Yes For Fat Tax!

I'm not sure if you're serious with this but a couple roadblocks I can see... 

To be taken seriously, you need a different name.  Unfortunately and respective to our political culture, fat is a very lose term and so a "fat tax" is going to be considered unacceptable in most instances.  It's all about wording- No one wants to be "for killing babies" but it sounds ok to be "pro-choice"

 Furthermore, for those who are borderline, you're going to possibly encourage health issues like eating disorders which are more of a threat to society than obesity.

 Economical gains are long-term and a rather hard sell.  To change or incorporate such a standard in all retail outlets would require more out of retail stores than their immediate gain.  Most companies don't use their own POS program but they are tailored to their company, this means it will cost them millions of dollars to add it to their POS system.

Beyond that there is the issue of inherent obesity.  Food isn't the only reason that people are fat, it can be traced back to genes and heritage.  Therefore, to them it is also unfair to have a biased "fat tax"

Those are just some issues that I see off the top of my head and Sam told me I had to post something.

 As far as the website goes, I think the layout is well done and I didn't run into any functionality issues.
 

i didn't tell you, you HAD to post something =D i just wanted your feedback on here so other people could see what you had to say too =D

First of all we are 100% serious about this tax. The government can tax alcohol and tobacco so why not fatty foods?

Look at these stats (from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for the United States:

• Smoking deaths per year: 400,000
• Obesity deaths per year: 365,000
• Alcohol deaths per year: 75,766

As you can see obesity falls just short of the smoking death toll yet nearly 5 times the death toll of alcohol. The alcohol related death toll figure would have even a greater disparity if you discounted the loss of lives caused by drunk driving and other incidents.

Regarding the name, if you Google "fat tax" you will find other taxes with the same purpose under the same name. I agree "fat" carries a negative connotation but what else could we call it? Anti-lipid tax? Pro-weight loss tax? I don't believe there to be a positive name for such a tax.

Furthermore, if you read through the web site, you'll notice the tax has been defined objectively rather than subjectively. We use scientific methods to define who are fat and by what degree as well as which foods would be included under the fat tax.

I spent over a year of my life working intimately with POS systems for a fortune 500 company, so I can speak pretty convincingly on that subject. I agree, most companies use major POS programs such as Aloha and Micros - that's not to say you won't find some "home grown" variants. If the POS system is designed properly, implementing a tax is a very minor tax. Now, the only problem would be creating the interface to the FTCD. I'm not even sure the FTCD is the right way to calculate the BMI.

I also agree with you that certain people are predisposed to becoming obese. As I hope you read on the site, the Fat Tax would provide economic relief for those people in the form of subsidies for treatments. I'm not a doctor so I can't enumerate the exact treatments or how much money would be allocated to these people, but I am saying the concept is sound.

 That's all for now.

Ryan:

First of all we are 100% serious about this tax. The government can tax alcohol and tobacco so why not fatty foods?

Look at these stats (from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for the United States:

• Smoking deaths per year: 400,000
• Obesity deaths per year: 365,000
• Alcohol deaths per year: 75,766

As you can see obesity falls just short of the smoking death toll yet nearly 5 times the death toll of alcohol. The alcohol related death toll figure would have even a greater disparity if you discounted the loss of lives caused by drunk driving and other incidents.

I think those figures are interesting, but what context are they considered in?

For example. As you say, obesity accounts for almost as many deaths per year in the US as smoking does. To get a fair perspective on the dangers of obesity however, I think it's important to consider the following:

a) How many people in the US are "smokers" and regularly smoke

compared to

 b) How many people in the US have access to Fat Taxable food which is excessively fatty or bad for their health and eat it regularly

 

I would argue that, whilst the obesity death statistic is - taken on it's own - high. If you compare it to smoking which, I would imagine, far far fewer people in the US regularly partake in, yet more of them who do end up dead, it is not nearly as high as it might seem. How many smokers are there in the US? And how many obese people are there? There are surely many more obese people than there are smokers. If that is true, then, as a percentage, the death statistic for obese people is going to be considerably lower than for smokers, even if as a statistical number it's not far behind it.

I can't help but think also that the whole movement for fat tax seems to be a quick way of penalising fat or otherwise overweight people for eating too much of the wrong thing, instead of investigating the reasons for why that is actually happening. As just one example, many fat people are poor people, and part of the reason they are fat is because high fat content food that has poor nutritional value is often much more cheaply available or far more conveniently available than the more nutritionally balanced alternative. So then, you whack a tax on these people who then can't afford those foods either. Maybe they won't be able to afford as much and then will consequently eat far less and lose weight. To me though, that seems like something of a blunt strategy as opposed to a thoughtful one.

 And of course, finally, the whole "economic relief" statement - the specifics of which are shrugged off on the grounds of you not being a doctor. Thing is, your not being a Doctor hasn't stopped you from endorsing this tax or the specifics of how it'll apply. So, apparently, you don't have the medical knowledge regarding obesity or fatness to be able to demonstrate how you'll help people who it might unfairly affect, yet you're able to endorse it affecting people in any case... that doesn't make much sense to me, and as an argument, I don't think it carries much weight - if you'll pardon the pun.