"This morning (September 1, 2007) during one of Fox's Saturday morning 'business
news' shows, Forbes on Fox, Fox aired a segment declaring that, 'We need a 'fat
tax' to save America.' (That's fat tax, not flat tax, and note that the
seemingly ever-present Cavuto mark was missing from the chyron.) The premise was
that we should tax junk food in order to help pay for the increased medical
expenses generated by overweight and obese people. One of the participants, Bill
Baldwin, the Editor of Forbes magazine, seemed to agree, If you eat a
Nutri-Grain bar and get diabetes, you're jacking up my health insurance premium.
Yes, it should be taxed. There are a lot of things you do that impose taxes, ah,
impose costs on innocent people and they should be taxed. "
Like it or not, this is the same logic that has been used very loudly for taxing cigarettes. If the logic is sound for cigarettes, you would have to show me how that same logic cannot be extended to food. The only problem that I see is drawing the line between normal consumption and obese consumption - with tobacco there is no normal amount of consumption.
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