Meddling in Other People’s Diets Is ‘Fun’ and ‘Inspiring’

That’s the opinion offered by Mark Bittman, who writes an op-ed column in the New York Times. A former food writer, Bittman figures he’s earned his chops as an elite, and is ready to tell the rest of us how we ought to be eating (Michelle Obama, anyone?). Bittman reckons that the best way to get us knuckle-dragging, benighted flyover people to eat “correctly” is to tax “bad” foods, and (who woulda thunk it) subsidize “good” foods.

That does not mean slapping a tax on politically incorrect foods would have no impact on consumption. But the tax would have to be pretty hefty to steer people away from the products they like, and it would be highly regressive. Bittman says that’s not a problem, “since poor people suffer disproportionately from the cost of high-quality, fresh foods,” and “subsidizing those foods would be particularly beneficial to them.” In other words, forcing people to pay more for the food they want is OK, as long as they can pay less for the food they don’t want.

Who will determine what counts as “junk food” and what the appropriate tax rate is? How will the government make sure people are not evading the tax by making their own junk food at home or buying it in the black market? Is it fair or efficient to make lean, healthy people pay a premium for cookies, ice cream, and potato chips because other consumers do not exercise enough to burn off the calories they ingest? Don’t worry, Bittman says: “We have experts who can figure out how ‘bad’ a food should be to qualify, and what the rate should be.”

The fact that his scheme would involve (even more) government intervention in what we do makes it a stupid plan. Any time government is taking money from me for buying what I want to buy, and giving it to someone else so they can buy what the government figures they ought to buy, there’s opportunity for waste, abuse, and corruption. Those “experts” that Bittman speaks of are the same-variety Obamabot noodleheads that are making decisions on how to run the economy – keep that in mind.

The law of unintended consequences tells me that a plan like this will end up with warehouses full of rotting government-subsidized arugula and turnips. I’ll make my own grocery list, thanks.

via Meddling in Other People’s Diets Is ‘Fun’ and ‘Inspiring’ – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine.