Self-anointed food cops like newly minted Centers for Disease Control & Prevention chief Thomas Frieden keep proposing soda and junk food taxes as “solutions” to curb the nation’s growing waistlines (or to fund healthcare legislation). But as we covered before, “lifestyle” taxes will provide negligible benefits—at best—on Americans’ health, and simultaneously set a bad precedent for personal food freedom.
As we told online readers of the Detroit Free Press on Friday, soda taxes not only wouldn’t work, but are part of a broader scheme by activists to make our dinner-table choices for us:
The invasive philosophy behind lifestyle taxes is nothing new to the administration.
Cass Sunstein, recently nominated to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, demonstrates another example of the government butting into Americans’ personal choices. Sunstein co-wrote the book Nudge, which argues that government regulations should intervene and “nudge” us towards making government-approved lifestyle choices—namely, what Sunstein and his ilk decide is best for us.
And while Sunstein suggests incremental “nudges,” it would seem the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new director Thomas Frieden supports knockdown, drag-out fights in the name of turning private choices into a matter of public health.
