The Irresponsible Water Tax
As of January 1, 2008, the city of Chicago is taxing water bottles. I just found out. I am so outraged. The obesity epidemic is plain in sight. The “your momma’s so fat…” jokes aren’t even jokes anymore. They are the truth and yet Chicago legislators think that it is socially responsible to tax water when most parents already prefer soda and juice over water because the sugar spiked drinks are much cheaper. I think there is no faster way to change the trend of bulging wastelines by changing the price of soda and juice: make them more expensive than water. Much of the lay public doesn’t know that pop is so bad for them, that pop has 13 teaspoons of sugar which means bad teeth, health problems, diabetes, and leg amputations. However, much of the lay public does know that buying the cheaper drink is healthy for their wallet. The government needs to cater to that if they had any moral ethics in helping people become healthier. I am going to contact medical societies and my state legislators about this awful tax. Change will be difficult, of course, because there’s also no faster way to lose campaign funding and resources than to hit the big pop and juice companies where it hurts, in the flashy greens. I’m going to try anyway. It’s a vicious cycle. People stop drinking water and buy pop because the government decided to tax water bottles to fill it’s budget. Then people get sicker and need more money for healthcare from public aid and once again the government will need to increase taxes to fill the gap in budgetting healthcare needs. They tax cigarettes. Why not pop?
