Yes For Fat Tax!

Fat Tax Benefits

Ok, before all your porkers get upset and begin devising plans to kill us by sitting on us, you need to read this section to see that the Fat Tax is really beneficial to all Americans, whether you're a fatty or not.

There are 3 primary benefits to the Fat Tax:

1. Positive Behavioral Change For Fat People
2. Subsidies For Healthy Living
3. Economic Benefit

Let's take a look at each of these areas separately.

Positive Behavioral Change For Fat People

At the end of the What Is The Fat Tax? section we hit on a very key point - voluntary weight loss just does not work. There is plenty of evidence supporting this, such as: the increase of overweight and obesity prevalence in the United States despite increased private and goverment spending on weight loss programs, drugs, operations, etc.

Ok so? So...the reason voluntary weight loss has a high failure rate is due to lack of self control and motivation, something the Fat Tax addresses directly through basic reinforcement methods:

As quoted from Wikipedia.org:

• Positive reinforcement changes the surroundings by adding a stimulus that increases the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future. Some things which can generally act as positive reinforcers include food, recreational drugs, direct stimulation of pleasure centers in the brain and conditioned reinforcers such as money.
  
• Negative reinforcement changes the surroundings by removing an aversive stimulus - such as turning off a painful electric current or removing a conditioned reinforcer such as changing the channel during commercials. There are two types of negative reinforcement. Escape conditioning occurs when the aversive stimulus has already begun, and the behavior terminates it. Examples include scratching an itch or hitting the snooze button on an alarm clock. Avoidance conditioning occurs when the behavior allows an aversive stimuli to be avoided before it starts. Examples include eating to avoid hunger, and taking an alternate route to avoid a traffic jam.

The Fat Tax encompasses both positive and negative reinforcement to affect long-term behavorial change among America's fatties.

Subsidies For Healthy Living

This section is for all you fatties out there getting ready to send us hate mail stating some fat people can't help being fat due to medical problems.

If we receive any mail like that, you'll receive an response to the effect: "Lift the fat rolls off your eyes and read the 'Subsidies For Healthy Living' section on the Fat Tax Benefits page."

Having said that, we understand certain medical conditions can cause a person to become overweight or obese. Not to fear the Fat Tax is here!!!!!!

All tax revenue generated from the Fat Tax will be used to subsidize or completely pay for medications, operations, and nutrition classes that help promote weight loss and healthy lifestyles. This means that medications like Levothyroxine that treat hypothyroidism, gastric bypass surgeries, and hospital/certified nutrionist (sorry, no Jenny Craig) sponsored classes will be paid for in part or full by Fat Tax revenues.

Economic Benefit

The economic benefit of the Fat Tax is tremendous but will not happen overnight. The economic benefit is heavily dependent upon the first two benefits. However, once the behavioral changes and subsidies for healthy living "kick in" we can expect to see the following:

• Lower healthcare costs and insurance premiums - Healthier Americans leads to lower health risks and healthcare costs which leads to lower insurance premiums.
  
• Lower taxes - Medicare and Medicaid currently pick up 1/2 the healthcare costs of overweight and obese Americans. In 2002 this figure equaled roughly $4.2 billion. The federal government is in charge of Medicare and Medicaid and gets the money to operate through - taxes.
  
• Lower costs of goods and services - Every wonder why a size 42 waist, 30 inseam pair of pants cost the same as a 34/32? Or how about a plane ticket for someone that weighs 500 lbs is the same as someone who weighs 200 lbs? As americans get healthier their size and weight will decrease therefore lowering the costs of products and services.
  
• Higher productivity - Healthier Americans means less bed time and sick days which leads to higher productivity. It also means you don't have to pick up the slack for your tubby cubemate.