Mediaboss Marketing

TUSCALOOA, Ala. Proponents of an American Nanny State have a plan to improve your health: Tax sugar and junk food so you will eat less of it.

These plans for bureaucrats and politicians to remake your diet are bad news for four reasons.

First, it is no ones business but yours what you eat. The freedom to eat a slice of apple pie might not sound quite as stirring as freedom of speech, but the ability to choose how to live our lives is the most fundamental freedom. What you eat is no ones business but yours.

Second, even if the government has a role to play in guiding our dietary choices, efforts at restructuring Americans lives via the tax code are fundamentally flawed.

This strategy has given us a tax system of unimaginable complexity: The Internal Revenue Code is almost 10 million words long. The leading publication for tax professionals takes up nine feet of shelf space. And that doesnt count the tens of thousands of pages of laws and regulations concerning sales, use, property, excise, and other taxes levied by government.

Taxes need to be simple and easy to administer. As tax laws get fatter, they clog our economic arteries and stifle growth. Trying to fine tune Americans diets via a junk food tax will further fatten the tax laws, and the wallets of accountants and tax lawyers.

If there are any Americans unaware that sugar and potato chips are fattening despite our $35 billion per year diet industry we dont need a tax to enlighten them, just some public service announcements.

Third, the governments record on dietary control is problematic. The federal government has been involved in the sugar market since the War of 1812. Nanny Staters promise that this time theyll get things right, but if they havent managed to do so in 200 years, why should we believe them now?

The details of official rules are written in back rooms in Congress and government agencies. When those details are drafted, those best able to influence the results are the lawyers and lobbyists for special interest groups.

For sugar, thats the manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup and the 17 domestic sugar cane producers who reap millions of dollars annually under our current agricultural subsidies and sugar tariffs.

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Morriss: Attack of the Nanny State