Apparently, there's an idea floating around (probably limited to california, just my luck), and it's a junk food tax.
The idea behind it is to charge a rather big tax for junk foods, to decrease purchases of them to decrease obesity.
Ok, so we get (theoretically) lowered obesity rates and a nice chunk of change to help our floundering state budget.
However, this is a rather interesting subject. A little over half of californians polled said they were in favor of it, but that's still nearly break-even.
So would you support this? Why or why not?
Personally, I wouldn't support this, since I'm simply pre-disposed to having a high metabolism, and I often have rather sugary things to fuel it. Thus I'd be charged a whole lot of money, but I'm not obese or anything: I don't need a weight decrease, I need a weight increase! (hence my workouts to build muscle mass).
Plus, it's not like taxing smoking, where non-smokers can find the smell of tobacco smoke to be unpleasant and unhealthful (thus they are being harmed/affected negatively), or taxing alcohol, where some people don't appreciate having drunks wandering around (once again, they are being harmed/affected negatively), but having a rotund guy enjoying a bigmac a couple restraunts down the street isn't going to ruin your day. Sure they might be harming their own body, but then again, it is themselves, and we don't really have a right to force them to stop when its not affecting the rest of us in the least. Especially when others (like myself) get hit in the fallout as well.