Have At It: Would a fast-food tax help or hurt the poor?

By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

Physicians swear an oath to, first, do no harm.

Politicians and bureaucrats do not.

Perhaps they should.

It’s interesting how often government programs designed to help the poor don’t. And it is sad how many of the same initiatives, as well-intentioned as they may be, end up hurting the nation’s most vulnerable.

Case in point, the so-called “sin taxes” stuck on certain goods and services, according to an economic expert on the subject.

Adam Hoffer, assistant economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, has written extensively on the subject.

Most recently, Hoffer and fellow academicians took on the war on fast-food, within the broader fat fatwa, as Wisconsin Reporter has billed it. Arguably the most prominent warrior on the junk food front is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose big soda ban recently was upended by the state’s appeals court.

In a USA Today op-ed piece,  Hoffer asserts targeted taxation or bans on fatty, salty, sugary and preserved-filled foods may be designed to go after America’s epidemic obesity problem, but it’s hurting the people who can least afford such “sin taxes” the most.

It’s a tricky issue, particularly in the Obamacare era.