This has been making the headlines over the last week and I wanted to weigh in on the topic with my 2 cents.
Apparently a number of countries have been placing taxes on sugar laden drinks and other products in an effort to curb consumption. They say they're to reel in the growing epidemic of diabetes that's said to be linked to people consuming too much of the sweet goodness that is sugar. Now Canada looks to be following suit.
While most people, including myself, won't argue that eating or drinking too much sugar isn't good for you (yeah we all know that) I think it's complete bullshit that we're considering this.
For one were already taxed to death in this country. The government keeps taxing everything they can to make up for lost revenue for their poor management of resources.
New taxes are created out of the blue and pushing more and more people into poverty. They're basically killing the middle class, then they complain they have to do more to help the middle class. It's all horseshit.
Our population is in decline, so yes there's less tax revenue for the government and the aging population is draining the system that's already broken.
To address this the Trudeau government has been upping immigration in a way to compensate for our declining population but the fact is..this is a failed move as the new residents live off of the system incurring more debt, Canada won't see any return for three generations according to data I've read.
Increasing energy costs coupled with the fact they want to impose new "carbon taxes" on energy consumption has basically left swaths of older Canadians in the cold. Many Canadians now can't afford their heating costs from all the bad deals the different provinces have made with the mega rich power suppliers. Remember this is country where it's cold for a large part of the year and then they lump on these new taxes to already struggling citizens.
Grocery and food costs keep multiplying so eating well for some isn't a luxury. We import most of our produce here and if we're to eat organic foods ofcourse we have to pay even more for them.
Everytime I get groceries I'm always shocked at the price at the checkout. $100 used to buy a decent amount of food not that long ago, now I'm paying $250-$400 dollars for a couple weeks worth of food..this is for a two person family. I'm not that old and the skyrocketing prices are happening in months not over decades!
The population is declining because Canadian couples in the prime age for starting a family, like myself and my wife, are forgoing having children so we can enjoy a decent lifestyle and eventually retire one day with money in the bank.
With childcare costs and the rising price of everything it just doesn't make financial sense to undertake parenthood for us. Gone are the days when a person could support a family on one salary, we both have to work to make ends meet and save for the future. If we were to have kids, almost all of one salary would be just to pay for someone else to look after our kids.
If they were serious about boosting the population they should start with trying to help prime age Canadians like us, rather than bring foreigners over here because they know they're gonna have 6 kids regardless. This is more for Liberal votes than trying to boost the population in my opinion but we wont get into that can of worms today..
Poor people buy cheaper sugar laden products. Taxing these items only hurts individuals already having a hard time getting by.. but noone cares about them it seems.
It's sad but sugar is cheap, more and more foods are laced with them so manufacturers can increase profits. Rather than look for alternatives or trying to tax mega corporations they punish those that can't help themselves. This is how the system is set up, they do it under the guise of trying to help people..again total horseshit. It's to take more of our money!
You can't tell me more people now are just purely consuming more sugar than they did in the past. I won't argue diabetes is on the rise but it can't be just blamed on the fact we're eating more sweet items.
My belief is people are just more sedintary now.
Kids aren't as active today with the rise of technology. Sports are on the decline while sales of iPads and PlayStations are dominating the mainstream. General labour jobs are being replaced with robotics and a hard days work today is sitting at a computer for 8 hours.
Rather than try to encourage people to be more active, by giving tax breaks to fitness activities that are proven to help not only physically but mentally, these geniuses will just add a tax to sugary drinks. It's just another fucking tax grab.
Same as the bastard government won't really try to stop people from smoking cigarettes they just keep adding more and more taxes to them. 10 years ago a pack of cigarettes here in Nova Scotia was $4, they're $15.50 now. The cigarette manufacturers don't get that money, the government does. They dont really want people to quit, they just want to make more money off of them.
Anything you enjoy will be taxed to the roof such as alcohol. I don't drink alot but everytime I go into the liquor store I'm always amazed at how the price of a case of beer keeps going up $2. I notice the steep increase because it's always so much more than the last time I was in there.
When does it end? The answer is it wont, I dont have all the answers but I'm just getting sick of this shit. We're not all stupid, the government doesn't give two shits about people's health they just want to take more of our hard earned dollars when if they all weren't so stupid they could find it in all the money they waste.
Yes eating too much sugar is bad for your health, everyone fucking knows that! Lets work on efforts to get people to be able to afford better quality foods or get more active, rather than just adding another bullshit tax to more items.
This is the end of my rant. Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear what you guys think in the comments?
