This may be hard to believe, but here is a tax that might have slipped past the radar screens of Wisconsin officials who love to tax and spend: the fat tax.
A recent New England Journal of Medicine study received a great deal of media attention when it asserted that obesity can be caused by hanging around with other obese people. Another study, this one by Johns Hopkins University predicts 75 percent of adults in the United States will be obese or overweight by 2015.
Viewed as a serious health crisis, what is the liberal answer to obesity and most societal problems? Raise taxes.
Yale University professor Kelly Brownell first offered the idea of a fat tax in 1994 suggesting a tax in the range of seven to 10 percent on certain unhealthy items like soft drinks or fatty foods to discourage people from eating poorly. Brownell also proposed going the opposite direction, with lower taxes on fatty foods. Brownell theorized that more money would be brought in that could be used for public health nutrition programs.
The nanny state spread as Brownell’s philosophy caught on with states such as Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington creating fat taxes on soft drinks sold within their borders.
Other states such as California, Maine and Maryland have also experimented with hefty fat-tax legislation.
One big problem is that money collected through fat taxes has typically not been earmarked for obesity-prevention programs or healthy food subsidies; instead they were often used to cover budget deficits.
Australian economist Adam Creighton is a summer Research Fellow at the National Tax Foundation. Creighton states the obvious that “government should leave people alone to decide their own size.”
Creighton wrote in a column for the National Tax Foundation and for The American, “Perhaps fat-taxers, who apparently don't want to pay for the foolish choices of others, should instead agitate for dismantling the public health system, much of which exists to alleviate health problems resulting from poor decisions. A handyman lifts packages incorrectly and injures his back; the sexually promiscuous contract STDs; a narcissist stares into the mirror all day and needs psychiatric care; and so on. Many people's behavior saps the public largesse for their recuperation; yet no one is lobbying to tax heavy parcels, nightclubs or mirrors.”
The fat tax fails in a number of areas:
Fairness: Thin people enjoy fatty foods. Where is the justice in making them pay higher taxes?
Simplicity: Under the fat tax concept, every food item would be designated a specific tax rate. What would the rate be for ice cream, cinnamon rolls, potato chips, green beans, asparagus, etc.? Who would determine those rates and how?
Transparency: There will always be confusion about who buys what food. Determining who bears the burden of a fat tax will be difficult, if not impossible.
You can read Creighton’s entire column
here.Finally, let’s return to the father of the fat tax, Kelly Brownell. What ever happened in those states that embraced Brownell’s fat tax? In states that implemented the fat tax, all the levies were repealed. Not surprisingly, revenue that was targeted for nutrition and obesity-prevention programs was, instead, used to address budget deficits.
