Some idiots are thinking that a sin tax on red meat might be a good idea. My reply: Fuck off, slavers. Excerpt:
The idea is still in its infancy and faces a lot of opposition from farming groups, but it’s emerging as a trend in Western Europe, said the research group. If taxes gain traction, it could encourage more people to switch to poultry or plant-based protein and help drive the popularity of meat substitutes.
“The global rise of sugar taxes makes it easy to envisage a similar wave of regulatory measures targeting the meat industry,” Fitch Solutions said. However, “it is highly unlikely that a tax would be implemented anytime soon in the United States or Brazil.”
In Germany, some politicians have proposed raising the sales tax on meat products to fund better livestock living conditions. A poll for the Funke media group showed a majority of Germans, or 56.4 percent, backed the measure, with more than a third calling it “very positive” and some 82 percent of voters for the environmentalist Greens in favor. Similar proposals have been introduced in Denmark and Sweden since 2016, Fitch Solutions said.
Goldsmiths, University of London, announced on Monday that it’ll stop selling beef on campus as part of a push to combat climate change. The decision was met with opposition from the U.K.’s National Farmers Union, which said it was “overly simplistic’’ to single out one food product as a response to global warming.
Not only is this a stupid idea – the very concept of a sin tax is utterly antithetical to a free society. The very concept of liberty – actual, honest individual liberty – requires that free citizens live free of coercion, whether the coercion comes from a street-corner thug or government.
And let’s be honest, that’s what sin taxes are – coercion. The government is using their power to initiate the use of force to change people’s behavior. The only time government has the legitimate right to do that is to prevent one person from harming another physically or financially; to prevent the use of force or fraud by one citizen on another.
The purpose of taxation is to raise what funds various levels of government needs to carry out the (few) legitimate roles of government; namely to take care of a few distributed interests, like national defense, treating with other nations, and establishing currency – that can best be done at that level.
Not to change behavior. Not to reward or punish.
Mind you, the idiocy proposed in the linked article is in Europe. But the United States has long had a wealth (hah) of sin taxes, and still does; only this week Princess Spreading Bull Warren proposed a sin tax on guns.
A sin tax on red meat? There are certainly enough nitwits here that would find it a good idea.
