About 9 percent of health-care costs are directly attributable to obesity, which led Dubner to wonder if we should assess a fat tax (on fat food, that is, not people) as a way of picking up the tab. One strong objection would be that such a tax would likely be extremely regressive: “[S]ickness, poverty, and obesity are spun together in a dense web of reciprocal causality,” writes Daniel Engber regarding what he calls the “girth-wealth” gradient. To sum it up: the poorer you are, the fatter you’re likely to be; and the fatter you get, the poorer you’re likely to become. So it may be that the obesity fight and income inequality are one and the same. [%comments]
The "Girth-Wealth" Gradient
TAGS:
and 
. You can also watch it on 
There’s also the argument that fat people tend to die sooner. They could end up actually saving the system money even though it costs more to treat them when they are alive. Even a very fit person will rack up a lot of medical bills in his or her 80′s or 90′s and a fat person will be dead by then and won’t cost anything to treat.
I see two problems with a fat (food) tax. One is that EVERY food can make people fat. If you eat enough carrots, you’re going to get fat.
Michael Phelps and Haile Gebrselassie would be heavily impacted by such a tax, but they need the calories in “fat” foods to keep them alive after they burn 5,000+ calories in a day.
One reason the poor tend to get fat is that junk food has more calories per dollar than health food. So if you are trying to maximize the amount of calories you can consume with a limited budget, junk food is the way to go.
Maybe instead of a taxing the junk food, we should just shift what agriculture we subsidize. Instead of subsidizing the corn syrup industry, why not subsidize real fruits and vegetables?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
1
It’s regressive how? You will hurt poor people by preventing them from getting fat on fattening foods? Won’t that help stop the cycle? Maybe the problem is that healthful foods are too expensive. So use the fat tax to subsidize them.
The objection that every food can make you fat is specious. Who is going to eat that many carrots? Not many people. Even if you get fat from too many vegetables, your health is going to be better than getting fat from too many donuts.
A somewhat related issue: why don’t airlines give people an overall weight limit, i.e., you and your bags together. I mean, weight is apparently the issue when airlines impose a weight limit on luggage, right? Then the obese among us can truly pay their fair share for flying.
It would make more sense to tax sugar or corn syrup or just processed foods in general. Fats are essential to a healthy diet, added sugars not so much.
No, the problem is health care cost associated with obesity. Therefore the fat tax should be assessed on their health care cost.
Forget the tax.
Remove the farm subsidies on corn, sugar, and wheat (and give their monies to broccoli and other greens) and you’ll take care of the problem without creating another layer of infrastructure.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0