In Brief:
If Americans were paid to eat less and exercise more they might be motivated to lose some weight-and save us a bundle on health care-says Dr. Barry M. Popkin, director of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Interdisciplinary Center for Obesity.. "From a societal standpoint, if a third to a half of Americans weren't so fat, the idea of the government providing tax incentives for the obese to eat less and exercise more wouldn't be so controversial," Dr. Popkin told Big Think, "In 1955, if you'd thought about taxing cigarettes you would have been run off the planet. Popkin proposes two possible ways of using taxes to motivate people to lose weight. Popkin admits that taxing bad behavior is different and more challenging than placing a tax on consumers products like cigarettes and alcohol, but he says there are technologies available that could enable the government to monitor obese people's diets and exercise. "We have devices that we could put on your throat that could measure your swallows," Popkin explains. If the idea of asking obese people to prove that they're exercising and eating well, or else face a tax, sounds far too Orwellian, Popkin's second suggestion is to make all Americans pay an additional flat-tax of, say, $100 a person per year, to build a pool of money which is then returned to people who either have a BMI lower than 30 or have somehow proven that they're dieting and exercising. Popkin points to corporate weight-loss programs, in which employees are rewarded with cash for partaking in exercising, dieting, and smoking-cessation programs, as an example of how there are already versions of what might be considered a "fat tax" being administered not just in America, but around the globe..
