Academics and Obama with their heads up their asses
This is of course nothing new. But the following para from a NYT article about putting a special tax on soda really got me:
“What you want,” says Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, “is to reverse the fact that healthy food is too expensive and unhealthy food is too cheap, and the soda tax is a start. Unless food marketing changes, it’s hard to believe that anything else can work.”
So - those who cant afford expensive food right now buy the cheaper, less healthy, stuff, and Yale's solution is to raise the price so that whole foods is the same price as Save-A-Lot? WTF. So with one hand we offer food stamps which are only accepted at no frills supermarkets and on the other hand we tax the less-healthy and more processed foods that those supermarkets offer. Seems like a great way to help people out. It is favored by the current administration.
Obviously, the argument is that the tax will cause buyers to substitute more healthy alternatives instead of soda - but I am not so sure about that. Also, this is the damn USA - when did we start legislating what people could eat? What really irks me is that as someone who is in shape and loves soda, I would get taxed. But alternatively, I could be a lazy fat lover of fruit punch, tang, and pocari sweat and not get taxed a damn bit. But it would be illegal to tax fat people (though much more equitable), not to mention political suicide, not to mention most politicians are out of shape, so instead the plan is to tax foods that can possibly contribute to obesity. We might as well start taxing the candy isle, frozen foods isle and pastry shop of every supermarket: that would be a much more effective means of achieving this goal.
The only link between soda and obesity is that soda has calories in it. You know what else has calories in it? Every damn food on the planet. Except celery, which has so few calories it takes more energy to eat it than you get out. We should tax everything but celery. Makes sense to me.
Want to be really scared? This is the last line of the article:
"It may be time to try something a little more forceful."
“What you want,” says Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, “is to reverse the fact that healthy food is too expensive and unhealthy food is too cheap, and the soda tax is a start. Unless food marketing changes, it’s hard to believe that anything else can work.”
So - those who cant afford expensive food right now buy the cheaper, less healthy, stuff, and Yale's solution is to raise the price so that whole foods is the same price as Save-A-Lot? WTF. So with one hand we offer food stamps which are only accepted at no frills supermarkets and on the other hand we tax the less-healthy and more processed foods that those supermarkets offer. Seems like a great way to help people out. It is favored by the current administration.
Obviously, the argument is that the tax will cause buyers to substitute more healthy alternatives instead of soda - but I am not so sure about that. Also, this is the damn USA - when did we start legislating what people could eat? What really irks me is that as someone who is in shape and loves soda, I would get taxed. But alternatively, I could be a lazy fat lover of fruit punch, tang, and pocari sweat and not get taxed a damn bit. But it would be illegal to tax fat people (though much more equitable), not to mention political suicide, not to mention most politicians are out of shape, so instead the plan is to tax foods that can possibly contribute to obesity. We might as well start taxing the candy isle, frozen foods isle and pastry shop of every supermarket: that would be a much more effective means of achieving this goal.
The only link between soda and obesity is that soda has calories in it. You know what else has calories in it? Every damn food on the planet. Except celery, which has so few calories it takes more energy to eat it than you get out. We should tax everything but celery. Makes sense to me.
Want to be really scared? This is the last line of the article:
"It may be time to try something a little more forceful."
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