Posted 11:38 pm Saturday, November 17, 2012
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'Fat tax' will not change attitudes
They say the “law is a teacher.” But sometimes the public has to teach the lawmakers a thing or two. Denmark’s officials have repealed a wide-ranging “fat tax” on products they disapproved of, just a year after it was instituted.
That’s because the Danish public wouldn’t stand for it.
“Citing a harmful effect on businesses and consumer buying power, lawmakers in Denmark have repealed the so-called fat tax, which was charged on foods high in saturated fats, after just one year,” the New York Times reports. “In a related decision, the Danish tax ministry said it was canceling plans for a sugar tax. ‘The fat tax is one of the most criticized we had in a long time,’ Mette Gjerskov, minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, said on Saturday during a news conference in Copenhagen, the day the repeal was announced.”
Expressing his clear disappointment, he added, “Now we have to try to improve public health by other means.”
There are two points to make here. First, government can use taxation (and of course legislation) to influence behaviors — this is where the concept of the law as a teacher comes from.
But government is pretty poor at changing attitudes. Did Denmark succeed in raising the prices of fatty foods? Sure. But it didn’t succeed in changing the preferences of individual Danes.
“Danes switched to cheaper cheeses or traveled to neighboring countries such as Germany to stock up on butter, cheese and other foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fat,” the Chicago Sun-Times explains. “One German supermarket reported that half the cars in its parking lot last week had Danish license plates. The tax didn’t do much to stop plump and not-so-plump Danes from chowing down on cheese or sausage. The politicians did manage to enrage Denmark’s citizens by piling an extra tax on something Danes consider to be gifts of nature, namely butter.”
Danes are no more obese than Americans, and economists say that in the U.S., 9.1 percent of all health care costs are obesity-related. It’s a serious problem.
Expressing his clear disappointment, he added, “Now we have to try to improve public health by other means.”
There are two points to make here. First, government can use taxation (and of course legislation) to influence behaviors — this is where the concept of the law as a teacher comes from.
But government is pretty poor at changing attitudes. Did Denmark succeed in raising the prices of fatty foods? Sure. But it didn’t succeed in changing the preferences of individual Danes.
“Danes switched to cheaper cheeses or traveled to neighboring countries such as Germany to stock up on butter, cheese and other foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fat,” the Chicago Sun-Times explains. “One German supermarket reported that half the cars in its parking lot last week had Danish license plates. The tax didn’t do much to stop plump and not-so-plump Danes from chowing down on cheese or sausage. The politicians did manage to enrage Denmark’s citizens by piling an extra tax on something Danes consider to be gifts of nature, namely butter.”
Danes are no more obese than Americans, and economists say that in the U.S., 9.1 percent of all health care costs are obesity-related. It’s a serious problem.
But as the Denmark experiment shows, it’s not enough to simply tax large sodas and fatty foods. Attitudes must be changed. And that happens at an individual level, not en masse through legislation and taxes handed down from on high.
Efforts such as Tyler’s Fit City Challenge are more effective precisely because they’re more personal. We can best fight obesity by coming alongside a friend or a co-worker, not by supporting punitive, impersonal taxes on butter and bacon.
A second lesson to be drawn from Denmark is that once a new revenue stream is opened for government, it can be hard to cut off the flow. The Danish government liked the estimated $216 million raised in that first year by the fat tax. And officials say they need the revenue, so while the tax is repealed, income taxes will be raised to compensate for the “loss.”
That’s an important lesson as we near the “fiscal cliff” nationally, and as the Texas Legislature prepares to address budget shortfalls. A new tax is rarely a temporary measure.
Efforts such as Tyler’s Fit City Challenge are more effective precisely because they’re more personal. We can best fight obesity by coming alongside a friend or a co-worker, not by supporting punitive, impersonal taxes on butter and bacon.
A second lesson to be drawn from Denmark is that once a new revenue stream is opened for government, it can be hard to cut off the flow. The Danish government liked the estimated $216 million raised in that first year by the fat tax. And officials say they need the revenue, so while the tax is repealed, income taxes will be raised to compensate for the “loss.”
That’s an important lesson as we near the “fiscal cliff” nationally, and as the Texas Legislature prepares to address budget shortfalls. A new tax is rarely a temporary measure.
