How much longer do I have to witness people say, “We can’t give this debt to our
grandchildren” then continue with their lives unchanged? How much more times
will I see presidents come into office talking about lowering the debt just to
increase the debt ceiling? I’m looking at you George W. Bush and Barrack Obama.
Why is it when finally both parties agree that something should happen, that
it’s the most neglected thing? Well I have answer for the debt and it’s
everyone’s least favorite three-letter word: Tax.
I know what you’re thinking,“With the economy in the ruts we can’t afford to have
another tax”. Now what if I tell you that this tax could be optional, and what
if I told you that it could potentially save America from its obesity problem,
too? This tax will be an option that you can choose every day, multiple times a
day for some, by choosing to stay away from fatty foods and going for the
healthier counterpart.
When a “fat” tax is proposed, a cry is heard from the opposite side of the room
shouting, “‘fat’ taxes wouldn’t work in America”. This principle comes from a
very basic and easily understood argument, and goes as follows: if a child wants
a soda, a drink that would be taxed more heavily in a “fat” tax, then he would
just search for one more dime before going to the vending machine to buy one.
This may be true, but it is a very simplistic approach to the tax. The idea of
the tax is not to target the child- it would target the parents. The hope is
that the ones buying the product would begin to shift from the purchasing of
sodas to more appropriate drinks due to expense differences. The tax is by no
means trying to stop all consumption of a ‘fatty’ product, just the mass
consumption of it. The idea would be that with the tax, the parent, in the long
term would save money on buying juices then if they would just buying sodas.
The responding argument that comes up usually goes along the lines, “a small
decrease in drinking sodas and other fatty food wouldn’t do much to lower
obesity”. Usually the assumption behind this reasoning is that if you take away
the pizza from someone they would just get the calories from another source. The
assumption that the consumption of fatty foods makes you fat is no hypothesis,
it’s supported by scientific research. Even further, the correlations between
the intake of calories and the price of the “fatty” products which hold them
have been tested. In an experiment in 1985, with over 5,000 subjects, showed the
result of how a 10 percent tax increase on soda and pizza would affect the
public. The conclusions of the experiment were a 7 percent reduction of calories
from soda and a 12 percent reduction of calories from pizza. Based on these
conclusions, the experimenting Scientists concluded that an 18 percent tax pizza
and soda could reduce the intake of calories per person to 56, and result in a
weight loss of 5 pounds per person a year. That was just from taxing some pizza
and soda pops. Imagine if there would be a tax not only on those two foods but
every fatty food. How much healthier would American civilians be?
Imagine the money that our government would make by putting a 10 percent tax on fatty
food. Now, calculating all the money that the Government would make in one day
from fatty food would come out as an unimaginable amount. Instead we can slim
down; let’s just see how much we would make from a familiar source, McDonald’s.
But why stop there, let’s slim down a little further. Let’s focus on a single
item, a cheeseburger. McDonald’s sells about 4.2 million cheeseburgers a day in
the United States. Lets make it simple and say every one of those burgers where
bought from the dollar menu individually. Then let’s assume that regular tax is
just a 10 percent. Now add a 10 percent tax for the “fat” tax. That would be 20
percent tax and at 4.2 million 1-dollar cheeseburgers America would make
$840,000 dollars a day. This statistic is also assuming that every individual
is buying a single burger with no drink and no fries. That’s right over 750,000
million dollars from one product form one chain restaurant a day! Imagine how
much more cash our government would make a day, if this “fat” tax was imposed.
In conclusion, we can literally kill two birds with one stone. Help get rid of the
two imposing problems of obesity rates in America and the growing national debt.
“Fat” taxes have been shown in studies to lower calorie intake and in effect
lower the general population’s weight. Put the tax on to lower the national
debt, a subject that every Politian loves to rant about. Let’s face it, there is
not a single person in the world that is pro-obesity and/or is pro-debt. Can we
for once become both pro-health and pro-wealth? Can we just pass one piece of
legislation that would give our future generation a good gift, a good healthy
and debt free life?