YES! Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for people's bad habits.
52%
NO! If people want to eat unhealthily it's their choice.
48%
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Thom's Blog Is On the Move
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I dont want the government to tell me what and how much to eat.
I believe that sugar especially white sugar is a no no, but who wants the government telling them how much they can eat. NO, you cant eat that berry pie because it has 1 more gram of sugar in it than the governmnet allows. RIIIIIGHT !
Sorry Thom, you really miss-constructed this issue.
No one will want the government to "tell us what we can and can't have", by framing your view as an attempt by the government to discourage or encourage behavior is not good for this debate and not the best understanding of this idea.
What Republicans and Conservatives should be able to get behind is the idea of Accountability and Responsibility on part of the Individuals and companies to account for the impact of their choices. Everything we do or take into our bodies should be taxed to cover the real cost to society. People should be free to live their lives as they want, but it is perfectly reasonable to add a tax to those goods that are known to cause huge medical or environmental concerns. We should be willing to get enough people and resources we need to handle every "issue" we have in our country and pass the costs off to those that participate in it. This works with well for "Companies that pollute and/or evade taxes": All we need is to put enough regulators on the bill to cover the problem and pass the full cost off to the offending companies.
Now a vast majority of causal connections are hard to establish, but we do not need to be exact, we make our best-informed decision on what the costs are and what amount of taxes we need to introduce and the important part is that we do not add a penny more than what is necessary. Ideally, we should be able to let the people that live responsibly pay a very minimum tax.
I would think it would be very interesting to know what that would look like. And another route should be the subsidizing of healthy activities and foods.
I believe in personal freedoms, that is the American way. In a world where people vote against their own interests, this is yet another disturbing way to interfere in people's personal lives.
His point is really just to tax the source of problems to take care of it.