I am quite lazy and need to exercise way more. I always get started but then my laziness creeps in and I can't keep up the consistency. I'm also busy as F. Today is a slower day, so I was able to get a little bit of exercise done. But it got me thinking.
Why doesn't society try to implement mandated exercise? Hear me out:
Consider how education is mandatory by law in most places. It's considered essential for especially young people to have access and opportunity to gain knowledge to enable them to properly participate in society to some kind of minimum level. We view knowledge and intellectual sophistication as not only a right, but something that generally speaking betters society overall. Why would exercise and improved health for people not be considered similarly?
The obvious benefit is a reduction in health care costs. I think this benefit is huge and especially evident after the pandemic. Imagine how much better everything would have been if everybody had exercised on even a minimal basis. The stresses on the system and overreach on resources would have been alleviated to a huge degree.
Mental health benefits, obviously.
How do you do it? Tax incentives, check-in apps, gym memberships. If you choose to get your exercise in other ways, log it into a government site and be subject to audit. Even though this would be possibly massively abused, I bet you'd still even get a portion of the population doing it and still achieving a huge societal benefit. How do we ensure kids are in school? We don't really? I feel like there are solutions I have already thought of in what the minimum amount should be mandated (like, 3 days a week, 20 minutes, something to that effect), but I'm interested in others takes.
What about ethical infringements on personal freedoms? Well, don't these exist when you force people to go to school too? Don't we all give up some reasonable freedoms for the betterment and safety of society? For example, traffic laws, smoking laws, etc.
If you were to mandate exercise, I feel like only even a little bit of required amount would go a long way. I dunno, it also might "normalize" it and get society to adopt it into their everyday routines which again, only improves society generally. People will make healthier food choices likely... I really don't see the downsides outweighing the upsides in creating a mandatory exercise system.
Thoughts?
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I wouldn't be opposed to tax breaks for exercise. We tax smoking and drinking on the grounds that they add extra health care expenses. Why not give people tax breaks for doing the opposite.
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I've always thought that gym memberships and sport/activity registrations should be tax deductible. Easy way to encourage physical exercise and keep our healthcare costs down long-term.
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I don’t think tax incentives are going to do much in terms of getting people more active and the loss in tax revenue when people start claiming gym memberships, golf memberships and other costs associated with being active could be astronomical.
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I wouldn't be opposed to tax breaks for exercise. We tax smoking and drinking on the grounds that they add extra health care expenses. Why not give people tax breaks for doing the opposite.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Muta
I've always thought that gym memberships and sport/activity registrations should be tax deductible. Easy way to encourage physical exercise and keep our healthcare costs down long-term.
This should be legislation tomorrow.
Not as sure about gym memberships because most people don't actually stick with it, but if you sign your kid up for a sport, that should be tax free / reimbursed in some form.
Run with it for 4 years and see where it goes.
But alas, nothing will actually happen cause nobody cares!
__________________
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I don’t think tax incentives are going to do much in terms of getting people more active and the loss in tax revenue when people start claiming gym memberships, golf memberships and other costs associated with being active could be astronomical.
I don’t think tax incentives are going to do much in terms of getting people more active and the loss in tax revenue when people start claiming gym memberships, golf memberships and other costs associated with being active could be astronomical.
Health care costs due to obesity are going to be worse than astronomical.
Health care costs due to obesity are going to be worse than astronomical.
Giving people tax breaks for getting a gym membership isn’t going to solve that. Especially if that person can’t afford the upfront costs in the first place. The only people who would for sure benefit from that kind of policy are the ones who are already voluntarily spending money on staying fit and clearly don’t need the added incentive. Basically they’d be receiving a handout with no guarantee of actually reducing overall healthcare costs.
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I think it would more wise to tax unhealthy foods to dissuade people from buying and eating garbage. Sugary drinks, processed meats, fast food, snacks, sweets, etc.
Personally, it's a lot easier for me to not eat junk when it's not in the house, than have it at home and not indulge through sheer tyranny of will.
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I think it would more wise to tax unhealthy foods to dissuade people from buying and eating garbage. Sugary drinks, processed meats, fast food, snacks, sweets, etc.
Personally, it's a lot easier for me to not eat junk when it's not in the house, than have it at home and not indulge through sheer tyranny of will.
I thought about that too, but you could actually do both. Forcing people to exercise seems like a good idea to me.
Maybe every citizen should have to do mandatory VO2 Max testing, twice a year. If your results improve, you pay less tax. If they worsen, you owe more tax. Financial survival of the fittest.
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Most people can't be bothered to exercise regularly even though it generally means a significantly longer healthy lifespan and higher quality of life. I'm pretty skeptical that saving 20-40% on a gym membership is going to create any real marginal benefit in terms of population-level fitness.
If you want to improve peoples' health, you need to move away from what has caused the problems in the first place; average North American food is generally an abomination and the SFH/suburban environment most of us live in isn't conducive to a naturally active lifestyle. But changing either of those things drastically at this point is a massive undertaking, and even just advocating for things like walkable, compact cities/neighborhoods riles up conspiracy theorists enough to lead them to threaten the lives of the people who push for them because they think the WEF is going to put them in a concentration camp.
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What if society mandated exercise?
