Comments

1

It's not just soda, those taxes include vanilla and other flavors in your latte! Vote yes on 1634.

2

1 You support statewide legislation that would restrict local autonomy?

3

@2: You support local redress?

4

"...while taking choices away from voters"

Sure, but Seattle voters didn't actually get to vote on this tax. The city council made the decision for us so the choice was already taken away from us.

5

Oh yay, it's this thread again!

6

@3 Why wouldn't I support a municipality's local sovereignty to enact policy on the basis of its residents, provided it doesn't result in a breach of human rights?

Isn't that supposed to be the core of conservatism?

8

We went through this years ago, with Seattleā€™s plastic bag ban. Chemical companies parachuted in with huge bucks to defeat the ban. Bloody lot of good it ultimately did them.

@7: Good luck with your reasoning on local politicians in poorer jurisdictions. This tax is a huge money-maker for Seattleā€™s treasury, and the soda companies know it. Hence their parachuting in with huge bucks to preclude any other such taxes being enacted, anywhere in our state. I predict the same fate the chemical companies obtained. No one needs plastic bags or sugar-water, and everyone knows this.

10

@9: If your argument requires sugar-water to be called ā€œfood,ā€ youā€™ve already lost.

11

@6: We are both correct.

With regard to what conservatism means, it's gotten so warped as of late. Better to read the works of William F. Buckley to get a good grounding.

14

That radio ad from that dimwit housewife about taxes on groceries really pisses me off. Trying to make ends meet? How much soda is she pumping down the gullets of her family?

Actually don't answer that, I have seen enough regular americans grocery carts loaded with gallons of this corn syrup laced shit. I can picture what she looks like.

Voting against this just to spite her!

16

In an ideal world, you tax things with higher societal costs at a higher rate than those with lower costs until you achieve a perfect balance between the aggregate public cost and aggregate public revenue from each product, action, etc. Through that lens, you tax excessive sugar. You tax excessive fat. Of course you do (assuming you donā€™t just ban it outright).

The problem is - the tax is levied on the consumer, particularly the consumer who doesnā€™t make the choice to avoid the harmful product in the first place. That consumer is most likely lower-income, so the tax is regressive.

Where you need to focus instead is aligning incentives on the supply side. Make the producer pay a fee upfront on every diabetic calorie bomb they produce in or ship to your state. Will they try to pass it on to the consumer? Sure, but they now see it on their P&L and have an incentive to change their formula and deliver a healthier and lower-priced product to market before the competition does.

Versus today. Who sees the tax? The distributor. The store or restaurant. The consumer. Coca Cola still has zero incentive to eliminate the unhealthy product in favor of a new healthy one. As long as their sugar-addicted consumer (and sugar is very addictive) wonā€™t tell them no (they wonā€™t), thereā€™s no reason for them to change their business model. Iā€™m surprised theyā€™re even bothering to sue - they should love the way this was introduced.

As is, we are stuck with the original problem (obesity, diabetes, high fructose zombification - yeah, itā€™s real) AND a more regressive tax system. Itā€™s not the wrong thing to do - it is just an inelegant way to do it.

All that aside, the soda companies could do what American companies used to do, back before the post-antitrust world of today: innovate in the consumerā€™s interest. Instead they sue to maintain their captive population of foie gras humanity, so fuck ā€˜em. Itā€™s shit like this that turns the free market into predatory capitalism.

Personally, Iā€™ll just keep drinking vodka.

17

The soda tax is a prime example of nanny state bullshit that makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.

19

@12: You donā€™t seem to know the meaning of the phrase, ā€œempty calories,ā€ do you?

Why am I not surprised?

22

Never thought I'd be defending Tensor, but Jesus 20/21, soda isn't food. It's tasty tasty poison in a can

23

@18 - We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of High Fructose.

24

Corps are peeps too mine friend
and they are wealthy and they need to
Make the Rules WE all get to live by
Well, them and the Fundies
who punish women for having
not-necessarily-baby-producing
SEX.

Just us.

25

Seattle should be embarrassing about this regressive tax. Start taxing 5 dollar mocha, cupcakes, top pot donuts and other bougie sugar loaded diabetes causers, and then we can talk taxing soda. Until then its just a tax on poor people. I consume probably about 500% the amount of sugar I should but donā€™t pay shit cause iā€™m lucky enough to afford way too much 3 dollar donuts...

26

@18 - The public often makes the wrong choice. It is the proper role of regulators to protect the public by putting guardrails on those who should know better and who derive profit from exploiting human biological vulnerabilities. Companies that peddle sugar-laden drinks arenā€™t that different from tobacco companies.

Like tobacco companies, the soda companies are selling an unnecessarily addictive product:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23719144/

Diet soda is probably just a solution to the marketability of sugar water, not the harm it causes to health:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful-truth-about-diet-soda-and-weight-gain-according-to-science/

27

@25 - Yes, we should regulate Starbucks and Top Pot. There is something sadly American about that. In a more traditional culture, ethnic diets where people co-evolved alongside endemic plant and animal populations would prevent large corporations from selling us poison. Here, we are a land of commerce and laws. Like all good things, both become a pox when taken to extremes, and we are nothing if not a country of (bland) extremes.

28

@14 glad you agree.

I occasionally partake of a quantity of flavored soda with my liquor, don't care about the tax either way. As far as I know there isn't a tax pending. However if the initiative fails, law of unintended consequences says tax will definitely happen..

But that ad is willfully misleading gotta vote against it.

29

@21:

Have you ever actually read the nutritional labeling on a can of soda? Here's the breakdown for a popular brand:

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size - 1 Can 12 fl oz

Amount Per Serving
Calories 140 Calories from Fat 0

% Daily Value*
Total Fat 0g 0%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 45mg 0%
Potassium 0mg 0%
Total Carbohydrate 39g 9%
Dietary Fiber 0g 0%
Sugars 39g
Includes 39 added Sugars 78%
Protein 0g 0%

Vitamin A 0% ā€¢ Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0% ā€¢ Iron 0%
Phosphorus 4% ā€¢

It is, as @19 states, nothing but carbonated water, refined glucose-fructose (in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup), and a smattering of flavorings; it contains literally no significant nutritional value, unlike actual foods, which, in addition to providing more than sufficient quantities of simple sugars needed to support human metabolism, also contain vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other necessary nutrients. Calling soda "food" is like calling a toddler randomly pounding their fists on a piano keyboard a "musician". Hell, it doesn't even come close to meeting the literal definition of food: "any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth."

If your argument, such as it is, is that humans need some amount of sugar (more precisely glucose) to function, that may be technically correct; but what they DON'T need is to source that glucose from processed beverages, and especially from those containing fructose, the other half of HFCS, which doesn't naturally occur in the body, can't be metabolized by it except in the liver which simply converts it into fat, and which has all manner of dangerous side-effects.

In short, if you're depending on HFCS-laced carbonated beverages to provide your Minimum Daily Requirement of carbohydrates to convert into glucose to keep your body healthy and growing, you're doing it very, very wrong.

30

@29-fructose occurs naturally in the body all the time. Sucrose (table sugar) is composed of a glucose molecule connected to a fructose molecule. Your body splits it into its constituent parts before metabolizing them. Fructose is also found in many fruits. There is nothing wrong with fructose per se.

HFCS does contain more fructose than does sucrose, but only by a few percent (I believe that HFCS55, which is 55% fructose rather then 50% like sucrose, is what is generally used in soda). The reason soda is turning people into whales is because they are drinking gallons of it. Remember when a Big Gulp was 32 ounces instead of 64 or even more? It's not the HFCS.

31

Regardless of whether or not the soda tax is effective, people with unhealthy habits put more of an economic and operational strain on the healthcare system, so they probably should incur more of the costs in some fashion.

32

So, if they are giving $11M to politicians to block sugar taxes, does anyone doubt that they have be setting up sockpuppets in the local papers comment sections to try to influence people as well?

Look around, how many of these antitax whack jobs are are really that stupid and how many are pretending be for money?


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