What's wrong with taxing sin foods? If you really want to affect change, taxes on products can do a lot. NYC increased taxes on cigarettes and people quit smoking. It works. At the very least, it will help provide money to cover their health insurance. Imagine that...
It's wrong because people get addicted to 'junk' foods, nicotine, and alcohol. That is no coincidence. By taxing it you basically take more money out of the pockets of poor, less intelligent people, and hand it to the corporations. A parent who is addicted to these products will end up having less money on their children in many cases. NYC is a fine city, but most of its inhabitants are functional zombies when it comes to understanding what rights they're entitled to in life. I don't like it when people fart around me, would it be ok to tax/fine people who fart in public? And to the people blasting me for my thoughts on the FDA, I don't like them because they feel like they have the power to infringe upon all of our personal right to decide and choose what goes into our bodies. There are plenty of alternative treatments for disease that are outlawed in the United States. Plenty of terminally ill people end up having to go to Latin and South America to find treatments that are outlawed here. Blatant fascism. Of course, the FDA does do some good things, but the bad certainly outweighs the good, IMO.
Interesting. Good thing the FDA is here or else people would still be working 15 hours a day in 100 degree warehouses...? In a truly capitalistic society, word of mouth and independent study are far more valuable than strict government regulations. With or without the FDA, it's not so easy for someone to run around selling snake oil in a market with numerous competitors for long without being exposed, this is not the Wild Wild West. Like I said before, a free society is not necessarily the safest society, but I'll happily sacrifice a little bit of security for true freedom. My medicine cabinet is stocked with tons of items, none of which are FDA approved, so maybe I should wonder why I never get sick. The absurdity of it all is that an FDA approved toothpaste says "Call poison control if swallowed", while a non-FDA approved one says nothing of the sort. I wonder if I'm living in the twilight zone. A couple of doctors I'm familiar with who specialize in natural medicine have received death threats and have been threatened by the FDA numerous times, mainly for their alternative treatments to Big Pharma, and for suggesting natural ways to fight off H1N1. God forbid people understood nutrition whatsoever, or these guys would be out of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Complete B.S most of those poster and the chants I do have nothing to do with the Bail out and all about Obama being a Muslim, terrorist, communist,Antichrist,African ect. The people I know who like Obama still like him and the people I know that hated Obama really hate him now. Everyone has put on there jerseys and were back to strong partisanship.
You are so right. There has not been a reported case of naturally occurring paralytic polio in the USA since 1969 ever since I began carrying my magic healing marble in my pocket. Coincidence? I think you and I can both say, "I think not."
without government regulations, people would be working 15 hours a day in 100 degree warehouse. are you really arguing that? franchise wasn't saying FDA created that. but labor laws were laws, after all, and promulgated by congress since states weren't doing anything about it.
Methinks the free market would trump any regulation laws. It's not like anything more than the small minority of people were working under such conditions back then. I never said that ALL regulations are inherently evil, just mostly unnecessary and wasteful.
In the 1850's the average work day was about 12 hours a day. In 1900 the average was just short of 10 per day. Extended workdays of 12-15 hours a day, 6 days a week weren't at all uncommon, especially for grunt work like working in mills or foundries. To have anything like a short 8 hour day would be the uncommon thing. The only thing that ended the practice was legislation prompted by agitation by labor unions.
Let us assume that all of the other crap you have spouted is true. A HUGE assumption, but just for fun. How in the hell do you expect to administer such a thing? Do you want the IRS privy to your medical files? No thanks. Besides...there are other ways to fund this than to have some piece of **** regressive tax. If you live a healthier lifestyle than the guy across town, good for you. I, for one, applaud that. There are better ways to encourage such a thing than under the penalty of enhanced taxation.
Then you think incorrectly. It was a monumental struggle in this country to break the power of monopolies and trusts that forced people to work for pennies in terrible conditions. By the way this was the MAJORITY of people in this country that worked like that. How many white collar jobs do you think there were 100-150 years ago? We were a manufacturing nation bacnk then and that's what people did; they worked in factories, coal mines, etc. This wasn't even that long ago. Go read The Jungle or Grapes of Wrath or Honest Graft. Where do people get the notion that the "free market" will solve everything? That big business is safer than big government? Deregulation has proved time and time again to do nothing but create unfettered greed. Business will push to get away with as much as it can whether that is dumping toxic waste in the local river, paying 5 cents an hour, usury, whatever, only when people began to complain and forced the government to step in did business concede and do now what we take for granted every day.
Ok, well, people who eat junk food, smoke, and drink excessively are a drain on our health system right? You agree there? You say reward healthy people by giving them discounts, but the problem with that kind of logic is that you will take out money from a system that needs money. You are actually punishing the poor because they have less ability to live healthy - by your own admission! They are "Addicted" to junk food. Your own logic says that rewarding healthy people will actually more quickly bankrupt the system. If you tax something, it cuts consumption of it. Higher price = less consumption. When the price of cigarettes went up in NYC from $3/pak to over $8 a pack, a lot of people, including myself, said it was unfair and terrible. Guess what, smoking rates in NYC plummetted and the average life expectancy has increased 18 months in NYC making it once of the best places to live if you want to live a long life. Increadible right??? Oh, and taxes don't go to corporations. Taxing sodas and sin foods would of course be protested BY THE CORPORATIONS. In reality, it is them that this kind of thing won't evey happen. But if you wanted to make the health system solvent, cover every American, and improve the life expectancy of the average American (in other words, make us actually claim to have a standard of living on par with Europe) - that's exactly what you would do.
So you believe Americans are so much more obese now than in the past because their willpower just ain't what it used to be? Seriously?
Once again Refman, I am not suggesting a sin tax. Lets cut the "who lives a healthier lifestyle" and simply suggest that a very healthy person shouldn't have to subsidize the unhealthly. Life insurance is already setup this way, so don't bother with any discriminatory "its genetics" examples. If you are a high risk, you pay more. If you are low risk, you pay less. That is the very basis of insurance, but of course, health care is really not about insurance. I also agree that the government has no business having my medical records. That is one of the primary reasons why I am against a public option.
So obviously we should do genetic testing to chrage higher price for people with genetic disorders. Maybe we should exclude them from insurance totally. How about force them to not have any kids, that should be better for the future right?
It looks like the EPA did a great job of protecting the water supply - not. And it would be great if we could have some communities with less government and some communities with more government. Then we could pick and choose which communities to live in. Unfortunately we all have to live in a federal nanny state.
