Taxes on Bad for you foods – possibly soon....

Today's Post: Monday, 12-21-2009

Eating too much bad for you foods and most drinking of any soft drinks will make you fat and sick & particularly likely to get type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, & every kind of heart disease from heart attacks & heart failure to strokes, peripheral artery disease (PAD), erectile dysfunction,& vascular dementia; and Alzheimer’s disease.

Most people who ingest this stuff don’t have a clue how bad this stuff is for them if they ingest it every day -- or worse, ingest almost nothing else -- & keep doing it for years!

Even some people who have at least heard it might be bad for them, pay no attention. They grew up with it; they see people on TV advertising for it; the stuff usually does taste good; their friends or people they work with eat or drink it; &, if they are still young or quite active, it may not have seemed to harm them yet. And, they believe if it really was that bad for them it would at least be illegal. Oops!

Unfortunately, this can be challenging to change since the companies who provide it make good money; and many of them are quite large. And, virtually everyone who watches broadcast TV is inundated with ads for this stuff, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You could outlaw all of the bad for you ingredients right away. But that is totally undoable. Except for the very worst stuff (trans fats so far), since most people don’t really know or believe it’s that bad for them, there is insufficient political support. And, even if the large companies it would put out of business didn’t lobby against it with great vigor -- & they do, it would put lots of mostly innocent and undeserving people out of work. (Most of them don’t really know the product they help make or sell is that bad for people either.)

However, we must reduce the consumption of this stuff or our economy will go bankrupt from people too sick to work or be very productive combined with horribly high medical costs.

This has already happened to such an extent, the recovery from the recession is slowed by the hit increasing medical costs have given the discretionary spending of the people who still have jobs!

The good news is that there is a proven fix to all this.

We already know from increases on taxes on alcohol and tobacco products that such increases reliably lower consumption. Some people quit buying completely. But most people still buy but buy less.

So, it’s proven. Higher taxes reduce consumption.

1. In my view alcohol needs no increases in taxes or very little. In moderation it’s actually good for you. It’s already taxed heavily. And, the increased harshness of drunk driving laws and enforcement have cut excess consumption by a lot.

2. As we’ve posted on from time to time, tobacco & tobacco smoke are so harmful, it might make sense to simply outlaw their use. They certainly deserve it. But that’s unlikely. And, given the US experience with recreational drugs and the alcohol Prohibition experiment, it may not even be a good idea with the market of millions of addicts who will still try to get them.

However, any tax increase of any size on tobacco & on smokable tobacco products is a great idea. It also is proven that it would help to continue to increase the number of places that people are not allowed to smoke since the second hand smoke is so harmful; &, with fewer places to smoke, fewer people will smoke and smokers will smoke less.

3. The big opportunity and the huge need for such taxes is on the food and drink components that are now untaxed and have begun to make nearly half the people in the United States and some other countries fat and diabetic and headed for massive increases in heart attacks and strokes and disability and more.

Sugar in every form, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, artificial sweeteners, and refined grains are both unnecessary for human life and health and proven causes of obesity and disease when ingested every day in quantity for years at a time.

When that happened to 10 % of the people, the costs were high but affordable. Now that it’s half the people -- and in the children on the way to being adults will be 75% if nothing is done, we simply cannot afford the tab.

The good news is that taxing this stuff will immediately give the governments that tax it badly needed income that actually improves their local economy instead of slowing it down.

So, as I see it. Such taxes are inevitable. We need them badly to slow the consumption of this stuff and begin to reverse the high medical care costs they cause. And, the governments need the tax funds.

But we have to start somewhere -- as desirable as such taxes are.

This may be happening soon in Taiwan!

AFP, an international health news service, said today, Monday, 12-21-2009, that Taiwan is planning the world's first tax on junk foods to cut obesity rates.

The Bureau of Health Promotion is drafting a bill to levy a special tax on food that makes people fat, including sugary drinks, candy, cakes, fast food, and alcohol.

Revenues from the tax would finance promoting health awareness and knowledge and subsidize Taiwan's now cash-strapped national health system.

The bill, if approved by their parliament, could take effect around 2011.

The article had this quote.:

“ "Overweight problems are getting worse in Taiwan with 25 to 30 percent of children obese, and it will cause more strain on our national health system," said Beryl Sheu, chief of the foundation's food nutrition division.”

Of course, it might not pass or they might pass a watered down version that is too weak to be effective.

But the more this happens, the more likely it is that soon an effective tax will be passed. Once that happens, the positive effects on the treasury of the government involved and the health effects on their people will be so tempting to other governments, such taxes will happen all over the world.

For example, if you go to almost any fast food place and most restaurants you can get a 16 ounce soft drink for something like $1.39. But if that soft drink was taxed 5 cents and ounce because it was a soft drink and another 10 cents an ounce for the high fructose corn syrup in it, it would cost $3.79. Would fewer people buy them at all? Yes. Would the people who still buy them buy them less often? Yes. They might buy and drink 7 a week instead of 14. That way some people would lose 30 pounds of fat by not drinking any. And, the people who cut back from two a day to one would lose 15 pounds of fat.

The same effects would happen at home if something like sweet rolls, cookies or microwave popped corn began costing more for the taxes on the refined grains, the taxes on the sugar, the taxes on the excessive salt, and the very high taxes on the hydrogenated oils they contain.

Each such snack food with such multiple taxes would increase in cost by three to six times a piece. A box of cookies at $3.49 is affordable to many people. When it costs $14.89 because of the $11.40 in added taxes that it actually deserves, it will be a rare treat if at all.

Since that’s closer to what a mostly sedentary person’s body can handle, that will make a huge improvement in obesity levels and their resulting medical costs.

The good news is that individual people can learn better than to eat or drink this stuff and stop now even before such taxes show up.

But the even better news is that the huge and avoidable medical costs, death, and suffering of the people who don’t know any better will drop like a stone when adequate taxes on this stuff exist everywhere.