This first weird thing is that he throws fairness into this mix. What is he even talking about here? Would the externalities of meat consumption be lower if farm workers received a higher wage? Sure, a small amount less might be consumed due to higher prices, but this would amount to a trivially small tax. Second, he again includes nutrition into the mix as an externality problem. I am curious whether Bittman actually wants to deal with the economic cost of bad nutrition in an efficient way, which would be to tax unhealthy people in proportion to the part of their healthcare that government pays for. I would guess not, which suggests he’s not actually concerned about the externality or efficiency here so much as he wants other people to be healthier per se. The problem is when a healthy person eats a hamburger, there is no health care cost externality.