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Taxing fat does little but tax our intelligence

By Felicity McMahon - posted Wednesday, 4 April 2007


So it turns out that after all this time of thinking that soy products are good for us and having spent the last decade replacing the milk in our lattes with soy milk, each small sip was a step closer to a cancerous ending for us all.

When the New South Wales Cancer Council declared recently (Sydney Morning Herald, January 14, 2007) that soy products may actually increase the likelihood of developing cancer, the news was less instructive for latte-sipping city slickers - like myself - and more instructive to our beloved bureaucrats intent on guiding our diet choices through taxing so-called fattening foods.

It turns out, that even science doesn’t have the cancer-proof answer to our dieting questions to lay the stepping stones to a cancer-free healthy body and life. So why is it that politicians feel as though they do?

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The interesting thing about the news released by the Cancer Institute is how forcefully it demonstrates our transient understanding of diet and nutrition, and how what’s good for you today, might be marked as fatal tomorrow. This is an instructive lesson for any government to stay out of mandating food choices by using fiscal remedies such as a fat tax.

By taxing supposedly fatty foods all the government does is indirectly legitimise certain food choices therein denying our own individual ability to make choices for ourselves.

It’s an absurdity that fails to realise that moderation is the answer to our food problems, not abolishing particular foods.

Any person, regardless of how vast their belt is, knows that eating particular foods to excess is unhealthy.

If Morgan Spurlock, the man who dared to “diet” merely on McDonalds meals (Super Size Me) taught us one thing - and I think that credits him far beyond what he deserves - it was that eating the same thing over and over is not only outrageously dumb, it’s boring and unhealthy.

If this is something we already know then, how will adding a tax discourage our unhealthy food choices? The answer is, it simply won’t, because we eat burgers, ice cream and hot chips because we like the taste, despite the fact that we know the next morning we’ll appear more rotund than yesterday. A tax won’t tell us anything we don’t, or shouldn’t already know.

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But even if we were to entertain for a moment the idea of a fat tax, how effective would it be anyway?

If it were a tax slapped arbitrarily on, say, fast foods surely its effectiveness would be undercut by simply over-indulging on other fattening delicacies, such as fresh cream, or excessive amounts of bread or heaven forbid, cheese. Does it make sense at all that fast foods, such as, say, a McDonalds or KFC are smacked with a tax, yet an equally fattening, alternative, such as fresh cream, avoids the taxman’s ambit?

The problem with a fat tax is that it is only effective when the tax is applied to an unhealthy quantity of consumption, rather than individual foods per se. But a fat tax, would presumably apply equally to your first Big Mac - which might be OK within a balanced diet - as well as on your 10th - which we already know is bad for you.

Consistently poor lifestyle choices cannot be solved by taxing individual foods that on the whole, most of us rarely eat, and where we do, eat in moderation. No fat tax can effectively tackle the core reason for our poor diets: our lack of self-discipline.

Moreover, the problem with a fat tax is that it doesn’t create the right incentives. Making “bad food” more expensive will not discourage us from purchasing it. Anyone who’s anyone knows that the reason we eat burgers or ice cream isn’t because it costs a lot less - you could feed a family of four much more cheaply by ducking into the supermarket and picking up a BBQ chicken - rather it’s because we like the taste. Taxing fatty foods wouldn’t change how tasty a donor kebab is at 3am after an all-nighter at the pub. We all know we’d pay a premium for something we enjoy, especially after four or five beers.

Often the argument is made that a fat tax has a precedent: that we already tax a range of things that we think people should consume in moderation, such as alcohol and cigarettes, so taxing fattening food is merely an application of those taxes to fatty foods.

Well, wait just a minute. First of all, making that parallel assumes that the taxes on those products are appropriate. Putting that aside for just a moment, it also assumes that those taxes work to deter consumption. The consumption of cigarettes and alcohol is notoriously inelastic, that is, even large changes in the prices of those goods have little impact on our demand for them. They simply don’t work to discourage consumption.

The taxes are just another way for a nanny state to tax the legitimate choices of members of society. Legitimate? Yes. Of course choosing to consume an alcoholic beverage or smoking a cigarette or eating a hamburger is a legitimate choice to be made.

Dangerous, you say? Sure, the link between smoking and a range of diseases has been proved, but does that give the government the right to mandate those choices for people? No. The fact that there is so much evidence to prove that there is a link between these so called horrible vices and a range of diseases, and in spite of that, people choose to smoke or drink, must mean that they just don’t care. They place a higher value on smoking or drinking, than on a supposed healthier lifestyle. Smokers would prefer a cigarette than a longer life. Drinkers prefer to have a spot of wine with dinner and accept the risk of developing, say, heart disease. I prefer a portion of French fries than a slender belly. We accept the risks associated with a chosen course of action.

In a society that respects the freedom of individual choice, those are legitimate choices to make. When a government places a tax on those choices, it says that individuals are incapable of making these decisions themselves, even though that decision may well be a very well informed one. Just because popular opinion believes that being slim is better than being fat, is no justification for stopping people from living their lives as they see fit.

The ability to make these choices independently of the state for ourselves is a core feature of our liberal democracy. As John Stuart Mill said, “there is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.” (On Liberty).

The only time where we can tolerate an interference with individual autonomy, with the choices that we make for ourselves, Mill argued, is to prevent harm to others. As Mill said, “His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil … Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

But even if you do accept that there should be a tax on alcohol and cigarettes, food is certainly in a different category of its own. No study could ever prove that occasionally eating fatty foods leads to any sort of disease. Absent any harm, government interference in the choices of individuals is completely unwarranted.

Ah, but of course, then comes the next argument: allowing people to make those choices means that they will become a burden on the state health system. For that argument to hold, there would need to be a tax on any risky activity, like sport, or sky diving, or driving a car.

Millions of accidents take place while playing sport, or undertaking adventure activities or even while driving a car. These accidents place a huge strain on the health system. We don’t place a tax on playing sport or even on sky diving and bungee jumping.

Even if we were to accept this “burden on the state” argument, what sort of precedent does that set for a government’s ability to tax us? Does it mean that any choice we make that may one day result in the development of diseases which cause us to burden the state’s health system should be taxed? Perhaps then, we should tax women who choose not to have children, since an overwhelming body of medical evidence suggests that women who don’t have children are more likely to develop ovarian, breast and cervical cancer? Why not?

Where does that leave us? People are fat and that’s not nice for them? What a value-laden statement to make! So much for “it’s what’s inside that counts”.

What is the solution? Let us control our own food choices. Don’t use tax to try and create incentives. Leave it up to individuals. They know what’s best, even if they find it difficult to walk past the ice cream shop without stopping for a cone and a scoop.

Tax on food is no solution to a lack of individual discipline.

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About the Author

Felicity McMahon is a graduate of the University of Technology, Sydney, with a degree in Business and a First Class Honours Degree in Law.

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