yes. we tax darts and alcohol - the medical cost of sugar probably well exceeds all risky outdoor activities by orders of magnitude. ~200 climbing accidents a year vs https://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2013/10/27/sugar-linke...
If this is unpalatable, we could always just tax Coca Cola directly so they can pay for their sugar-induced health crisis.
Okay I'll bite. Why shouldn't we do that? If you're going to 28x your death risk[1] by participating in a purely non-essential activity, why should you be able to externalize the costs to others?
>Perhaps instead of taxing food, we instead tax obesity. Put the responsibility on the individual.
That's actually not a bad idea. We kinda already have that for smoking, in the form of higher insurance premiums for smokers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety#Crash_rates_...
Rock climbers can fall - they also build physical and mental fitness as well as learn to work together with and trust others in a high pressure environment.
Motorcyclists can crash, but they're choosing a form of transport that is far more efficient than a single passenger vehicle in many ways (fuel consumption, parking requirements, traffic impact).
People are already incentivized by nature to sort out on their own what sorts of activities will allow them and their communities to flourish. Let them. We will all be better for it.
Someone mentioned there are 200 climbing accidents a year. Figure out how much that costs, and bake it into the cost of some climbing specific requirement (climbing permits? equipment? gym memberships?). I doubt the cost will be significant. And if it is, maybe we should rethink climbing as an activity.
Same with sugar. Figure out how much added sugar actually costs in terms of health impacts, and tax sugar appropriately. A key point of this strategy is that if you aren't consuming a large amount of e.g. soda, as a parent post claimed, then the tax is negligible anyways.
> Motorcyclists can crash, but they're choosing a form of transport that is far more efficient than a single passenger vehicle in many ways (fuel consumption, parking requirements, traffic impact).
Motorcycles aren't actually that efficient. A prius gets better gas milage than many (most?) motorcycles: https://www.latimes.com/news/la-hy-throttle2apr02-story.html
At least a prius has a chance of carrying more than one person.
A nonpartisan government panel of scientists. I realize with the current political climate in the us, that might be a tall order, but that doesn't immediately mean the idea should be dismissed.
>How will they go about determining whether there are more benefits or costs associated with a particular activity?
Cost benefit analysis based on empirical evidence?
>People are already incentivized by nature to sort out on their own what sorts of activities will allow them and their communities to flourish. Let them. We will all be better for it.
The examples you've listed lie on a spectrum. Indoor rock climbing probably isn't too negative, all things considered. OTOH motorcycles is much harder to defend. You're really going to risk your life to save a few grand a year on gas and parking?
Like I said before none of this is new. The government has already deemed tobacco to be more harmful than good. As such, it's heavily taxed. I don't find it outrageous to tax things that are similarly obviously more harmful than good.
No one should be arbitrating personal activities unless they directly and immediately impact those around you.
(And for the record, I vehemently disagree with sin taxes such as those for alcohol and tobacco. Legally requiring health warnings on the packaging, on the other hand, makes a lot of sense to me. Also note that alcohol and tobacco have much more consistent and severe health impacts than, say, refined sugar.)
You probably have better genes than my family. Lookup endomorph body type or reasons of reduced metabolism.
Evolution has inversed survival of the fattest, so it seems ;)
Somatypes are an ancient pseudoscience, while caloric intake relative to TDEE doesn't lie.
If obesity were taxed, there would be pressure to put loopholes in those taxes. Somatypes and "thrifty genome" and so on would be perfect hooks to hang those loopholes on. Result? Questioning that science becomes politically untenable, at least in some universities and research labs. After all, "the grants just follow the illiction returns", as the poet once said:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1987/9/29/borking-up-the-...
I lost 25 kg. In 6 months, with counting calories and all. But the amount of effort I had to deliver for a normal weight is almost exponentially more
1 hour strength training per day
1 hour cardio in the morning
No alcohol
6 * eating small portions
8 hours of sleep
1 cheat meal per week
Every day, no exceptions.
Regardless of any minor variability in metabolism, you literally cannot get fat from things you don’t put in. This is like high school or middle school physics. This is by far the biggest factor in obesity (consumption).. such that everything else is essentially irrelevant. People with actual metabolism disorders either die or require replacement of enzymes, whether that’s type 1 diabetes or the rarer metabolism disorders.
If you eat high volume foods with calories at or below what you’re expending, you will not get fat, full stop. Starving people aren’t fat.
There are of course behavioral differences that dictate consumption, some of which are genetically influenced, but metabolism has not much to do with it.