{"id":309610,"date":"2010-02-10T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerfreedom.com:\/\/5520ba276335aff75aa5852fc03f7289"},"modified":"2010-02-10T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T00:00:00","slug":"personal-responsibility-still-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/309610","title":{"rendered":"Personal Responsibility Still Ahead?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, you’ve probably heard about the new White House initiative to combat childhood obesity<\/a>, spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama. It’s a noble goal. In anticipation of this announcement, Forbes<\/i> columnist and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Karlyn Bowman took a look on Monday at where the public stands regarding obesity, and <\/span>found that Americans overwhelmingly support personal responsibility<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

People see personal responsibility as key. In the CBS poll, 89% said obesity can mostly be controlled with diet and exercise, while 7% said it is out of our hands. This emphasis may be one reason Americans are not enthusiastic about new taxes on unhealthful behaviors.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a Harris Interactive\/Tax Foundation online poll from early 2009 on general tax attitudes, 36% favored a tax on sugary drinks, while 58% were opposed to it. Twenty-three percent favored a tax on foods with salt (71% were opposed), and 39% for junk food in general (56% opposed). On all three items, the opposition was strong: Of the 58% who were opposed to the tax on sugary drinks, for example, 41% were strongly opposed….<\/span><\/p>\n

Other recent surveys have tied these taxes to health care reform costs, and this impacts the numbers. In an April 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 52% favored increasing taxes on unhealthy snack foods to "help pay for health care reform and provide coverage for more of the uninsured," but a strong 46% were opposed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ending serves as a warning that Americans are more willing to support taxes on “bad” foods if they’re couched as “helping” health care reform. And while <\/span>the Los Angeles Times<\/span><\/i> reported last week that soft drink taxes are <\/a>dead<\/a> federally<\/a>, soft drink tax crusader Kelly Brownell<\/a> brags that “We’re getting<\/span> contacted by a new city or state almost every day<\/a> who are seriously thinking about the idea of a tax.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The political pendulum is certainly swinging. But with the vast majority of Americans believing in personal responsibility when it comes to weight control, the ploys of self-anointed “food police” who <\/span>practice social engineering via the tax code face an uphill battle.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now, you’ve probably heard about the new White House initiative to combat childhood obesity, spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama. It’s a noble goal. In anticipation of this announcement, Forbes columnist and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Karlyn Bowman took a look on Monday at where the public stands regarding obesity, and found that Americans overwhelmingly support personal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4054,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4054"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}