If in fact the Democrats manage to push through “universal health care” (or governmental health rationing by way of empowering already petty tyrannical bureaucrats with the power over life and death, as I’m hoping it will come to be known), one thing I’ve argued that we will almost certainly come to pass is increased taxation on whatever latest scapegoat the government identifies. It is okay to steal money, the rationale goes, so long as that money being stolen comes from bad people. And the government, bless its heart, will get to define who is and isn’t bad.
From David Harsanyi:
Sin taxes are normally levied on so-called vices like drinking, smoking and gambling. Now Congress is “studying” a proposal to legislate morality by taxing sugary beverages — which is to say it is “studying” whether such a tax would be politically feasible.
According to the executive director of the Center for “Science” in the Public Interest (CSPI), “Soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply, and it’s something government should discourage the consumption of.”
There is nothing “clear” about it. Soda can be harmful, it can be harmless and it is always tasty with a cheese-infused burrito — which we should affix with a massive “discouragement” tax if we’re going to be consistent about our gut-busting peccadilloes.
The selective tax would also pursue energy and fruit drinks, but not politically correct, high-everything beverages like Frappuccinos. No one wants a violent insurrection in the malls and trendy urban cores of America.
The CSPI also wants government to “pressure” food companies to produce healthier fare (because, God knows, there are barely any wholesome options available for the masses), dramatically raise taxes on alcohol (what fresh hell is this?), and dictate the level of sodium allowable in packaged and restaurant food.
The CSPI is the group that once laughably claimed 150,000 people perish yearly from salt intake (the “Forgotten Killer”), despite lack of any evidence and the ongoing debate regarding the real effect of sodium.
Beyond the health issues, you may want to ask yourself if it’s appropriate for government to use taxes as a tool for strategic social engineering.
Isn’t it counterproductive to pass one-size- fits-all punitive taxes that target the recreational ginger ale drinker along with the depraved Coca Cola abuser?
Or is it government’s job to provide transparency, allowing consumers to make smart decisions, or not, about what they ingest?
We already have set a precedent with cigarettes. The argument most often employed by sin tax proponents revolves around economic externalities — or the idea that everyone shouldn’t have to pay for the destructive habits of the few. (Though there is evidence that the societal cost of obesity is largely inflated, as it were.) I have sympathy for this argument. So perhaps all citizens can begin taking fiscal and moral responsible for their own behavior . . .
. . . I’m just kidding. That’s crazy talk.
But once we start rationing health care, externalities will only become more of an issue. If we collectively pay for health insurance, then what is to stop the majority of us from dictating to the minority what it can eat or drink?
What would stop Republicans — after they roar back to power in 2048 — from levying sin taxes on promiscuous behavior? After all, promiscuity burdens all taxpayers through sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and Lindsay Lohan.
If government continues to manage social behavior through taxation, why not give it a shot? It’s the moral thing to do.
Today, soda and junk food. Tomorrow, once the flood gates to such taxation is opened, whatever new or next “vice” the party in power can conjure to socially demonize.
It is selective. It is deprivation of choice by governmental coercion. It is the worst form of nannystatism.
President Obama can afford to pay the increased taxes on his cigarettes. After all, once he was elected to the Senate, his wife got a 260% raise. Plus, if Obama ever gets into a financial scrape, he can always promise to pump out another set of memoirs — and get a nice advance on the project.
The rest of us? Not so much. Remarkably, the progressive ideology that pretends to fight class warfare is directly responsibly for the kinds of policies that create such warfare.
Bad as all that is, though, let’s not lose sight of what I’ve long suggested is the natural endpoint of such thinking: that government, once it controls healthcare and is confronted with the fact that it needs to find ways to cut benefits to stay solvent and continue to overpay “management” bureaucrats, will have every motivation to tell you what to eat, how much to sleep, and when and for how long to exercise.
So really. Can national morning calisthenics be far behind?
And I’m not being hyperbolic, either: when many of us made the arguments that food taxes would naturally follow from the war being waged on cigarettes, we were dismissed with a wave of the hand as cranks engaging in slippery slope fallacies.
Well, welcome to your lube job, America. See you at the bottom of the slope.
So, the only people who drink soda make over $250,000 a year? I did not know that.
Soon, every American will have Michelle Obama’s arms, whether they want them or not. Meanwhile, though, does the soda thing make any sense? I mean, all that CO2 trapped in carbonated beverages reduces global warming.
Included in the govt’s “sugary beverages category”: Gatorade! F’ing Gatorade!
I’m about ready for the government to get the hell out of my house (all roooms!) and wallet. Go back to doing what you’re CONSTITUTIONALLY PERMITTED to do and not a damn thing more and leave me the hell alone to choose what I want.
Can I start the “Grumpy Old Man” party?
You see, that’s why I smoke Havana Cigars – ’cause they can’t tax ’em.
Hirsanyi, and yourself, are spot on.
he is correct in arguing that this is legislative, or bureaucratic, usurpation of power on a grand scale.
And the example of taxing promiscuity, which seen thru to its logical end is 20 times as debilitating as lard asses, ought to give a liberal pause.
this kind of power cudgel WILL come back to haunt them some day.
If there was a valid libertarian and GOP (infused with the ideals of classic liberalism) left, this would be a wonderful campaign ad.
There isn’t, so this stuff becomes reality.
meant to insert “movement” after libertarian there, but didnt.
apologies.
Lubing? Make mine manteca.
Let Obama’s dirty socialist voter whores pay these taxes I think. Not a damn thing our dipshit hungarian muppet president wants to tax and discourage what I can’t do without.
If they REALLY wanted to reduce the cost of health care, they’d outlaw the following:
Alcohol
All extramarital sex, especially male-on-male sodomy
Sports
Automobiles
Tobacco
After all of the plain evidence before our eyes for the advent of soft tyranny, Jeff mentioned the word that will make even normally sane people lose their marbles:
when many of us made the arguments that food taxes would naturally follow from the war being waged on cigarettes, we were dismissed with a wave of the hand as cranks engaging in slippery slope fallacies.
Jeff and the rest of us who thought this have been proven right. But the hysteria over tobacco is so ingrained that its mere mention unhinges vast numbers of minds. So before anyone turns this into a tobacco thread, please note the principle at work there is identical to what is now happening here. I promise in ten years you will be required to prove your caloric intake and the nature of your diet before getting prompt treatement at your local government-owned People’s Healthcare Monopoly. Failure to adhere to strict guidelines may result in… ah… a certain lassitude in delivery of medical care.
On the other hand, there will be a thriving black market in forgeries of healthcare documents. So we’ve got that going for us.
What I do think though is that anything what the CSPI wants to tax what ends up getting taxed should be ineligible to be purchased with food stamps. I just think that would be the right and proper dirty socialist way to do things. For teh peoples.
We also sometimes fail to notice (probably on account of its having been around so long) that our government has been meddling (which amounts to taxing, for crying out loud) in the price of sugar for decades, though the industry subsidies of various forms. Want cheap Brazilian ethanol? Oh hells no.
r
Actually, ‘feets, I think there are already some restrictions on what kind of foods you can buy with food stamps.
In any case, what really should happen is that instead of gleefully running with the latest press releases from the CSPI, reporters should get off their fat asses and do some reporting.
And the FDA should go after CSPI for making health claims.
And whatever state they’re in should go after them for practicing medicine without licenses.
Sdferr — want Coca Cola with cane sugar? Oh hells no. Gotta keep the corn subsidies up!
(And we simultaneously subsidize sugar growers.)
What’s funny is it’s not only the sugary drinks that make Michelle’s and Nacny’s asses so fat. It’s when they fluff up the pillows on the loveseat and lay there watching Oprah, Maury, Judge Judy, Brian Williams, Olbermann, and then chase it with a couple of Twinkies or a big cereal bowl of cookies and cream. That 6 hours a day of spreading their massive butt cheeks in front of the idiot-box is the problem. I wonder why they don’t tax TV watching. No I don’t.
OUTLAW!
If you’re on food stamps, there should be a special checkout aisle that you go through. And it should be 18″ wide. And if you can’t fit your big doughy hips through, no food for you.
Fat rich people are unhealthy.
Fat poor people are victims of white-people marketing.
I’m not sure Rob … it seems fairly unrestricted – WIC is different, but food stamps I think you can buy a fine array of Little Debbie products and also tasty beverages too
My local Mexican oriented grocery stores carry Mexican bottled Coke and Pepsi. Is this due to the type of sugar in the stuff? I.e., cane sugar in Mexican bottles and corn sugar in US?
Can you pay your cable bill with food stamps?
Yes, Sdferr, that’s the reason.
Yes, and there are also circumstances under which you can buy explosives with them. Alaska is looking better every day. Go global warming!
alp — if you’re on food stamps, do you have to pay your cable bill? Or did the pols never manage to get that passed?
That’s a great idea I think al cause most of the cooking shows are on cable.
Pablo, heh, the logic going, I need a moose to get me through the winter, so you need to buy me the bullets to kill her with.
I see, dimly, the fast food joint of the glorious therapeutic future… McPeople’s! We now feature over four items on our great menu! Now serving two varieties of brown rice, steamed or uncooked. Try our new buckwheat and green pea McHealthybrick, with a cool refreshing McWater, served in a recyclable cornstarch cup. Drink deeply and fast!
I think the O!stimulus will pay the poor people’s cable bill.
That will heal the economy some.
There seems to me that there will come a point when the Red Chinese will be more free than we are, and it will all be done for our own “good”.
I’m going to assume that the sin tax is aimed at reducing the consumption of the evil beverages, right?
So, the “goal” is to put Coca Cola and Pepsi and everyone out of business??? And their distributors. I’m sure McDonalds and gas stations would suffer as well. It’s GENIUS!!!!
Those democrats sure know how to put people out of work.
VolksVood, George.
“People don’t care how much you weigh, until they weigh how much you eat.”
Zig Ziglar
And, here in Michigan, you can even use your food stamps for snack food at the gas-n-sip.
Food stamps stimulate teh economy!!!
Classic Python –
“We’re going to tax… thingy.”
“Thingy?”
“You know – THINGY!”
“Poo-poos?”
“No no…”
Sdferr, let’s just cut to the chase… Soylent Green!
i don’t write as pretty as our host does, but i did post something about this horror this morning. and now i’m sorry i took out the bit about daily enforced calisthenics with dear leader on the tv you can never turn off. but i figured the little fangirls wouldn’t get it. =/
Food stamps are like in gold-card form now, right? Self-esteem should not suffer due to the need to have the government buy your Nutter-Butters and Newports.
Gatorade.
So when we breathe out we get taxed, when we drink soda we get taxed, when we drink alcohol we get taxed, when we smoke a freakin ciggerrette we get taxed, when we work we get taxed, and when we die they take half our shit. Beautiful, how about next they take the fillings out of my mouth when I am dead because they would pollute the Earth.
a fine scotch — how about ‘the get off my lawn you bastard kids party’? then i could join too.
There will be no certificates of good dietary habits.
Stool samples all around!
It been done already, though more to recoup the costs of the ZyklonB, than to get the mercury out of circulation.
Coke uses cane sugar in the US sometimes. Look for yellow caps.
Don’t forget your receipt!
George, #10, why didn’t you mention that Big Brother had a nice tan?
Stool samples all around!
Methinks you’ve met these kind of bureaucrats before. They not only turn the world into shit, they analyze it!
Is it just me, or is the movie “Brazil” looking more and more like a documentary?
Brazil. Atlas Shrugged. Brave New World. You frigging name it. For an agnostic age, we seem hell-bent on prove correct the principle of prophecy.
It’s so hard to peg what any particular tyranny is going to be like, Andrew. Tyranny is, by definition, whimsical and capricious.
For Mr. Pink, @ #40.
I disagree. The great tyrants are all depressingly alike. Banality of evil and all that.
No shit Andrew, why they all gotta be so damn bossy? Man, if I was a tyrant I wouldn’t give a fuck what anybody did long as I got mine, you know?
Tyrants that don’t give a shit become dead tyrants. There’s a cemetery full of Roman Emperors attesting to this fact. If you want to stay in the game, you can’t miss a dribble.
There is always a catch. If it was easy
they wouldn’t have to pay youyou wouldn’t have to kill so many people to do it.Quite so.
Incidentally, this post desperately needs a
“MAGRUBER
PEPSIPEPSIPEPSIPEPSI
PEPSIPEPSIPEPSIPEPSI
MAGRUBER!”
somewhere in there. So I’m adding one.
Louchette @ 41,
Your suggestion is duly noted and approved. I actually stole the idea from someone (not sure who) who was talking about what an impressive ticket Dick Cheney & Phil Gramm would be.
Strong on national defense and fiscal policy, care not at all about social policy (what you do behind closed doors is your business), and yell at Congress the way grumpy old men yell at kids (“Get offa my lawn, you whippersnappers!”)
That’s a ticket I could get behind.
You rang?
[…] . . and how the future is here. Now. Today, soda and junk food. Tomorrow, once the flood gates to such taxation is opened, whatever […]
OMG mcgehee i think i <3 you.please don’t tell jeff or blowhard, mkay? and yes i would not only jointhat partay, i would work the phones and probably even throw money at it…
argh! typos… spaces… PIMF, etc. =P
Does anybody (possibly Ric Locke) remember drinking Dr Pepper out of cans that looked like this, particularly VM#3? Damn that stuff tasted good back then.
Sdferr, we splurged on some Dublin Dr. Pepper Sunday. I’ve already consumed my half. Couldn’t tell you the last time I had a Dr. Pepper of any kind. maybe a long car trip.
[…] far it would be left alone. There’s also the nanny state aspect of such legislation. As Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom noted the other day: Bad as all that is, though, let’s not lose sight of what I’ve long […]
It would be just my luck to have an opportunity to get some Dublin Dr. Pepper, only to find that after all these years avoiding non-diet soft drinks, anything not artificially sweetened is now simply impossible for me to enjoy.
[…] NEXT UP: Dr Pepper forced by government to change its name to Dr Kevorkian …. […]