The article seems to be shittily written in my opinion but I figure if you watch the video (about a minute) it will get the point across.
My question lies in, do you think this will benefit the health of the people moving forward, or do you fear it being weaponized to endorse or threaten companies to comply with the mention of Kennedy being tied to its future as mentioned in the end of the article
I think sin taxes are absolutely acceptable if the government is also fully paying for the healthcare of all citizens (which we should totally be doing).
The combination of the two would make America a much healthier place overall.
I’m in the UK, we have the NHS, and several “sin taxes”, and they still pretty much exclusively penalise the poor (as does the NHS which has been defunded to oblivion in favour of rampant privatisation, so those who can’t afford to go private are left with the ruins), while those selling the “sinful” products (and private health insurance) continue to rake it in.
There is no taxing or legislating or regulating our way our of capitalism, which is exclusively responsible for those in power exchanging the health and well being of the population and the planet for profit, and they will never allow any tax or legislation or regulation to pass that would put them at any kind of disadvantage. The fact that some people still think they would, is frankly quite terrifying.
Yes… these kinds of taxes are regressive, in that they cost poor people more than they do wealthy people
The government is not the arbiter of morality, only legality, and I definitely don’t want a government of whatever the fuck the GOP has become deciding what’s affordable and what’s not.
So since they aren’t…
Right… and your comment was in reply to someone merely proposing taxes that don’t exist yet either…
No my comment was in the frame of the. Government doesn’t pay for our bloody healthcare. If you think they do you don’t know shit about what happens here mate. We serve, slave, and bend over backward while people tell us “maybe you don’t know”.
I’ll tell you honest. You should take that opinion to fuck the populous and kick off
They don’t think the US does, they think it should. You don’t need to be so aggressive about it.
I was an asshole, yeah. Sorry mate
So you’re supportive of Canadian sin taxes on sugar? Obviously America is broken as shit but let’s look at a less fundamentally awful example. Canada has a (granted smaller) issue with obesity and the costs of supporting long term care for it - a sin tax on sugar that helps support the Canadian healthcare system due to the outsized costs obesity causes.