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 listening are talking about whether putting high taxes on cigarettes or unhealthy foods is social benefits or not. The article suggests three pieces of arguments to support it is beneficial. However, the professor challenges that the suggestions to support the article are unconvincing.
According to the article, the taxes discourage people from continuing to buying unhealthy stuff since the price for those is higher. However, the professor disagrees with this opinion. Price sometimes does not lead the behavior. The addicted smoking people will continue to buy the cigarette which is cheaper but with low quality, which contains more harmful substances, making them even unhealthier. This phenomenon is the same for junk food.
Secondly, the article says that increasing the taxes for financial fair, because of the smoker and junk food eater easy to get sick and cost more money than others. Nevertheless, the professor casts doubt on this opinion. Rasing the taxes for this situation do not count the income the people make. It will increase more burden to the lower income people than higher income people. And the lower income people have no money to buy healthier food because they do not have extra money.
Finally, the article says the government can use the revenue for the taxes to improve other beneficial things like public welfare. However, the professor disagrees with this opinion. The amount of revenue may be very high as millions of dollars, and the government may tend to depend too much on this revenue from cigarettes or junk food taxes, even hate to lose this revenue. Therefore, the government may release less political regulation like prohibiting people smoking in the public place or banning all places including private places for people to smoking.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, however, may, nevertheless, second, secondly, so, therefore, talking about
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 8.0 10.4613686534 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 5.04856512141 119% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 7.30242825607 137% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 12.0772626932 33% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 22.412803532 62% => OK
Preposition: 29.0 30.3222958057 96% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 5.01324503311 100% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1516.0 1373.03311258 110% => OK
No of words: 290.0 270.72406181 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.2275862069 5.08290768461 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.12666770723 4.04702891845 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.546088838 2.5805825403 99% => OK
Unique words: 158.0 145.348785872 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.544827586207 0.540411800872 101% => OK
syllable_count: 469.8 419.366225166 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.23620309051 146% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.51434878587 132% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 2.5761589404 78% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 13.0662251656 130% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 21.2450331126 80% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 49.9342127758 49.2860985944 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 89.1764705882 110.228320801 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.0588235294 21.698381199 79% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.17647058824 7.06452816374 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 4.33554083885 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 4.45695364238 202% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.27373068433 70% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.166617986763 0.272083759551 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0511728288191 0.0996497079465 51% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0677832140105 0.0662205650399 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106071876735 0.162205337803 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0261471099624 0.0443174109184 59% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.7 13.3589403974 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 53.8541721854 101% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 11.0289183223 90% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.76 12.2367328918 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.42419426049 99% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 63.6247240618 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 10.498013245 84% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.2008830022 89% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.