THW Impose Fat Tax

by JiKriss 6:35 AM 0 comments

In this motion we talk about whether we should apply fat tax or not.

Below is the idea about this motion in both Pros and Cons side
these Idea will be useful depends on your Mechanism. Whether you would apply the Fat tax on the Fat people based on their BMI (Body Mass Index) or you would apply it on the Junk food itself which means the price of fatty food would be more expensive and people will consumption on it will decrease.

Pros (+):

An individual's BMI is no longer a purely personal matter

The obesity epidemic is taking an enormous toll on global medical costs. In the US alone the health care costs attributable to either direct or indirect consequences of obesity have been estimated at $147bn.

The figure might seem excessive, but we need to remember that obesity is linked to Type 2 Diabetes, several kinds of cancer, coronary artery disease, stroke, congestive heart failure, asthma, chronic back pain and hypertension, to name just a few.We also need to realize that many of the diseases on this list are chronic, requiring lifelong pharmacological therapy, which often follows complex and expensive diagnostic procedures, frequent medical specialist consultations, and not infrequent emergency interventions.

The value of income lost due to decreased productivity, restricted activity, and absenteeism, not to mention the value of future income lost by premature death.

Thus it become clear that due to the substantial cost obesity presents to the society, individual choices that might lead to excessive weight gain, can no longer be considered as solely individual in nature.

Therefore the government is legitimate in its action to introduce a form of a fat tax in order to try to dissuade the population from becoming obese and cover the increasing societal costs the already obese individuals are responsible for.

There is ample precedent in the form of other “sin” taxes

A sin tax is a term often used for fees tacked on to popular vices like drinking, gambling and smoking. Its roots have been traced back to the 16th century Vatican, where Pope Leo X taxed licensed prostitutes. Recently, US federal cigarette taxes were shown to have reduced consumption by 4% for every 10% increase in the price of cigarettes.This show us that the “sin” taxes is worked.

Thus, we need to imply this too on the unhealthy food to fight the Obesity epidemic.

In fact, a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine followed 5000 people for 20 years, tracking food consumption and various biological metrics. The report states that “Researchers found that, incremental increases in price of unhealthy foods resulted in incremental decreases in consumption. In other words, when junk food cost more, people ate it less." Thus, it should be concluded that a fat tax is an important part of a sensible and effective solution to the obesity epidemic.

COUNTERPOINT: to introduce a new policy to the society based on the ‘sin’ tax experience which is seemingly similar but actually different, is not a good idea. Tobacco and fatty food are vastly different. You know that actually Fat is still needed by the body, but different to tobacco, it’s really unhealthy for the body. Thus, the thing here is DOSAGE. Tobacco is unhealthy in any doses, but fatty food that we call “junk food” won’t give bad effect on our health as long as we don’t eat too much. This resulting that fat tax won’t be effective because it will affect every people

(If the mechanism is to impose the tax by only imply this tax on fat People based on BMI (Body Index Mass), then we need to say that the government already have much problem to solve that they don’t have time to seek for each people personal BMI. This kind of mechanism won’t work)

A fatty food is often cheaper than healthy food

An important reason why people continuously turn to unhealthy, fat, sugar and salt food, is the simple fact that junk food is often cheaper than a healthy food. Seeing that the obesity is more common in the low economic people, we find that price of food is substantial toward consumption. Thus it’s reasonable to levy fat tax in order to give chance for healthy food.

COUNTERPOINT: They said that Instead of making healthy food more accessible, we would make all foods less accessible – this is a truly nonsensical and harmful situation that we should avoid. Moreover, given that many individuals in lower economic groups will have become used to eating “junk” food, when prices rise they will not necessarily move to the healthier alternative. It is likely that they will stick to what they know, and end up paying more from their limited budgets for it. The end result is likely to be that these people will still buy junk food first but will pay more and thus will not be able to afford any healthier foods. Their proposal to impose fat tax won’t work.

Cons (-):

The fat tax violates on individual choice

Introducing such a tax would constitute an overstepping of the government’s authority. The role of government in a society should not expand further than providing basic services such as education, legal protection, i.e. only the services necessary for a society to function and for the individual’s rights to be protected.

Such a specific tax is completely uncalled for and very unreasonable in the context of a fair society with a government that knows its place in it.
Protecting the individual should go no further than the protection against the actions of a third person. For instance: we can all agree that governments should put measures in place to protect us from thieves, scammers, etc. But should it also protect us from frivolous spending? Limit us in the number of credit cards we can own? Tell us how we can invest our money?

What this tax does is exactly that – it is punishing the citizens for a specific choice they are making by artificially inflating its cost.

Thus it is clear that levying such a tax against a specific choice an individual should be able to legitimately make is a clear overstepping of the government’s authority.

COUNTERPOINT: Such a limited view of the role of government may be something we have seen in the past, but even conservative governments today are into the ideas of social support, progressive taxation, etc.This shows a clear trend that the perception of government is changing – and rightly so. The challenges of the 21st century are vastly different from those of a hundred or more years ago, when that idea of government was popular or mainstream. This fat tax is used to reduce the medical spending on obesity. Thus the government has the authority to control their country outcome.

This Proposal lead to a wrong way of solving a problem

This Fat tax will give a great effect on low economic society who tends to eat junk food. The thing that this proposal doing is clearly making the healthy and unhealthy food are inaccessible. Rather than to focus on increase the tax on unhealthy food, we should give people more access toward healthy food.

Those are some Ideas about this motion. Thanks for reading... :)

Source :idebate