Detroit's Fast Food Tax Proposal

Detroit - in an effort to curb its budget problems - is now proposing a special "sin tax" of sorts on fast food. That tax, at least as I read, would be entirely born by the consumers of such food rather than on the purveyors.

That this happens in Detroit bothers me. Within the city limits, as I understand it, Detroit is mostly black and other minorities. Lot of poverty there, including legions of working poor.

Now, McDonald's et al aren't just frequented by the poor. But all too often, the poor have few other choices to go grab a meal. It's relatively easy for me to sit here in rural north central Vermont and sneer that, "Let them take the same money and go buy fruits and veggies and lean meats and make their own sandwiches." Sure, that would be a better choice. But not everyone has a kitchen. Not everyone has the luxury - and yes, for many, it's getting to be a luxury in Bush's economy - to go buy a week's worth of groceries and have it last a week. I've lived with other people, for example, who - after I've go out and work and buy the groceries, consumed those groceries while I went back to work.

Sin taxes that specifically target those least able to pay it never makes a lot of sense to me. Yes, you can argue that these same people create too much of a demand on the health care system when their weight balloons and their health suffers as a result of eating a steady diet of Big Macs and Super-Size fries. But there's a bigger problem here and it doesn't either stop or start with poor people living off Taco Bell and Wendy's menu specials.

So why not apply the tax to the corporations in a way that does NOT allow them to merely pass that cost along to the consumers? Oh wait. I know. Because "we can't hurt businesses or they'll leave."

Great. We have a system in place now where every concession possible is granted to big business, to the detriment of consumers. I don't agree with people suing a restaurant when they get fat off the crappy food. But I also don't agree with a system that specifically avoids putting the sin tax where it's really due.