In No Fat Tax, Russell Roberts shares a surprising economic fact:
But if obesity causes health problems, doesn’t that justify government’s involvement? After all, if we taxpayers have to foot the bill for some of those higher health care costs, don’t we have the right to intervene in each others lives?This argument has been used to justify the on-going and growing regulation of tobacco. It’s actually a lie. Smoking causes people to die earlier and relatively quickly, saving enough in Social Security expenditures to overwhelm the health care outlays. That actually justifies subsidizing tobacco rather than taxing it if you think that we should base public policy based only on the impact on government spending.
Smoking causes people to die earlier and relatively quickly, saving enough in Social Security expenditures to overwhelm the health care outlays. Crazy.