Many countries require cigarette smokers to pay particularly high taxes on their purchases of cigarettes; similar taxes are being considered for unhealthy foods. The policy of imposing high taxes on cigarettes and other unhealthy products has a number of social benefits. First of all, the taxes discourage people from indulging in unhealthy behaviors. Raising taxes on cigarettes, for instance, leads people to buy fewer of them. Smoking has declined as taxes on tobacco have risen, showing that these taxes do work to make society healthier. It can be expected that imposing similar taxes on unhealthy food and beverages would help reduce obesity rates. Second, taxes of this kind are financially fair. When people get sick as a result of their smoking or eating unhealthy foods, they create medical costs. It is unfair that everyone in the society, including nonsmokers and people who follow a healthy diet, should contribute equally to covering these costs. Taxing people who engage in unhealthy behaviors creates extra income that can be used to cover the medical costs. In this way, some of the financial burden is shifted from all of society to just those who choose to participate in the unhealthy activities. Finally, the high rate of taxation on cigarettes significantly increases revenue for the government. In addition to using this tax revenue on medical assistance, governments often use the revenue for other projects that benefit public welfare, such as building stadiums or creating public parks. Even basic government-supported services like public education benefit from these taxes. Thus, the taxes on cigarettes, and the proposed taxes on unhealthy foods, benefit everyone..
The reading and the lecture offer two opposing views on the taxation of unhealthy products such as cigarettes. While the text suggests that this policy would have social benefits, the professor casts doubts on all the specific points presented in the passage. The lecturer believes that such policy would not be as beneficial as the reading suggests.
First of all, the professor argues that high taxes not necessarily discourage unhealthy behaviour. According to her, taxes will not stop people from consuming products that are harmful to their health. For instance, higher taxes on cigarettes did not force people to cut tobacco consumption, instead consumers only switched to cheaper and lower quality cigarettes. The lecturer suggests that if higher taxes are imposed on unhealthy food, people would have less money to spend on healthy food, which would increase overall health risk. This directly challenges the author´s view that taxes would improve people´s health by stopping them from consuming items such as cigarettes.
Secondly, the lecturer states that such measure cannot be considered fair. In the lecture, she explains that this policy does not take into account the income difference between people. The professor mentions that increasing taxes on these products would increase the financial burden for people with lower income. If both rich and poor people consume these products, the burden will be greater for those with less income since the taxes would take a fixed percentage from the salaries. Therefore, raising taxes does not necessarily generate financial fairness.
Finally, the professor opposes the idea that the higher government revenue from taxes would increase public welfare projects. The teacher states that the government would get millions and millions of dollars from these taxes, which means that they would become extremely dependant on cigarettes and unhealthy taxes. So, in order to keep getting more, it is very unlikely that the government would want to take radical measures to stop citizens to follow these unhealthy behaviours such as banning smoking on outdoor spaces.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 272, Rule ID: DEPENDENT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'dependent' on?
Suggestion: dependent
... means that they would become extremely dependant on cigarettes and unhealthy taxes. So, ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, if, second, secondly, so, therefore, while, for instance, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 6.0 10.4613686534 57% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 5.04856512141 277% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 5.0 7.30242825607 68% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 12.0772626932 124% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 22.412803532 120% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 34.0 30.3222958057 112% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 5.01324503311 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1809.0 1373.03311258 132% => OK
No of words: 330.0 270.72406181 122% => OK
Chars per words: 5.48181818182 5.08290768461 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.26214759535 4.04702891845 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.51979308842 2.5805825403 98% => OK
Unique words: 177.0 145.348785872 122% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.536363636364 0.540411800872 99% => OK
syllable_count: 540.9 419.366225166 129% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 3.25607064018 92% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 2.5761589404 116% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 13.0662251656 122% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 21.2450331126 94% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.4781882025 49.2860985944 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.0625 110.228320801 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.625 21.698381199 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.9375 7.06452816374 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 4.33554083885 138% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 4.45695364238 179% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.27373068433 47% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.24562445961 0.272083759551 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0882325972176 0.0996497079465 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0489085177554 0.0662205650399 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14442287448 0.162205337803 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0664208549944 0.0443174109184 150% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 13.3589403974 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 53.8541721854 95% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 11.0289183223 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.5 12.2367328918 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.7 8.42419426049 103% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 63.6247240618 134% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 10.7273730684 75% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 10.498013245 95% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.2008830022 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 20 minutes.
Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.