OUR VIEW: A junk food tax erodes freedom

If we forget about the value of freedom and the joy of making choices for ourselves, it’s easy to admire Gov. Bill Ritter’s desire to eliminate a state sales tax exemption on candy and pop. After all, junk food rots teeth and makes some people fat and diabetic.

A primary tool of top-down social engineering is the imposition of taxes on activities government leaders would like to discourage. If government wants to discourage the burning of fossil fuels, it imposes higher taxes on oil and gas. This raises the price, and a price is nothing other than a control valve. In Economics 101 we learn that raising a price slows the consumption and trade of a product or service, while lowering a price increases consumption and trade.

Just as government is able to discourage activities with taxes, it has the option of encouraging activities with tax exemptions and rebates. The government wants couples to have kids, for example, and children come at great initial cost to their parents. To encourage reproduction, therefore, the government offers a substantial tax break for each child under a couple’s care. To encourage philanthropy, the government offers exemptions to charities and churches and those who fund them. It’s all social engineering, driven by government rather than a free market.

In Colorado, state government wants a slice of revenue from every financial transaction between buyer and seller. It achieves this with a sales tax. Government does not desire, however, to impede consumption of food. It does not want a tax on nutrition supplies even the poorest among us need in order to survive. Therefore, the state exempts taxes on most food products bought for consumption at home. The food exemption includes candy and pop, perhaps incidentally.

Ritter believes state government needs more money. He would also like to slow the consumption of candy and pop. Ritter, after all, formerly ran a nutrition center in Zambia, and he knows how excessive consumption of sugary treats may lead to tooth decay, obesity, and diabetes. By eliminating the tax exemption for unhealthy treats, the state would generate revenue and discourage consumption of processed sugar in one fell swoop.

At times like these, people who value freedom for freedom’s sake must speak up for junk food junkies. Good nutrition is important; freedom is many times more important. That means one can live as a health-obsessed, organic-only vegan — on a crusade to improve youth nutrition — and oppose the governor’s proposal for a junk food tax that makes it harder to choose candy and pop.

Those who don’t consume junk food, and think they’re immune from taxes imposed upon personal choices, should consider a controversy unfolding in Missouri. State officials, looking for any source of revenue they can find, have begun collecting sales taxes on yoga classes. Missouri officials consider yoga a form of recreation, while a growing number of yoga enthusiasts and instructors in Missouri have begun insisting yoga is religious — thus exempt from taxes.

Fortunately, Colorado residents are wise enough to understand the ramifications of quick and easy changes to tax policies. In 1992 they amended the state constitution to forbid just the kind of social engineering Gov. Ritter wants to impose. The same law protects yoga, and all other activities, from new taxes.

The Colorado Constitution’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights requires an election for: “a tax policy change directly causing a net tax revenue gain to any district.” The law defines “district” as “the state or any local government, excluding enterprises.” That’s pretty clear. Eliminating an exemption is nothing other than a tax policy change resulting in a revenue gain.

Gov. David Patterson, D-New York, walked away from an idea to impose taxes on soft drinks because opponents convinced him it would hit the poor hardest.

Gov. Ritter should follow Gov. Patterson’s lead and abandon this idea. The tax would raise prices only for people who derive joy from choosing cheap junk food; it would do nothing to help them afford or appreciate Bok Choy from Whole Foods. It’s an unfair control tax, and nothing more. View it not as a challenge to junk food, but as an affront to our freedom to choose.