Observation #68 The Fat Tax

I teach law to teenagers. Well, I try. One of the early concepts studied in the course is natural law vs. positive law. A natural law philosopher believes that law comes from nature. If there were no laws we would be ok because people know right from wrong. The Jimminy Cricket would warn us if we were not acting in accordance with the law of nature. Some natural law believers take more of divine approach. God or some version of, provides us with the rules to live by. Positive law theorists believe that law dictates our behaviour. The reason why we don’t kill people is because it is against the law not because it is wrong. This is a simplification of course. We need laws to shape our decisions. We need to legislate morality because too much is left to chance with natural law. I always ask my class, “If there was no law against murder, would you kill someone?” Scary answers sometimes.

Can we legislate people to live a healthier lifestyle? In Denmark, they just passed a “fat tax”. They have placed a charge on any food that contains more than 2.3% saturated fat. We, in North America, of course have already tried to use a positive law approach to healthiness. We heavily tax cigarettes and alcohol. They are called sin taxes. Some argue that the healthcare costs incurred by people who are obese or smokers or alcoholics or all of the above need to be balanced with collecting more revenue. Some people see this as an additional burden on the poor. Do poor people eat worse than richer people? They probably work longer hours for less, making fast and fatty foods a more convenient option. Additionally, there is that cycle of poverty that has contributed to poor nutritional education and genetic pre-dispositions.

I’m not sure legislating healthiness is the best approach. You can’t ban butter. Imagine knocking on the door of a speakeasy, “I need two pounds, man.” Maybe if you adjusted people’s income tax based on their weight, maybe people would be more motivated to live a healthier lifestyle. Weight can be an abitrary number sometimes too. Maybe a positive law approach isn’t the way. It’s too bad natural law doesn’t take care of this. It should.