they called it the fat tax.
it started in california, like most strange things do. a small pilot program linking state tax rates to body fat percentage. the math was simple: your bfp became your tax rate.
fifteen percent body fat? fifteen percent tax rate. thirty percent? well, you get the idea.
the economists loved it. finally, a way to price in health externalities. the doctors celebrated. prevention through incentives, not intervention. the politicians saw gold - a tax system so elegant it felt like nature.
what started as a california experiment became a global revolution. state after state, country after country fell like dominoes. turns out people will do anything to pay less tax.
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novo nordisk became the most valuable company in history. their weight loss drugs transformed from luxury to necessity overnight. ozempic shortages sparked riots in manhattan. semaglutide became a currency more precious than gold.
the zeroers emerged from crossfit boxes and biohacking forums. their goal was simple: reach zero percent body fat, pay zero percent tax. they lived on air and spite, measuring ketones like prayer beads. most failed. the survivors became legends.
cities changed next. elevators disappeared from buildings under forty stories. bike lanes grew wider than roads. fast food chains converted to fasting clinics. the golden arches turned to rust.
corporate culture mutated first. office cafeterias turned into protein dispensaries. performance reviews included dexa scans. hr departments hired nutritionists instead of diversity consultants.
middle management became literal middle management.
tax optimization got weird. corporations started routing profits through their fittest employees. executive boards transformed into walking advertisements for ozempic. ceos competed on body fat percentage like they once did on profit margins.
quarterly earnings calls started with dexa scans.
startup pitch decks led with founder fitness metrics. venture capital flowed to the lean. "founder-fitness ratio" became a key metric. y combinator added a gym to their application process.
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power structures inverted like a sugar crash. fat politicians became unelectable. lean became the new look of authority. campaign ads featured candidates' dexa scans next to their policy positions. presidential fitness reports sparked more debate than foreign policy.
the supreme court justices' annual weigh-in became a national event. congress installed treadmill desks. the oval office got a peloton.
pediatricians coined new terms. pre-tax anxiety disorder. fiscal anorexia. tax transition syndrome. parents watched helplessly as their children's relationship with food twisted into shapes they couldn't understand.
school cafeterias became battlegrounds of class warfare. rich kids fasted, poor kids feasted. the children of politicians conspicuously picked at salads. being fat became a form of teenage rebellion.
we created a generation that counted calories before they could count money.
new social classes crystallized around body composition. the lean elite. the muscular middle. the metabolically disadvantaged. dating apps added bfp filters. marriage contracts included weight clauses.
black markets bloomed like fungi after rain. synthetic lab results. dexa scan hackers. water loading specialists. anything to game the system.
some regions declared themselves fat havens. tax refugees waddled to samoa, wisconsin, mississippi. they called it adipose arbitrage.
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not everyone celebrated this new metabolic order. the genetics crowd screamed discrimination. epigenetics researchers warned of generational trauma. eating disorder specialists watched their worst fears multiply like calories.
professional athletes faced a cruel paradox. muscle mass counted against them. powerlifters became tax criminals. sumo wrestling went extinct.
religious leaders debated fasting as tax avoidance. some called it spiritual arbitrage. others saw it as divine alignment. ramadan became a global phenomenon.
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but something beautiful emerged from the ashes of our old relationship with food. cake day became our most cherished holiday - that one precious day each year when the tax code looked away. grandmothers guarded their secret recipes like crown jewels. children counted down months until they could taste real sugar again.
restaurants transformed into temples of occasional indulgence. master chefs became artists of the rare feast. eating turned from mindless consumption into mindful celebration.
we didn't lose our love of food. we learned to treasure it.
they say there's a place in the mountains where people still eat carbs daily. where bathroom scales are burned in ritual bonfires. where your worth isn't measured in millimeters of subcutaneous fat.
but maybe we don't need that anymore. maybe we found something better - a world where pleasure is precious precisely because it's rare.