Food Taxes: The Mathematics of Health and Tyranny. Gareth Morgan - Fascowerist.

Food taxes and subsidies will probably protect health & reduce inequalities – but the devil is in the detail http://t.co/WG6tmYU8hn
— Gareth Morgan (@garethmorgannz) October 10, 2013

@garethmorgannz A tax on food choice is a tax on choice, period. It's an attaxk on freedom. Go away busy-body.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) October 10, 2013

@MarkHubbard33 and the tax on booze and cigs? Why should I pay your health bills from your poor choices bludger? Taxes help you think
— Gareth Morgan (@garethmorgannz) October 10, 2013

I won’t bore you with the rest of the exchange, but the mathematics of food fascism and alcohol wowserism, let’s call it fascowerism – not to be confused with radshitzyism - is interesting.

My argument against food taxes and alcohol excises will always be the philosophical one of my first tweet: a tax on food choice is a tax on choice, period; it's an attaxk on freedom. But it appears Gareth is arguing his case from cost considerations: he doesn’t want to pay for bludgers, thus will restrict the freedom of a whole society to achieve what he sees as the worthy miserly benevolence of fascowerism. And by the bye, because he is incapable of seeing beyond his own importance, the irony will be lost on Gareth that I will be able to afford to eat and drink what I want, despite his tax lust.

A free man knows that the answer is not to tax all of us, but to make individuals responsible for their choices via the burden of their own health costs, but statists have an innate belief in their own superiority and your stupidity, thus will never be able to resist the patronising answer that puts them in your house, in this case every meal time, sitting around your table to lecture you from chick pea entrée (*) to fresh fruit salad dessert. That Gareth is convinced of his own superiority is evidenced by the arrogance in his posting to me - whom he doesn’t know from Kim Jong-un - assuming me a bludger, because Gareth is the only one working, right?

So let’s look at the underlying case for costs Gareth is making. I don’t have to research and answer any of the below questions. But Gareth who wants to raise the cost of living for all of us, including, I suspect disproportionately, a large grouping of society who can least afford the higher cost of food, has to answer these if he wants to make his case for fascowerism on grounds of savings to the taxpayer.

Surmise that by taxing food society ends up with healthier, longer living individuals. Okay, but what is the actual change in health costs? Is it a saving?

People who die earlier of obesity related diseases may well impact on health costs for a much lesser period of time than longer living healthier people who are still going to die of something, as well as being around longer to incur injury or disease, the latter of which with their healthier immune systems they might keep surviving from to be admitted into the health system with something else. Amateur prognosticating, yes, but I think the logic unavoidable surely.

Also, some of the obesity related diseases such as diabetes are no doubt expensive because their duration is extended, however, some of the related diseases such as coronary, which without any facts I’m going to assume to be the bigger ailment from inappropriate eating and drinking, oftentimes will have very quick outcomes. Perhaps just the cost of the ambulance to Accident and Emergency. Whereas aren’t healthier, lingering people more likely to die from longer, lingering diseases such as cancer meaning more public health bedtime, drugs and salaries?

So, cognisant of the trade-offs, are there any studies that indicate what the likely change in the cost of healthcare is from people eating healthier and living longer? It may not be that significant, or even savings at all?

And if that is not problematic enough, then the same ethic that leads a society to universal healthcare, also leads to universal superannuation, such as we have in New Zealand. People living longer means a higher superannuation cost. Indeed, a much higher superannuation cost,  remembering it is the cost of superannuation that is in big part responsible for collapsing the economies, thus societies of Europe and the US currently and into the future.

Given this, the algebra becomes:

Taxpayer savings in healthcare of healthier eating = savings in health costs (this could be negative) - increased cost of superannuation.

I can easily envisage this equation ending up a negative number, thus a cost on the taxpayer.

I love a drink or four, but I eat healthy. It would be over a year since we’ve had fish and chips or a take-away, plus I walk twice a day, and kayak when we’re in the Sounds, so I recommend healthy eating and exercise for a good life, but I’m not so arrogant as to impose my values or a joyless fascowerism on anyone else. So on the level of taxpayer savings that Gareth has cast his net, does anyone have any figures to slot into my equation above? Is he even correct on the brutal but necessarily dispassionate level of cost?

If he is wrong in even this, that would be the sugar laden icing on the cake, and I’ll drink copiously to that.

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(*) This comment was said for effect, not in honesty. Funnily enough, I love chick peas. With my Friday night bottle/s of wine I eat a can of chick peas rather than a packet of crisps. Stunningly, I did that without a tax on crisps. Albeit I eat my chick peas in the knowledge that like soy beans they’re probably genetically modified, thus will kill me.