For an underweight person, an occasional high calorie fast food outing might not be so bad. Perhaps we should tax fat people instead because they are the ones who are unhealthy and are on a fast track to the hospital. If we tax men, women and children on the BMI (body mass index), that would be a fairer tax. In other words, when I weighed 245 pounds, I would have been taxed at one rate and, today, at 160 pounds I would be taxed at a lower rate. Of course, the tax rates per BMI category would have to be legislated. However, that would be fairer, since the problem people would be the ones paying the freight, so to speak.
Weight and size has a genetic component. Eating fast food is a choice. Taxing choices rather than who you are is a lot more fair.
BMI is an extremely flawed metric. Anyone who lifts weights will have an unnaturally high BMI. You should use body fat percentage.
What about people who drive cars... should they be taxed even more for being car drivers? What about people who ride motorcycles.... that's less safe than NOT riding motorcycles? Right? What about living in the city vs. the country... or choosing to live in a more dangerous part of town? What about aspertane? How about folks who refill toner cartridges for a living.... have you heard what that stuff does to you? What about ground beef in general? BlueTooth? Wifi? Cell Tower proximity? Should we start making people submit their dietary intake in order to get a better feel for how hard we should tax folks toward the greater prosperity? We really have to get a handle on all this freedom, stuff's DANGEROUS man. And COSTLY! I would say back off taxing people into the current ideal perception of lifestyle. Buncha pushy mofos.
Nope, we should just tax fast food and junk food because we have an epidemic of obesity that impacts society in a dramatic way and these are a couple of prime reasons for the rise in obesity.
You people are just as Fascist as crazy right wingers. Taxing peoples ability to eat Junk food. People could go to a grocery store and buy veggies and fruit if they want to but they choose not to. What a load of crap. Do people here see how ridiculous that is?? This is the poorest segment of the population and you want to tax them more. Its a choice, if people wish to live unhealthy lives then they should be able to. Then they should have to pay for two seats in an airplane, or for their insulin or a double wide casket.
We all pay for the choices of others. Somebody chooses to bring kids into this world that they cannot support, we pay for it. Somebody chooses to drive a gas guzzler, it contributes to higher gasoline demand...we pay for it. The list goes on and on. I'm not sure why this is where you draw the line.
78 million Americans are obese, 25 million have diabetes, and 79 million are prediabetic. When 78 million Americans are orphans then it will have gone way over the line as this has gone.
How about just not paying for the healthcare of those above a certain BMI threshold? Let them die. Or allow them to get healthcare only if they pay for it themselves all out of pocket.
What evidence is there that 78 million American kids are soon to be orphans because of their parents' eating habits?
We're all paying for costly EOL hospital bills for most of the elderly. That's a big chunk out of rising healthcare costs.
78million orphans? You are assuming that every single fat person is going to die pretty much immediately, that they all have children, and that every single,one of them will have died before their children grew up. In short, you're making this **** up.
Huh? I'm not saying 78 million people are going to die and create orphans. I'm saying when 78 million people belong to any group, be they obese or orphans, that's a really significant problem that merits immediate attention.
