Wow, today we have an incredible hypothetical scenario to discuss. This one, even I struggled to write this text, because I was really confused about which side to defend. Although I remained firm in my conviction that the freedom of all of us must be respected, regardless of what affects us, be it good or bad, I believe that we should have the right to choose. Yes, I am in favor of whether we want to do something to screw ourselves over (even if someone says it will go wrong) or just choose good things, we are free to do so!
But what is this controversial subject? Well, let's imagine that it would be the creation of a "healthy tax", that is, a specific and expensive tax, focused on products that are bad for your health, such as sugar, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes or things like that. Wow, at first it would be really interesting, I really thought that this tax would be a great thing, to make everything that is bad for you more expensive, so that people could avoid these harmful products and have a better quality of life. But, following what I always defend, would it be good to support this? A very complicated question for me.
I think a part of me says yes, that I would support this, to impose an astronomical tax on these products, after all, I lost a grandmother and an aunt because of the harm that cigarettes do. Families are destroyed every day because of alcoholic beverages, when it is the man or woman who does something crazy and it ends everything, love, family, life, all of this done by someone who is already not well, and then alcohol comes along and intensifies all the bad things. Wow, looking at it like that, it would be really good, I think it would be the first tax that I would actually support without even thinking about it.
But even so, this would still hurt two things that I defend to the end: freedom and less government and more people (including, LESS, much LESS taxes that eat away at our income). So, yes, my advice would be to say no to the health tax, even though it really has a chance of reducing so many bad things that happen in our lives. I think that everything in life has at least two paths to follow, so one of these paths would be to increase the tax on these products and the other would be to just leave it as it is and guide and educate people.
That's why I don't support tax increases on any product. In fact, what I most wanted was for Brazil to have a lower tax burden, so that people could have more income, pay less taxes and fees to the government, which only consumes this and never invests it in improvements for the population. It's complicated, as much as this tax is good in the end, I think we should have zero tax on everything (if possible) or the minimum applicable and in balance, raise awareness, educate, talk, do joint efforts, advertisements, anything else possible to show that these products are bad for our health.
So, we would use our freedom of choice, as stated in the first paragraph, even if it is bad for us, even if we choose bad things, we have the right to choose, that is how I think and see the world. Now, a decision like this, to change taxes in this way specifically for products that are bad for our health, I think it would be the case of a vote with the population and the use of democracy. Whatever the majority thinks, it is done, but I continue to always defend freedom of choice and almost zero taxes and fees.
