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California City May Tax Sugary Drinks Like Cigarettes
Hugh Pickens writes "Voters in Richmond, California are set to decide in November whether to make the Bay Area city the nation's first municipality to tax soda and other sugary beverages to help fight childhood obesity. The penny-per-ounce tax, projected to raise between $2 million and $8 million, would go to soccer fields, school gardens and programs to treat diabetes and fight obesity. Councilman Jeff Ritterman, a doctor who proposed the measure, says soda is a prime culprit behind high childhood obesity rates in Richmond, where nearly 20 percent of residents live below the poverty line. 'If you look at where most of our added sugar is coming, it's coming from the sugar-sweetened beverages,' says Ritterman. 'It's actually a poison for you, because your liver can't handle that huge amount of fructose.' Not everyone is pleased by the proposed license fee on businesses selling sweetened drinks. It would require owners of bodegas, theaters, convenience stores and other outlets to tally ounces sold and, presumably, pass the cost on to customers. Soda taxes have failed elsewhere — most notably in Philadelphia, where Mayor Michael A. Nutter's attempts to impose a 2-cents-per-ounce charge on sugary drinks have sputtered twice. However, Dr. Bibbins-Domingo says similar taxes on cigarettes have had a dramatic effect on public health. 'It was a few decades ago when we had high rates of tobacco and we had high rates of tobacco-related illnesses. Those measures really turned the tide and really led to lower rates of tobacco across the country.'"
It's nice to see so many cities are willing to help us out by telling us what to buy, then moving those funds to "help people" and "create jobs". The rhetoric is unending and unhelpful. I really don't care if this helps kids for five minutes, because ten minutes from now they'll switch to cheap artificially sweetened drinks that are cancerous. We don't need to talk about that though, just the fact's ma'am.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Much like taxing cigarettes. If cigarettes are so bad for the individual (as the government states - and anyone with a fucking brain knows) why is the government in the cigarette business? And try to be honest with yourself - the government is in the cigarette business when they make 20x the profit on a pack, compared to the cigarette company.
Taxing soda won't do anything but hand over more money to the government. It won't stop a thing and people know it.
Want to stop children drinking soda? then simply make it illegal for them to do so. (Which I don't agree with)
Why should everyone else have to pay higher taxes because some people like to drink poison or smoke fiberglass particles?
It may be their choice but they should have to pay for their choice and not make everyone else pay.
Dr. Bibbins-Domingo credits the taxation of tobacco products with being the sole cause of decreased smoking. But it seems to me that I grew up with no desire to try cigarettes after spending my childhood watching PSA after PSA pointing out that it would cause all sorts of horrible diseases. Taxation never figured into it for me...and it also seems that taxation only matters after you're hooked on cigarettes, too. I smoke cigars occasionally, but whatever added cost comes from the taxes don't matter, since it's a rare occurrence. The taxes would matter only if I were regularly spending money on them, like habitual cigarette smokers do. And I've seen how hard it is for smokers to stop, once they are hooked...it's incredibly hard. So I doubt that taxation was the main cause of the decrease in smoking.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
So taxing products that contain high fructose corn syrup is taxing something that people already pay taxes on!
Tax driving, because it can kill you.
Uh, I think a lot of counties and states do tax driving. Property taxes on vehicles, taxes in the form of registration, fines if you're caught without insurance (to pay for said deaths), the list goes on and on in that respect. So that's already been taken care of.
Tax running because it can cause joint problems.
In this case, I think any study would find that the benefits of running (on average) far outweigh joint problems. I'm pretty sure runners live a lot longer than non-runners and experience far less negative health effects than sedentary individuals.
Tax all non-"organic" foods because they contain neurotoxins.
It's for our own good.
You are so full of shit, it's hilarious. All non-"organic" food contains neurotoxins? Bananas? Potatoes? Horseshit. You know as well as I do that the FDA and a number of other watchdog groups keep their eyes on what you will actually find in a supermarket and that those pesticides and crap they do find are put through rigorous tests on other mammals to ascertain their safety. And, yes, the company responsible will find a very steep "tax" should that link ever arise -- just look at what happens in the cases of tainted produce that somehow make it through the processes involved to ensure they are safe.
What you don't seem to understand is that sweeteners have enjoyed an artificially low price due to subsidies and these subsidies are the reason why you can buy a big gulp at 7 eleven for pennies when there are 744 calories in that thing. Just like smoking, cities should be able to decide what measures need to be taken when lobbyist groups cause soda to be less expensive than water and this "tax" is actually an adjustment to reflect the true cost of these products. If you think that you're not being taxed already to pay for subsidies to make people fat that in turn drives up health care costs to everyone, you just can't comprehend the big picture.
Don't even get me started on how US corn subsidies and NAFTA have destroyed Mexico's farming and forced millions to turn to other crops like drugs.
My work here is dung.
If we really want to combat obesity (and not just childhood obesity), the single best thing we can do is take away farm subsidies. The cost of corn (and other things, of course) would double overnight, leading to a massive increase in the prices of unhealthy foods. Colas in particular would be hit hard since HFCS would no longer be so cheap. The key thing is that prices of soda won't necessarily go up, but serving sizes will go down. Notice how small the classic coca-cola bottles are? 6 fl oz. That's what people drank back in the day before subsidized corn allowed cheap sweeteners. Now we have 12 oz cans and 22 oz bottles available everywhere. That's what they did with the cheap sweeteners--they didn't lower the prices of colas, they just sold us more per unit.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
For everyone furiously typing their post that includes words like "choice" "responsibility" and other good words you've cynically crafted in to politically charged euphamisims.
1. There is an obesity problem
2. It is linked to sugary drinks
3. The price of sugary drinks is artificially low due to government subsidies
4. Why do you support government handouts that hurt the public?
Then perhaps healthcare shouldn't be a public burden. Why should anyone pay for anyone else's life choices? The options are two: remove public healthcare or remove the choices. Our society is moving rapidly toward the latter. The logical continuation is to determine an optimal course of action for every person at every point in time, and to punish them if they attempt to deviate from their orders. We will eat what we're told to and nothing else. We will sleep and wake when we're told to and at no other time. We will exercise, work, and entertain ourselves in the exact manner which we are instructed to. To do anything else would be selfish, increasing the cost to society. Think of the children!
I couldn't believe it when I was in the US last year, checking the bread section, not a single bread without high-fructose corn syrup! I don't think taxing sodas will fix the this deeper issue. Maybe it's easier to preach for some good old free market solution to fix this issue? "Factors for this include governmental production quotas of domestic sugar, subsidies of U.S. corn, and an import tariff on foreign sugar; all of which combine to raise the price of sucrose to levels above those of the rest of the world, making HFCS less costly for many sweetener applications." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup
In what world do most obese children "choose" to be fat? Most children are unaware of the nuances of dieting, the dangers of obesity, and the difficulty in losing weight once gained. They don't choose their parents or the culture they're born into either.
"The rest of us" shouldn't have to pay for anybody's choices. How about everybody pays for their own healthcare expenses? Gosh, what a concept!
Tell me how well that works out for you when you have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer treatment out of pocket.
We have insurance to spread the risk, not to encourage people to take stupid risks and make intentionally bad choices.
Yes, this on the surface seems like an overreaching nanny state tax. Consider this though.
So what do you do about this? Let people eat up our healthcare system with obesity related illnesses (no pun intended), or try things out to fix the problem? The government has run educational programs before with little success. Taxing sugar almost seems like a reasonable alternative at this point.
subsidies are there to maintain a stable food market...and it works.
No, subsidies exist to feed money into corporate farms that in turn give their lobbying groups the edge to make sure that they come out turning taxpayer dollars into profit (often with negative or little disposition towards the family farms and little guys).
Soda are marginally cheaper because of it. Less then a penny a liter.
That's not true at all. To come to that conclusion, you're taking the billions of dollars that the federal government is paying out to farmers and dividing it across the number of servings in that time frame. But that's not the true net effect of what those subsidy dollars have on the industry. The market is literally flooded with corn now that ethanol subsidies have been put in place and removed. The price is going to plummet and you'll be able to make as much HFCS as you want for nothing. The amount the government put in to bait these farmers into this system is paltry compared to the effect it's going to have on the price of corn. You didn't even read the article I linked to, did you? A ton of people are producing corn right now thinking they're going to get a ton of money just like last year as that corn is turned into "green" ethanol and when that doesn't happen, HFCS will basically be free for soda manufacturers. Hell, the government (read: taxpayer) will probably end up paying (er, "incentivizing") again to prevent that corn from rotting in the fields.
"Don't even get me started on how US corn subsidies and NAFTA have destroyed Mexico's farming and forced millions to turn to other crops like drugs." Since it isn't true, there is nothing to start.
Citation granted. You don't realize it, but the poorest parts of Mexico are suffering from the above subsidies paid for on my and your dime.
My work here is dung.
Perhaps, but what's an unhealthy lifestyle? Where do you stop? Is driving one of the shoebox sized cars an unhealthy lifestyle? Is riding a motorcycle unhealthy? How about living under power lines, is that considered an unhealthy lifestyle? Live near an airport or next to a busy road? You eat non-organic foods? You walk outside without sunscreen? You live in the city? You ride a bicycle to work? You drive an SUV? You eat meat? You eat fish? Are you getting enough caffeine? Are you using an antiperspirant? Are you using detergent?
What unhealthy lifestyle choices are you making where you should be taxed more or kicked off of healthcare to let die?
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Sounds great. When you die of cancer that costs more than you can afford to treat, can I have your stuff?
The reality is we each have a low probability of that happening but almost no one can afford to pay for it alone. This is why insurance exists. Much like flood or car insurance, you have to either enforce participation or just allow people who don't have the money to die in the gutter.
I would prefer to think we do not live in a society that lets our people die in the gutter.
Just to be sure we're clear -- are you saying you want to live somewhere the emergency rooms turn people away?
I'm not really sure that it's fair to characterize "ensuring that the costs of the choices have would-be externalities incorporated rather than passed on to others" as "removing the choices". Does make a better sound bite, though.
Ok, then actually, we need to turn things around and tax people who try to live longer. No, seriously, the big cost in healthcare is end of life care. It is when you are old and everything just starts going wrong, particularly when you start suffering from mental problems like dementia. THAT'S what really costs. A guy who dies at 60 of a heart attack from being obese? Saved everyone a ton of money. Yes, during his life he cost more than someone who was in very good health, but by not living in to his 80s he saved a ton of money net.
This is all never mind retirement pay. It would be easy to fix SS if most people started dying before they needed to collect it. It could just pay out for disability, and for the rare retirement.
So if you want the taxes to align with the costs, then healthy living is what is going to be taxed. Those that do things that would lead to them living the longest will pay the highest taxes because they are the ones who are likely to cost the most.
If you don't like that idea because you are making the "right" choices, then maybe you need to rethink your premise. Seems to me like people want to "punish" people who they perceive to make the wrong choice, rather than set up something actually based on economics.
So some research, we know what the costs are in healthcare and it is that damn old age and end of life care that pushes it through the roof.
If you choose to be fat, if you choose to smoke, if you choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle, you should be the one to pay for your healthcare expenses.
I keep hearing this crap and seeing it modded up as "+5 Informative."
Here's the problem with these arguments: Study: Fat people cheaper to treat.
This is a problem with the majority of health care expense studies that call for "nanny state" approaches to just about anything. Such studies usually compare annual costs to treat people who have various conditions or behaviors. Rarely do they consider total expenses for the entire lifespans of patients.
Think about it this way: an obese or a smoker or whatever may get sick a little more and thus cost a little more on average for the early part of his/her life. But a lot of these people then have heart attacks or strokes or whatever and die at age 45 or 55 or whatever. Meanwhile, other healthy people continue living to age 85 or 90, and they need health care (including various illnesses, operations, whatever) for an extra 30 or 40 years more. In the end, even many "healthy lifestyle" people will die of cancer or some other costly illness, so they end up costing the system a lot of money in the last couple years of care, just like the obese smoker who ends up with lung cancer 30 years earlier.
But those extra 30 years of healthcare, even for healthy people, will often end up costing more than the obese person who was "nice enough" to die and remove himself from the insurance pool early.
The cost-benefit analysis is a bit controversial, and there are some conflicting studies, but basically when you consider the total cost of healthcare over an entire lifespan, that obese smoker probably costs everyone a little less -- or at least about the same amount.
You can apply this logic to just about any "nanny state" law. Seat belt laws supposedly save us money because people wearing seatbelts end up with fewer major injuries, thereby costing the healthcare system less. But those studies never take into account the fact that people who don't wear seat belts tend to have a much greater fatality rate, and every 18-year-old dumbass who gets himself killed without a seatbelt is someone the healthcare system won't have to treat for another 60 or 70 years.
In the end, most of these things tend to balance out... because people who do stupid things just don't live as long and therefore generally shave decades off of their healthcare costs.
You want to be angry about someone -- be angry with the 100+ year old healthy people who have had minor operations and other problems over the years. They're the ones who collectively are costing you huge amounts of money over their lifespans. Maybe you're in favor of cutting off health insurance for anyone who lives past the average lifespan??
The parents are making them fat to catch sales and save money.
This cut to the heart of why such a tax actually makes economic (and capitalistic) sense at a state level. The cost of these sugary/fattening products is artificially low due to taxpayer money being funneled into the industry at a federal level. Since the farm lobby is too powerful to get that cut it makes sense for states to balance things out and bring such food items at least part of the way back to their real cost.
I've known at least four people who drink 8+ high calorie/high sugar/high caffine drinks per day and they are as thin as rails. Yet I work out, drink 95% water, and try my best to eat healthy and I'm the one with 'extra' pounds. So I think you and alot of other people are not looking enough at biological factors and deciding it is all in the foods consumed.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
You're not paying for your own healthcare, you're also paying for others. When the hospital has to spend $20k on someone, and that person doesn't have insurance, the hospital has to eat the loss. Wait.. wait.. loss? They're a private business, they'd go under. Ahh, here we go, they jack up the prices for everyone who can afford health-care.
Guess what is causing health-care prices to go up? People who can't afford preventative measures have to come in once it's critical. On average, that costs even more. It's lose lose. Not only do your prices go up, but the poor get worse treatment.
Ignoring corruption and waste(very real issue), public healthcare would reduce the cost of healthcare by catching preventable issues before they cost more money. We need a baseline public healthcare with most everything else as elective. Then let private insurance cover the difference. I'm sure people middle-class workers would love to have insurance with better coverage, and that's where private companies come in.
I work in a hospital system and we do provide for care and regular screening for the poor/indigent. Many of them CHOOSE not to utilize this.
It's certainly not like this everywhere (we are a large not-for-profit system), but saying that they do not have that option available at all is certainly not true. There are also a couple of free clinics with quality doctors that provide free check-ups and basic care in the community as well. This is in a city of about 315k people, for whatever it's worth.
Just another ignorant American.
You might want to rethink your handle.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It's free. No cost. So unless the decision to purchase food is based on a limited availability of time, then yes, they really are choosing to forego healthcare. Considering that most people that would be considered too poor to afford basic checkups and such are generally not employed (or at least, not working 40 hours a week) it is fair to say that they could use the public transport (also available free for persons that qualify, and unbelievably cheap even if you do not) to get to the hospital or free clinics for screening. They -choose- not to.
I'm going to be blunt here. Many of the poor/indigent became that way due to poor life choices or less than stellar intelligence. Not all, by any means, but it is safe to say that an appreciable percentage fail to regularly make decisions that would improve their quality of life. Please note I'm NOT saying that they should just be left to rot or ignored, but rather that not all of their plight it pushed upon them by the 1%. Shoot, we recently had an event that had free blood tests and even radiology work. FREE. I cannot believe we are the only health system doing these types of things, but perhaps we really are just that far ahead of the game.
Just another ignorant American.
Many would argue that the cost of care is skyrocketing, not because of caring for people who can't pay, but because nobody has to directly pay the cost of care. Your doctor sees something, and its a 1% chance of being bad. So he orders a test.. You say great, what a fabulous doctor. However, someone has to pay the $15k for that test. If YOU had to pay it out of your pocket, would you think a bit on it? thats a ton of money for a very, very small chance of something being bad. In fact, when is the last time you knew someone who asked the doctor how much something costs?
Calling healthcare 'insurance' is a bit silly.. if my car insurance covered all gas, repairs, accidents (as many at-fault incidents as I needed) payments, etc.. You can bet the cost of car insurance would skyrocket too..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?