Let me know your opinion in the comments
No, I think we should de-subsidize the meat industry, expand plant based industries, make good food freely available to all, and make the levels of sugar we see illegal.
People eat healthier when good food is availablr to them. It’s just overpriced. Making the cheaper food more expensive will just mean people will eat less food. We need to make good food convienient and affordable (or free, preferably)
Edit: this came off meaner in tone than intended. I disagree with your solution and think it won’t work but understand your viewpoint
No that’s a fair point you’re making, I could get behind that. Problem is, given the set up cost, there’s not much will of the government to enact such a plan, I would’ve thought.
No. I believe they should impose higher taxes on the rich, wealthy, and corporations.
Quit having poor people foot the bill for the goddam rich people’s handouts.
Like a windfall tax basically?
When a corporation has “record profits” - on that money.
When a rich guy pays himself 50K a year to avoid taxes but has 4 billion in assets - on those assets.
And we need to do some serious digging in ALL the offshore tax havens - tax all of them at 90%
Ok. Thanks for sharing your view.
“Curb”, not “curve”.
lol schoolboy error! Thanks for catching
This has a long history under the term ‘sin tax’. I.e. taxing vices (sins) that no one needs for survival to discourage their use. Traditionally referring to things like alcohol and tobacco, but I’ve seen applied to movie tickets and even sugar. The fact that sugar kind of functions as food does make it a bit more complicated.
Interesting. May I ask in what way does it being food cause complications? I’m intrigued now
Most of the “sins” are luxuries you can do without, and will probably be better off. Food is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. Sugar is a terrible food, but it’s often a large part of the cheapest (most affordable) food items available. Taxing sugar puts an extra burden on those who can least afford it.
While they would be better off eating food without sugar, the real option might be not eating at all.
That’s like saying people will stop driving pickups if you increased the price of gas over $4 a gallon.
If you track sales of new gas guzzlers vs economy cars over time, there is a clear correlation with the price of gas. It’s just not as effective as you might think. $4/gal isn’t the point where most people would get something more efficient. You’d probably need to get up to around $10 for there to be a significant cliff.
We’ve seen in work with cigarettes too
How exactly? Please elaborate
What a capitalistic take on health concern…
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, easy to understand, and wrong.
Econ 101 doesn’t work in economics, how is it going to make us healthy?
Yes.
So we should tax everything other than water and soylent?
That’s your premise.
Alternatively, who gets to decide what’s “bad for you”?
Depends on if the taxes pay for universal healthcare or not. But who needs to eat unhealthy food when the rich are available to eat.
No. These foods are very cheap and therefore disproportionately consumed by lower-income people. This is effectively another tax on the poor.
Instead, tax the profits of companies that make billions of dollars by selling us poison disguised as food; charge them to make it, don’t charge us to buy it. Tax the profits of the entire company, not the products, or they’ll simply raise the price of the products and achieve the same result.
Only when it’s more profitable to feed us healthy food will we be fed healthy food.
Tax the profits of the entire company, not the products, or they’ll simply raise the price of the products and achieve the same result.
What’s the difference? If you tax the profits, companies will have to either increase the price to make up for the lost margin, or stop selling the product, and focus on higher-margin products.
The problem with “good food” is not the cost to make it. It’s distribution and shelf-life. If processed food were taxed in the same way as alcohol or cigarettes, you can bet that the industry will very quickly find a way to make “whole foods” more accessible.
I think taxes like this are regressive as they target the individuals buying them, who usually have less money, than the companies manufacturing them who have much much more wealth.
In the US, there are some areas where it is flat out difficult to purchase produce that isn’t somewhat rotting at an affordable price. This is a far greater drive to bring people to buy processed and unhealthy foods than the temptation of a sweet or fatty treat.
Taxing the “bad thing” is a myopic solution. Improving access to and lowering the cost of the “good thing” is a far more progressive solution.
Also, this isn’t an unpopular opinion post, this is more of a question asking for potentially unpopular opinions, probably not right for this community.
I think before they start taxing us for what little pleasures we can still have, they should tax the rich so we can afford to exist.
To an extent yes and they already do that for sweets for example.
Reportedly, the sugar tax has worked quite well in the UK (though the details could be improved, don’t let companies pump everything full of sweeteners until the drinks are sweeter than before despite lower sugar content). Fat isn’t categorically unhealthy like sugar is, so that wouldn’t make sense, and AFAIK salt has no relationship at all with obesity.
Taxes on sugar is how you start a revolution
