Fat Tax: Food for Thought?

An intriguing proposal...

Gurinder Shahi


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Should state tax fat people?

By AL SMITH

Posted: Feb. 10, 2008

It seems Gov. Jim Doyle is dismayed that he lacks the revenue needed to create his socialist utopia. I've a potential solution to his budget shortfall that will simultaneously resolve the "obesity crisis" about which we've heard so much.

Let's impose a surtax on fat people. Here's how it works.

Wisconsinites would take their completed tax forms to a local Department Of Revenue office, where they would mount a scale. For every pound over their maximum healthy body weight, as established by the Food and Drug Administration on the basis of height, gender and age, they would pay a penalty of $100.

Those unable or unwilling to pay would be provided an alternative. For every pound overweight, they would have to spend 100 hours on either a treadmill or a stationary bike, rigged to generate electricity for their local power grid.

Exercising, literally, this alternative would not only downsize the grotesquely fat but would produce truly "green and clean" energy of which even the most die-hard environmentalist would approve.

Simply, the more you weigh, the more you'd pay. This concept should delight liberals who demand a progressive tax policy, while the additional funds generated, if applied to deficit reduction, would secure the dour approval of fiscal conservatives.

The surtax would affect equally the powerful and the powerless. The surtax scales, like the scales of justice, would be blind to social status.

Furthermore, lest anyone accuse me of being insensitive to the plight of the seismically challenged, there's an ethical foundation to my proposal.

There are proven links between obesity and disease, including diabetes, heart failure, hypertension and stroke. In short, people fat enough to generate their own weather patterns suffer a higher frequency of illness, require more medical services and, hence, increase health care costs for all of us.

For the overwhelming majority of the truly gargantuan, being overweight is a personal choice. That choice is a combination of taking in way too many calories and burning off way too few and failing to vigorously exercise on a regular basis.

We already use taxation to penalize other people who make unhealthy choices. For example, look at the latest increase in the cigarette tax. The same rationale that applies to other sin taxes should apply to those who voluntarily supersize themselves.

The biggest benefit of the fat tax would be that it would restore the link between personal behavior and consequences without compromising individual freedom. Want to enjoy a daily diet of 8,000 calories? Go ahead, but have your checkbook or running shoes handy.

Now before a horde of club-wielding chubby folk start trundling toward Elm Grove, let me tell you that I honesty don't advocate any such tax. Also, I come from a family of pear-shaped people and don't believe that body type determines worth.

But before you dismiss a fat surtax as deranged fantasy, pause for a moment and think about the hundreds of types of taxes we pay now that didn't exist a few decades ago. What product isn't taxed, or subsidized by taxes, today?

While I've no prejudice against big people, what I do profoundly disdain is the bloated obesity of our state government, which is in screaming need of liposuction. We need to seriously consider eliminating or privatizing a broad range of state services.

We are responsible for our own health, economic security and individual well-being. It's time for us to push ourselves away from the feeding trough of programs that only further empower career politicians and ever-more intrusive bureaucrats.

Al Smith of Elm Grove is a sales and marketing manager and a freelance writer. His e-mail address is thereadypen@aol.com