The NY Times ran a story today about a proposed tax on "sugary beverages" including pop and sweet juices. The articles states, "a tax of a penny an ounce on sugary beverages would raise $14.9 billion in its first year, which could be spent on health care initiatives." As a person that believe that
a) Americans ingest too much pop anyway,
b) American pop is horrible for you and
c) it doesn't really taste that good
I'm pretty firmly in the camp that thinks this tax is a Good Idea. I probably drink a can of pop every two or three months, though if you count mixers in alcoholic drinks that number probably decreases to a can every month or so, give or take a week. This is down from a high school diet in which I practically lived on Mountain Dew and Pepsi so I can attest that once these drinks are cut out it's pretty easy to keep them out - granted I enjoy drinking water and like the taste of liquor straight up or on the rocks. I also think that it's ridiculous that it's not hard to find cases where soft drinks are cheaper than cheap bottled water.
I do think, though, that if Congress wants to go around taxing unhealthy amounts of sugar that it would be awesome if they went whole hog and taxed all products containing high fructose corn syrup(HFCS). This synthetic byproduct of America's ridiculous corn subsidy has invaded pretty much every supermarket ingredient label and is pretty much horrible for you in every way. Taxing it would provide a short term boost in revenue and also have the long term benefit of companies (hopefully) moving towards natural sugar in its products. I'm personally tired of scanning a label and seeing various multi-syllabic manifestations of chemically processed corn. If we're going to affect behavior through taxes to encourage good health let's do something that will make a difference across the board.
Isn't it kinda wrong that since you don't use the products in question, of course it's okay to tax them?
ReplyDeleteWhat if someone wanted to tax products you actually used for "health" or "safety" reasons? Would that be okay?
Should we be driving behaviour with the tax code? And if we should tax behaviour that we don't like, what does it say that we also tax work via the income tax?
"Isn't it kinda wrong that since you don't use the products in question, of course it's okay to tax them?"
ReplyDeleteI don't drink pop, but I eat plenty of things that contain HFCS because it's almost impossible to avoid without actually living on a farm. It's become artificially cheapened due to corn subsidy and so food sweetened using this product is undercutting healthier (and better tasting) food. I'd love to see the corn subsidies cut (which would also include the added bonus of cutting out this farcical push towards corn ethanol) but lacking that a tax an HFCS is the only way to "level the playing field" so to speak among companies and consumers.
"And if we should tax behaviour that we don't like, what does it say that we also tax work via the income tax?"
This implies that we ONLY tax that which we don't like, which is an incorrect assumption. It's a cute ploy but inaccurate. Income tax is payment for services rendered by the government (police, firefighters, etc). It's not a motivator for any particular behavior. Whether we SHOULD tax based on motivating behavior shifts depending on the product. The argument with smokers is that cigarettes should be because second hand smoke endangers public health and their own worsening health will eventually result in higher healthcare costs. With HFCS, again, it's mostly to balance out the corn subsidy which artificially drives down the price of the product in a way the healthier options cannot compete with.