It’s for your own good.

Because anybody who buys full-sugar soda is TOO STUPID to make his or her own decisions. Obviously! OMG, especially if they’re POOR! The POOR are TOO STUPID to make the right decisions, so it’s OK to make this [vice of theirs which doesn't interest or otherwise impact me] TOO EXPENSIVE for them! Then they’ll make BETTER CHOICES! Choices of which I would approve!

Yeah. Thanks for the thought. No, really.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. The Gin Craze in the 18th century was a forerunner of this behaviour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze). Jessica Warner’s “Craze: Gin and Debauchery in the Age of Reason” comprehensively discusses this kind of tax, and the reasons behind it. And, of course, taxing the vices of the poor paid for a series of wars that the government needed to finance. But it was the poor, and not the rich, who paid for the wars, and whose vices were taxed.

you’re exactly right, it is all about obesity and new york city is on a crazy kick to tell people what type of foods they can and can’t consume.
first it was the no trans-fats ban, now the soda tax is on the table and further down the line, theres talk of bloomberg’s new pet project of controlling salt levels in processed food.

obesity IS a problem but its one that’s much larger than telling people what we can and can’t eat.
to HONESTLY tackle this, will take more than treating citizens like children, which is where i start getting offended.

The insurance costs of obesity are the main concern as I understand it. Just charge overweight people more for health insurance, like they already do. There are much more important things for the U.S. government to worry about.

Define overweight and obesity. According to just most of the scales I’ve encountered someone with my build and bone structure would still be considered overweight or obese even with zero body fat.

The problem with the whole discussion is that we’re attacking an ephemeral and largely subjective idea. Taxing anything to fight something as imaginary as obesity is a joke.

Rational Point responds:
We are facing a rapidly rising obesity crisis that is costing us dearly as taxpayers (close to $110 billion/year!), mortality (one of the leading causes of death in the U.S.) and quality of life- and there are large disparities that comes along with the crisis:
Poor people are much more affected by obesity and obesity-related diseases (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke etc).
Why is this?
Is it because poor people decide that they want to be obese and suffer from these diseases? Is it because they have less will power than those who are fortunate to have higher incomes?
Or is it because we have policies in this country that artificially make junk and soda much cheaper than fresh produce or other healthy foods; and that billions of dollars in advertising that promotes junk, including soda, are targeted at all of us, including billions for children alone, with particular emphasis at poorer demographics; and that poorer neighborhoods have many times the number of stores, restaurants and vending machines that heavily market cheap and highly caloric foods, including sodas, and far fewer stores that promote (or even have available) fresh produce or other healthful options?
Clearly as a society we create environments that heavily entice all of us, and particularly the poor amongst us, to eat junk and drink soda and make it almost impossibly difficult, particularly for poorer people, to make healthier choices. This is clearly a matter of social injustice.

So “why discourage the poorest people from getting enough calories?”
If we want the poorest to continue disproportionately dying younger, suffering from chronic disease and contributing to the unsustainable health care costs we all have to pay for, then lets continue encouraging the poor to consume more calories. A tax on soda distributors- especially if the money will be used to make healthier food more affordable and to help create environments that make it easier for people to make healthier lifestyle choices- is not a regressive tax, it’s a progressive tax!

Let’s also be clear- The obesity epidemic is due to multiple factors, but sugared soft drinks is the single item that research shows is clearly linked to obesity.

IR, to your credit you propose making healthier foods less expensive- and I agree that this needs to happen. But where will the money come from to do this? And where should the money come from to fund comprehensive obesity prevention programs? Should we as taxpayers cover all of the expense (afterall, we already cover most of the health costs associated with obesity through medicaid and medicare and we pay for the federal subsidies that allow soda companies to make their products cheap and especially easy to market to the poor)- or- should soda companies pay their fair share too? If they pass on the tax to their consumers and as a result people drink less caloric junk, lose weight and stay healthier- isn’t that good for all of us?
A soda distribution tax that is used for obesity prevention and increasing access to healthier foods for the poor is a policy that is both progressive and responsible.

This is all about trying to stop people from getting fat. If it was just about taxing something useless then why isn’t ipods being taxed? They harm people’s ears, cause people to be rude, and just waste resources.

And right there is the problem with sin taxes. Right there you’ve made a series of idiosyncratic value judgments and assumed things about others to back up your judgments so that you can justify reducing something you dislike. Perhaps an iPod is useless for you, but its pretty much vital for me. I come from a musical family, I play music as a hobby, I listen to music almost constantly, in order to cope with being non-neurotypical I have had to learn how to think musically and process data through relating and tying it to specific sound patterns, the existence of a piece of tech like the iPod has improved my life immeasurably. Between allowing me to concentrate in public places (the overstimulation of crowds is difficult for me because of my disability) and giving me the music that shapes my life my iPod is a constant presence positive presence. As far as hearing damage goes, between ear infections as a child and ten years in a metal band that ship has already sailed. As a rational individual I have weighed the costs to my health versus the benefits to my quality of life and I take the precautions I have deemed necessary to reduce my risks while maximizing my rewards.

But none of those possibilities crosses the mind of someone who believes that they know better for others. No, instead you come with judgments and arrogance. You’ve decided that you don’t like how people act with their little ear buds, that those ear buds don’t bring value to you, that they’re useless and a waste of resources. Your next step is to suggest that perhaps those of us who have made a choice with which you disagree ought to be punished so that people who make choices you approve of can be rewarded. But, conscious or unconscious, thats really just feint. Like most of these kinds of schemes it comes down to narcissism and greed. You don’t like iPods (or the people who have them, or whatever the stimulus is in question) and so you want to increase your comfort by removing the offending stimuli, even though it isn’t really any of your damned business and theres no reason your mere opinion should carry the weight of law. At the same time you hope that maybe you’ll get a little freebie. It comes down to greed: “lets rob John and buy ourselves a widget.” The rest just helps you sleep at night.

“I don’t have much of an issue taxing wholly unnecessary, wholly un-nutritious products that barely count as “food.” I would have more of a problem taxing unhealthy and non-nutritious food products like frozen dinners, fast food, etc, because the reality is that for low-income people, that’s what often has to feed a whole family because fresher food isn’t affordable or available. But soda isn’t feeding families. It’s also not hydrating like water.”

For some people, it might be providing the extra few calories they need each day, and what’s wrong with that? Why discourage the poorest people from getting enough calories? For that matter, even if it’s not a nutrition issue, why make food/drink more expensive for the poorest people? How is it justifiable under ANY circumstances to make ANY food less accessible to poor people? And why should poor people pay a regressive tax on the food they eat?

Scotland has a system for families under a certain income, where you can get vouchers for milk, fresh fruit, and fresh veg. The idea is that poorer people have a harder time affording these items, so they are subsidised. Unfortunately the scheme only exists right now for families with kids under 5, rather than all families in the right income bracket. But that’s the kind of scheme that I think would be far more productive than a regressive tax. Making nutritious food affordable is far more productive than making food (any food) less affordable.

–IP

although as Bitter Scribe points out, that would have serious economic impacts on farmers.

You know, maybe its because I’m fourth-generation city-folk, but I never understood the American obsession with the wellbeing of the family farmer. Big Agribusiness owns not only most of the farms in America, but reaps a disproportionately high share of the agricultural subsidies too. Theres a whole cottage industry here in Chicago of developers who buy up land out in the boonies and market it as a place to build a summer home that develops wealth by planting a lawn and applying for farm subsidies. There are parts of southern Illinois that are essentially abandoned because the property taxes for land are lower than the subsidies landowners get for not growing corn. After all of the speculation, tax investment, and conglomerates are taken out of the equation, you’re left with family farmers who have an average post-expense income better than I could hope to have. Yet we still bend over and grab our ankles for any salt-of-the-Earth character in overalls who puts a hand out and mumbles about the dustbowl and America’s Breadbasket. My great-great grandfather was a barrel maker by trade but my great grandfather had to find a different line of work because technology made barrels irrelevant. Why on earth do we tax working people to offer subsidies to well off investors, well off farmers, big Agribusiness, and the handful of people who expect the rest of the country to underwrite their luddism?

/end rant