Take Two: A Tax On Fat (People)?

Last month a New York Times column seriously proposed that the federal government should slap an extra tax on fat people. Yesterday The Washington Post aired the same idea.

In a front-page article on obesity politics, Sunday’s Post quotes one man who advocates a national weigh-in:

…he would have every American weigh in at the post office on tax filing day each year. Slender taxpayers would receive a credit, while “the people ruining our health care economics would pay the standard tax,” he said. “People who are able to be disciplined and lose weight should be rewarded.”

The Post also quotes Rick Berman, executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom. “It’s something of a free-for-all,” he said.