Current Events > Which of these laws would you rather pass?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The top three comorbidities of the leading causes of death in the US are obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

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Do sin taxes actually drive sin consumption down?
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considering diabetes and hypertension happen to people who are a healthy weight, a calorie tax would only help part of the problem. it's not just how much we eat, but also the kinds of foods we eat

and then there's the fact it just wouldn't work, because prohibition never does. you'd just be making a black market for twinkies

plus it can't be policed at all in general

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A calorie tax is the single dumbest fucking way to achieve the goal, so gun laws it is.

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ThyCorndog posted...

considering diabetes and hypertension happen to people who are a healthy weight, a calorie tax would only help part of the problem. it's not just how much we eat, but also the kinds of foods we eat

and then there's the fact it just wouldn't work, because prohibition never does. you'd just be making a black market for twinkies

plus it can't be policed at all in general

Putting aside the part about prohibition not working (I agree there), the majority of type 2 diabetes could be easily avoided if people managed their calories. Like, 95% of it.

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ThyCorndog posted...

considering diabetes and hypertension happen to people who are a healthy weight, a calorie tax would only help part of the problem. it's not just how much we eat, but also the kinds of foods we eat

and then there's the fact it just wouldn't work, because prohibition never does. you'd just be making a black market for twinkies

plus it can't be policed at all in general

It's not a prohibition. It would simply make high calorie foods more expensive while creating revenue from those purchases to fund medical care / research.

A calorie tax would be more effective than selective taxes or bans on say soda because it would always target sugar and such by definition. Studies show that when one high calorie option like soda is penalized, consumers switch to something with similar caloric contents like fruit juice. With a calorie tax, it would always be lower calorie foods that are incentivized as alternatives.

Also just because hypertension and diabetes can occur at healthy weights doesn't mean they, especially the latter, are way more prevalent in the obese and a result of unhealthy food.


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Oh, media


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Knowing America more gun laws would somehow increase gun violence.

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Doe posted...

It's not a prohibition. It would simply make high calorie foods more expensive while creating revenue from those purchases to fund medical care / research.

A calorie tax would be more effective than selective taxes or bans on say soda because it would always target sugar and such by definition. Studies show that when one high calorie option like soda is penalized, consumers switch to something with similar caloric contents like fruit juice. With a calorie tax, it would always be lower calorie foods that are incentivized as alternatives.

Also just because hypertension and diabetes can occur at healthy weights doesn't mean they, especially the latter, are way more prevalent in the obese and a result of unhealthy food.

Nice in theory until you have the problem of food deserts, where people can't buy nutritious food and so resort to calorie dense fast foods. I feel like this is passing the problem onto the consumer.

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pinky0926 posted...

Nice in theory until you have the problem of food deserts, where people can't buy nutritious food and so resort to calorie dense fast foods. I feel like this is passing the problem onto the consumer.

OK so use the tax revenue to combat food deserts.

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They are already taxing the fuck out of cigarettes, why not tax everything else that's bad for you?

The economy gets better and the people get healthier.

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I'd use the gun option to ban guns. Easy choice. I hate guns

Gun laws, easily.

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Doe posted...

Oh, media

I kind of get what this is trying to say, but what do they really expect it to look like? No one is googling lower respiratory infections because if you feel weird in your lungs you go to the doctor. Someone dying of a lung issue doesn't cause google searches but terrorism does.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the chart.

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WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

I kind of get what this is trying to say, but what do they really expect it to look like? No one is googling lower respiratory infections because if you feel weird in your lungs you go to the doctor. Someone dying of a lung issue doesn't cause google searches but terrorism does.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the chart.

It's more about how the media overrepresents homicide and terrorism as a danger to the public despite heart disease being the number one killer and outshine the former two by several orders of magnitude.

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Gun laws easily. There's no way our government would spend that tax money on helping people.

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Gun laws

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