(NaturalNews)
Mr. Johnson weighed nearly a ton.
And drank pop 'til his health came undone.
His kidneys turned blue
But he said, "I've got two."
"So I'll drink 'til I only lose one."The debate over health care reform has run smack into a brick wall of economic reality. There's just not enough money to pay for all the disease in America, it seems, and now lawmakers are desperately searching for new sources that might bridge the financial gaps. Their latest scheme involves taxing sodas with a three-cent
tax to raise an extra $24 billion over the next four years.
At first, taxing
soda might seem like a good idea. Sodas, after all, promote
diabetes, obesity, bone loss and many other costly
health conditions. It only stands to reason that people who drink soda should pay a little more towards a national
health care plan.
But there are problems with this idea of a soda tax. For starters, it's a highly regressive tax that ultimately gets paid mostly by low-income, low-education people (the kind of people who drink a lot of soda). It's a tax, in other words, on those who can least afford it.
Another problem with such a tax is that if the U.S.
government is going to use
taxes to modify consumer
behavior, it would seem prudent to first
end the government subsidies on sugar that have existed since World War II. Why are we still using taxpayer dollars to lower the price of sugar when refined white sugar contributes so much to our nation's health problems?
Then there's the question of where the
money will go. Even if you slap a five-cent tax on every can of soda, does that money actually end up going towards improved health care, or is it just lost in the morass of bureaucratic incompetude that wanders the halls of Washington these days?
Case in point: The government settlement with Big Tobacco. All that
tobacco money that was supposed to go to "improving health care" across
America has actually ended up in the general budgets of most states, where it gets wasted on a thousand different things that have nothing to do with health care. A soda tax would likely end up being lost in the system in much the same way.
A better solution for influencing consumer behavior
Slapping new "sin taxes" on consumer
products as a way to shape consumer behavior while raising money is a seductively attractive idea if you're a bureaucrat with an itchy trigger finger. It seems (at first, at least) economically and morally sound: Make the people who cause the problem pay more for fixing it. It all seems so simple: Let cigarette taxes pay for health care. Let soda taxes help fight
obesity. Let alcohol taxes pay for
alcohol addiction recovery centers. But in the real world, it never quite works that way: Money gets stolen away for other uses, rarely going to the intended beneficiary. Meanwhile, the taxes end up hurting those
consumers who can least afford it.
A far better option is
educating consumers about the harm these products cause. Put large, unambiguous warnings on cigarettes like, "SMOKING CAUSES CANCER" along with a horrifying picture of a diseased lung. On soda cans, you could require warnings like, "DRINKING SODA CAUSES KIDNEY STONES" along with a picture of a short, sweaty man holding his junk and screaming in pain.
You get the idea. Why
waste all that time and effort collecting and distributing a five-cent soda tax when you can just use pictures and warning
labels to influence consumer behavior?
Of course, using honest labels on harmful products doesn't raise money for bureaucrats to ferret away in their favorite pork projects, but it does accomplish something much more important: It
reduces long-term health care costs by dissuading people from consuming harmful products.
Sure, it doesn't stop every ignorant teen from slamming colas while he becomes obese and diabetic, but it does have a positive influence on many. The sad truth is that most people who drink soda have no idea the phosphoric acid
causes bone mineral loss and
kidney stones. They have no clue that high-fructose corn syrup promotes diabetes and obesity. They just don't know about the harmful effects of
drinking highly acidic liquid sugar beverages, and that's part of the reason why they keep drinking them.
In my opinion,
large health warnings should be required on all sodas and junk food products. And they should be blunt: Soda causes diabetes. Donuts cause obesity and heart
disease. Hot dogs cause cancer. The list goes on...
Such a proposal would horrify the corporate giants in the
food and beverage industries, of course. Their sales depend on consumers staying ignorant about the ravaging health effects of their products. Requiring their labels to tell the truth would devastate their sales and profits. The processed food
industry would suffer huge economic losses. So would the
sick care industry as fewer people suffer degenerative disease. Lots of jobs would be lost as people avoided disease-promoting foods.
And that should be the ultimate goal: A huge downsizing of the junk food and
sick care industries. The smaller they are, the better off the people are. Ultimately, we should strive to destroy the sick care industry altogether. The day Big Pharma's top corporations declare bankruptcy due to a lack of sales is the day we've achieved something meaningful for the health of our nation. And we're not going to get there by taxing
sodas without telling people the truth about how sodas destroy their health.
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In mid 2010, Adams produced NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and pursues hobbies such as martial arts, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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