.
2. Seems wrong for government to oppress certain businesses in order to help others.
