Is this necessary?
I don’t know – but it’s fun!
There is a tax on pop (soda) in Pennsylvania.
This is probably one the stupid ideas I have ever heard. It is not the job of the goverment to police our eating habits and it is in no way right for them to punish us for eating food that they feel is detrimental to our health. Who is going to decided what is “good” and what is “bad”? What is scaring me the most is that the people who are suggesting this are the same people who are teaching our youth. (My rational being that part of the study was done by “health advocates” at Yale. I am assuming they would be teachers, though of course I do not know for sure) I do not feel any one has any authority to tell me what I should and should not put in my body, be it a steak, burger, soda or apple. Why don’t we just lower the prices of all “healthy” foods so that people will have an incentive to buy them. It will also help make “healthy foods” more available to lower income people.
Guinastasia:
Are you sure that the soda itself is taxed? I know here in California that pretty much all beverages are taxed, but only because of the container that they are in. The tax is supposed to be a way to encouage people to recycle their containers. If I go to a restaurant and buy a soda the tax is not applied since the beverage is served in a reusable glass or a paper cup. If I buy a soda from a store then the beverage is in an aluminum can/plastic bottle/glass bottle and the container is taxed.
-N
I just know I’m gonna regret mentioning this…
Good intentions don’t make sound policies, vide the smoking fiasco. Yes, yes, second hand smoke, subsidies to “drug growers”, health costs, etc. but can’t we distinguish and extrapolate?
This is where politics, PC thinking and cant all collide in a messy pile. (Speaking from personal bitterness, it’s also where political moderates tend to get shot by all sides for asking pertinent questions.) Where does personal responsibility lay in relation to civic obligations?
Speaking for no one but myself, the idea of Government Inspector General For Healthy Life Styles turns my stomach. Too close to Vonnegut’s concept of Handicapper General. People, being people, live messy lives; we screw carelessly, eat “wrong-things-du-jour” and indulge in all kinds of stupid behavior.
So where’s the line on anarachy; y’know, deliberate social mayhem? Snarfing chocolate, eating eggs–even raw in sauces!?–,deliberately living among abestos, lead and known carcinogens, eating flesh, courting protein deficiency by not eating flesh…well, we’re all a sorry, wrong-headed, stupidly suicidal bunch.
I have no input beyond venting the facts as I see 'em. If anyone else can sort out the blame/cost/duty/enforcemnent mess, have at it.
I’m just sick to death of cant, and wishing Vonnegut a happy 70th b’day–and longing for an trenchant upcoming truth-sayer of his stature.
Okay. Going away now.
Veb