Should the U.S. Tax Fast Food?

[EnderJE]

Maybe douchebag shouldn't be giving $500million to the smithsonian institute, hollywood producers and green research companies in his "lets get america working" bullshit stimulus.

r

Would a war be better?

 

[inkspot]

Since Obama just signed SCHIP, expanding healthcare benefits to the middle class by funding it with a .61 a pack "sin tax" on smokes...Should we extend "sin taxes" to all restaurants because they all offer unhealthy choices that cause health problems?

"sin tax" I never heard of that before. leave it to you for enlightenment. being around children all day long I can honestly say thank god for health care for children. imagine the physical suffering a child goes through because his parents can't afford insurance. .61 more on a luxury item seems a small price to pay. as far as sin taxing fast food I'd have to say no. doesn't it make sense to "sin tax" sin? like the porn industry. ching ching

 

[beach_bum_dude]

Define "sin". If smoking is a sin, why does the asshat do it?

 

[inkspot]

Define "sin". If smoking is a sin, why does the asshat do it?

does a sin have to be bad?

 

[Razorguns]

Would a war be better?

Hey someone's gotta find those WMD's! If we don't fight them there, we fight them here! These colors don't bleed!!!

USA! USA! USA!

r

 

[mrplunkey]

We really need another cabinet-level position around food -- "Secretary of Nutrition". Then he can appoint a "Food Czar" and this organization can decide which foods get taxed and which get subsidized. I'm guessing we can start-off with 600,000 federal employees in the department, but we'll need at least a 17% per yaer headcount increase to insure we're investing adequately in such an incredibly important initiative.

We have no choice. The time to act is now. We cannot delay this any longer without putting our economy at risk. We could slip from a recession to something much worse.

 

[gjohnson5]

Ummm...paying a flat tax on a pack of smokes, booze or gas does disproportionately tax the poor as a percentage of income while generating a constant amount of money for the government.

I don't know what a pack of smoke costs but for arguments sake let us make it $1,000.00 a year for a "normal" smoker. That is an inelastic cost, you pay 1k a year whether or not you make 25k a year or 10 million a year....

drug use transcends all tax brackets....
IMHO calling every flat taxes an attack on the poor is misconstrued at best.

 

[manny78]

Other then a cash grab, I never really understood sin taxes. If you don't want it, then ban it.

That would require a mega set of balls which no politician no far ever had. We ban pot but allow cigs, whats the logic behind that ?

 

[inkspot]

That would require a mega set of balls which no politician no far ever had. We ban pot but allow cigs, whats the logic behind that ?

The tax revenue from legalized pot would take a good bite out of our debit.

 

[mrplunkey]

The tax revenue from legalized pot would take a good bite out of our debit.

- Let's assume 50M Americans people smoke pot.
- Let's assume they smoke $2,000 in pot per year
- Let's assume we tax pot at 20%

50M x 2,000 x 20% = $20B in revenue.

After this year, our debt will be in excess of $14T dollars, and our unfunded liabilities (i.e. social security, medicare, etc.) will reach almost $60T.

I don't think taxing pot would get us very far.