taxes

Mexico and Hungary tried junk food taxes — and they seem to be working

i've been saying this forever!! except that i take it one step further in i think that the money from the junk food tax should be used to subsidize healthy food (leafy greens, for instance, or food stamps if they made junk food ineligible).

one other tax i'm SO in favor of is a luxury tax! and interestingly enough, the US used to have one:
"In November 1991, The United States Congress enacted a luxury tax and was signed by the former President George H.W. Bush. The goal of the tax was to generate additional revenues to reduce the federal budget deficit. This tax was levied on material goods such as watches, expensive furs, boats, yachts, private jet planes, jewelry and expensive cars. Congress enacted a 10 percent luxury surcharge tax on boats over $100,000, cars over $30,000, aircraft over $250,000, and furs and jewelry over $10,000. The federal government estimated that it would raise $9 billion in excess revenues over the following five-year period. However, only two years after its imposition, in August 1993, the Congress decided to eliminate the “luxury tax” since it did not achieve its main objective. However, the luxury automobile tax remained in effect until 2002.^[3] A luxury tax still applies in some states for products deemed unnecessary or nonessential, a category in which non-luxury products often fall into.^[4]" from wikipedia

obviously the numbers would need to be changed, i mean, $30k may have bought you a luxury car in 1991 but certainly not in 2018, ha! the thing about these taxes too, is that you can set the bar quite high, say a car qualify for a luxury tax only if it is over $80k, has two axles, and weighs less than 5000 lbs. so that'll exclude any big rigs and really heavy passenger cars (which would probably be for commercial use anyway)