Fat tax

via lessworkmorelurk.com/

Lesley Deverrall at NewstalkZB reports

Samoa Air says a controversial new policy that calculates a passenger’s fare based on their weight and the weight of their luggage is proving successful.

The airline introduced the policy in January, saying it would make flying safer.

You have to love the fact that this is done in Samoa.  It took some real courage to do this when a fair few of your customers are built like a brick outhouse.

Read more »

Back in 2011 I blogged about the new fat tax in Denmark and said at the time it wouldn’t work.

Unfortunately the Danes experiment won’t work because they are taxing the wrong things. Instead of taxing foods with fat in them they need to be taxing things with carbohydrates in them, that is a much broader tax base to start with and secondly will actually address the issue.

You would think that after 50 years of telling people to eat less fat to get thinner we would have a whole heap of thin people, instead we have the exact opposite with the high focus on carbohydrate rich foods. The obesity epidemic is being caused by the health professionals forcing us to carb load.

I was right…it didn’t work and is now it is being repealed…though that won’t stop Labour and the Greens adopting similar stupid policies:

Citing a harmful effect on businesses and consumer buying power, lawmakers in Denmark have repealed the so-called fat tax, which was charged on foods high in saturated fats, after just one year.

In a related decision, the Danish tax ministry said it was canceling plans for a sugar tax. “The fat tax is one of the most criticized we had in a long time,” Mette Gjerskov, minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, said on Saturday during a news conference in Copenhagen, the day the repeal was announced.

“Now we have to try to improve public health by other means.”

Fat bastards just need to stop stuffing food in their gobs.

A correspondent has just snapped these photos of the rare Heathrow Seat Hippo. Dr. Cat Pause will no doubt have an orgasm over such a behemoth rolling through Heathrow Airport.

Literally taking up 6 seats. Maybe 7. I think her back fat rolls have sucked one seat up.

Hopefully Matt’s cellmate has hooks as meaty as these…it will keep him warm at night.

It has multiple stomachs and frequently rolls over. Some chair arms hidden under that mass

One chair arm has just been released back into the wild after being trapped for god knows how long, I suspect there are more being held captive though.

Seriously though…people like that traveling should be charged excess baggage for their own bodies.

ᔥ Reason.com

There is constant talk of a tac on foodstuffs to combat obesity, rather than taxing the fat bastard who scoffed the food stuffs. Mike Bloomberg reckons New Yorkers want a fat tax on soda. This is an illogical path based on some pretty common metrics.

Bloomberg also plans to exempt fruit juices, which typically have more calories per ounce than sugar-sweetened soda, and milk-based drinks. So while New Yorkers won’t be allowed to order 20 ounces of Coke (240 calories), they will still be able to get a 20-ounce Starbucks whole-milk latte (290 calories) or even a 24-ounce Double Chocolaty Frappuccino (520 calories), not to mention a 20-ounce milkshake (about 800 calories).

In other words, Bloomberg is right when he says there will still be lots of opportunities for New Yorkers to consume large quantities of high-calorie drinks, which means he does not even have a sound paternalistic justification for his meddling. He is screwing with people not to protect them from their own foolish choices but just to create the appearance of doing so. Or maybe just because he can.

Coming ready or not, the fat tax:

I think it is something that we should look at,” he said in an interview with Five Live. “The problem in the past when people have looked at using the tax system in this way is the impact it can have on people on low incomes. But frankly, do we have a problem with the growing level of obesity? Yes.
“I am worried about the costs to the health service, the fact that some people are going to have shorter lives than their parents.”

Mr Cameron said obesity was now on the verge of overtaking smoking and drinking as the “biggest health challenge”. “Don’t rule anything out, but let’s look at the evidence and let’s look at the impact on families,” he said.

It is coming because it needs to.

Denmark is getting one. And for good reason. If someone is fat they cost all tax payers a lot of extra money because they eat too much food and don’t exercise enough.

Denmark is to impose the world’s first “fat tax” in a drive to slim its population and cut heart disease.

The move may increase pressure for a similar tax in the UK, which suffers from the highest levels of obesity in Europe.

Starting from this Saturday, Danes will pay an extra 30p on each pack of butter, 8p on a pack of crisps, and an extra 13p on a pound of mince, as a result of the tax.

The tax is expected to raise about 2.2bn Danish Krone (£140m), and cut consumption of saturated fat by close to 10pc, and butter consumption by 15pc.

“It’s the first ever fat-tax,” said Mike Rayner, Director of Oxford University’s Health Promotion Research Group, who has long campaigned for taxes on unhealthy foods.

Problems with obesity are going to cost the New Zealand taxpayer billions, and it is time we had an honest debate about making fat bastards pay for their lifestyle choices.

Lets broaden the tax base by taxing fat bastard food and not using quite so much income tax to fund keeping fat bastards alive. Unfortunately the Danes experiment won’t work because they are taxing the wrong things. Instead of taxing foods with fat in them they need to be taxing things with carbohydrates in them, that is a much broader tax base to start with and secondly will actually address the issue.

You would think that after 50 years of telling people to eat less fat to get thinner we would have a whole heap of thin people, instead we have the exact opposite with the high focus on carbohydrate rich foods. The obesity epidemic is being caused by the health professionals forcing us to carb load.