4 ms·
A good argument, and a reasonable one, but we do have game, TV, and social media companies doing whatever they can to ensure a sedentary life of staring at scre
by PostOnce 9y ago
A good argument, and a reasonable one, but we do have game, TV, and social media companies doing whatever they can to ensure a sedentary life of staring at screens, since the more you sit and stare (and develop mental and physical health problems) the more ads or iaps they can feed you and profit from. No one suggest we tax sitting or screen time.
I'll concede sun and salt are in a different category, but it seems morally wrong to tax my sugar because someone else can't moderate their own intake. Why is it our position anyway, to tell someone what they can't do if it doesn't affect us? If we tax sugar, alcohol, salt, etc, then the man who has these each in moderation, once a month or whatever, is now paying higher taxes not on one product, but across the board, where none of it harms him because he partakes rarely of any one category.
- Retric 9y agoIf you eat less than the average amount of sugar then a sugar tax is equivalent to giving you money by reducing your tax burden at the expense of others.
- PostOnce 9y agoThat's true, but limiting someone else's freedom to save yourself some money seems to me to be pretty evil. -- I guess what you said doesn't conflict with that idea.
- megablast 9y agoWe are not telling someone what they can’t do, why do people keep saying that? I like a sugary drink as well, and I am happy for everyone including myself to pay more if it imporoves health.
- PostOnce 9y agoTax at some point is so burdensome as to be an effective ban. If a can of Coke is $250 then you're not really free to drink it. It's been done with cigarettes.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoAustralia already has some of the highest taxes on cigarettes. They have nationalized healthcare also, so a sugar tax can be seen more as reducing society healthcare costs, which are born by everyone more equally, rather than anything else. So the sugar tax can lower your taxes even if you don’t impuslively eat sugar, by lowering your burden in supporting nationalized healthcare (the goal behind the cigarette tax as well). If this was America where much of the healthcare wasn’t socialized and it was every poor schlob for themselves, then you might have a point.