Using numbers from here and here I ran some rough figures. Estimating the US population at 300 million, here’s what I came up with. The average person in the US smokes 120 cigarettes or 6 packs per year. The average person in the US drinks the equivalent of 579.5 cans of carbonated soft drinks per year. It seems to me that more money would be raised by adding a tax to carbonated soft drinks. If it looks like I ran the numbers wrong, feel free to correct me. (The drink data is for 2005 and the cigarette data is for 2006)
Not to mention that soft drinks have been directly linked to obesity, diabetes and other things that are causing our children major health problems. A higher tax might make parents think twice about giving their kids so much of it and it could help those uninsured kids. Win/win.
Even Reagan liked the EITC, but it seems to have fallen out of favor with today’s GOP, so I doubt Bush has that model in mind.
Fair 'nuff.
Maybe so. But he’s still responsible for his words. And if you’re right, this shows what he’s willing to play hardball with, in order to get his way on something pretty trivial from the looks of it.
The health problems associated with carbonated beverages isn’t the carbonation, it’s the empty calories, usually consisting of high fructose corn syrup. Instead of taxing consumers of the drinks, maybe we could just eliminate the subsidies that go to the farmers and end up making that commodity so cheap to begin with. In the last ten years, farmers (read: Archer Daniels Midlands) received over $160B in subsidies with a little over $50B going to corn alone. Maybe it’s time to end [Agribusiness] Welfare as We Know It. Oh wait… the agriculture (and ethanol) lobbies seem to be even more powerful than the tobacco lobbies these days.
Diet drinks have issues also, plus you’d have to set the limit somewhere. Sounds like a good proposal to me (keeping the tobacco tax also, of course.) We’ll see how big the soft drink lobby is.
<Col. Bat Guano> You’re going to have to answer to the Coca Cola company. </CBG>
Well, seeing as the whole damn government shut down in 1995, 1990, 1984, and 1981, this kind of hardball not only has some historic precedent, but looks paltry by comparison.
I don’t believe it’s a given at all that tobacco use puts a heavier burden on the health care industry. In fact, some governments in eastern Europe have made exactly the opposite argument - that smoking deccreases the burden of the individual on the state.
It’s true that it’s expensive to treat a sufferer of lung cancer. But if that person didn’t have lung cancer, he’d still die eventually, and the fact is that the last year or two of anyone’s life if expensive in terms of health care. What’s also true is that the elderly are by far the biggest burden on the health care system, not just because of terminal illness but because of overall deteriorating health - cataracts, joint replacements, cancers, expensive drugs…
In addition, the elderly draw Social Security. If someone dies of lung cancer at 54, do you think they cost the state more than if they had made it to 90, THEN died of some other cancer, after drawing SS for 25 years, perhaps living in a state-funded home for the aged for the last decade of life, and requiring numerous medical treatments to remain alive?
Only if you are totally discounting the heavy tax burden that falls mainly on poor people, or the rights that get trampled underneath the big boot of the do-gooders that demand others live lifestyles they approve of.
Your argument that it will get people to stop smoking isn’t even a good one. Tobacco use has shown itself to be remarkably inelastic when prices change. Here in Canada, cigarettes cost close to $10/pack. And poor people still smoke. It just hurts them far more.
I think ‘sin taxes’ are the worst taxes of all, because they seek to use the taxation power of government to modify behaviour rather than to merely raise money for the needs of government. They are a violation of rights. If you don’t want poor people traveling, you can’t issue a law that says travel will be restricted only to those who have a permit from the government. That would be a violation of their rights. But hey, you can achieve the same thing by simply taxing transportation out of the reach of the poor.
In Chile, when the government wanted to shut down opposition newspapers, all it had to do was put ‘sin taxes’ on newsprint, and make them high enough to price the opposition newspapers out of business.
Clearly what’s needed is a heavy gin tax. I don’t approve of your choice of drink, therefore, I think you should be taxed to the point where you stop. And if you don’t stop, we get more tax money. Win-win!
While diet drinks have issues, they’re a lot less troublesome, on the whole, than the consumption of serious quantities of sugar.
As far as the limit’s concerned, the can of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper on my desk right now says it’s got 0 calories per serving (serving size: one 12-ounce can). A limit of, say, one calorie per ounce would provide plenty of margin of error.
Also, I expect the Coca Cola company and its rivals would be less opposed to a proposal like this if they can sell an essentially equivalent (from a marketing perspective) product that isn’t subject to the tax.
Yes, but from a public policy perspective carbonated water doesn’t really hurt anyone.
The biggest contribution that soft drinks make, negatively, is the fact they are high in caloric content but aren’t terribly filling. Kids will drink a ton of soda/pop/soft drink/insert noun of choice when allowed to do so, and this directly contributed to obesity because your average 20 oz has 250 calories and your average can has 100.
If someone consumes only 100 more calories per day than they use, that is 36,500 calorie surplus over a year which is 10.4 lbs/gained. If someone does that throughout their childhood they can be 50-60 lbs. overweight by the time they are 18.
So even a small increase in caloric intake in the form of a single soda a day can be bad if you’re already eating a lot of calories.
There is also evidence that it contributes to diabetes, of course. Scare mongering aside I don’t think there are many proven negatives from diet soft drinks. They do contain caffeine which has a mixed record of bad/good.
The problem is, it’s hard to even quantify it because smoking causes lots of expenses that are hard to directly tie to smoking itself, that is why excise taxes on tobacco products serve a good purpose. As they tie the costs of externalities to the person who is harming society.
What is particularly offensive about tobacco smoking is it hurts people who don’t engage in the smoking at all. Smokers will do anything to rationalize their smoking, but studies showing the harm of second hand smoke are clear. Furthermore, the costs of trying to remove the nasty scents smokers leave in hotel rooms and et cetera are not insignificant to businesses.
My motivation in supporting tobacco taxes is that tobacco users cause disproportionate levels of financial burden to the State/society, thus they should have to pay a share of this directly in the form of excise taxes. I don’t view tobacco smoking as sinful (I’m a religious person), and morally speaking I don’t really care too much if you smoke.
Furthermore, your point about tobacco use being inelastic is further reason to support excise taxes on the products. It just means government will receive more revenue from people who obviously can afford to pay it, if they couldn’t, they wouldn’t buy the tobacco product.
There is a reason that gas taxes are levied by government, because use of gasoline is also fairly inelastic and the people filling up are the ones causing wear and tear on the roads that gas taxes repair. Tobacco excise taxes are a tax on smokers, not a tax on poor people.
I don’t think we should tax people just because we don’t like what they are doing. However when someone is contributing to rising health care costs through some habit, said habit should be taxed.
Liquor is already taxed and I think mostly because it is a “sin tax.” So while I disagree with the motivation of the liquor taxes, I’m okay with the taxes because alcohol use does contribute to rising health care costs. Habitual drinkers have a higher risk of various heart conditions and of course liver conditions. Drunk driving is, however, a separate issue as non-drunk drivers who drink don’t contribute to drunk driving IMO.
And ten years after that they’ll be 160 pounds overweight. And by the time they’re 50, they’ll be almost 600 pounds! Who knew Coke was so destructive?
Clearly, the relationship between caloric intake and weight is just a little more complex than your description.
Why single out a single can of Coke? A chocolate bar has almost twice as many calories. A bag of chips can have five times as many calories. A Big Mac and fries has ten times the calories of a Coke.
I think what’s needed is a vast array of taxes applied to every aspect of a person’s life, so that their behaviour can be modified and they can be forced to maintain their bodies in a way the state approves of. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had tax incentives pushing us onto the straight and narrow? One of my biggest problems is that I spend too much time in front of the computer and not enough exercising. This and TV watching are a major source of weight gain for most people. Clearly what is needed is a ‘couch potato’ tax. Put meters on our computers and televisions, and if we sit in front of them for more than 2 hours a day we start being taxed by the hour. That would force people off their asses, get them out in the fresh air, and probably do more for public health than all the soft-drink taxes you could dream up. It’s win-win!
Also, we could stimulate health by forcing people to climb stairs and walk more. So there should be an escalator tax. Price them out of the market, and people will be forced to exercise more when they go to the mall. We could also mandate that parking lots for company vehicles be located no closer than 1/4 mile from the place of employment. This will either force people to walk more, or get them into public transit. Win-win!
Now that we’ve accepted the useful role of taxation in ‘guiding’ people into lifestyles that we approve of, the sky’s the limit! Hell, I’m already planning my rationale for taxing big subwoofers out of small japanese cars. I’m pretty sure it will have something to do with hearing damage.
And evidence that it doesn’t. I don’t think there’s a consensus here at all.
And there’s also a very big proven positive: People like drinking them. Who are you to decide where the correct balance is between pleasure and risk? Half the things that we enjoy are ultimately not as good for us as alternatives would be. We could all eat less red meat, get more exercise, floss more, study more, and work harder. Do you really want the government to decide what the right balance is, and to punish us like children if we don’t find it?
Bush wants to limit SCHIP coverage to families that make up to 200% of the federal poverty level. Over 200% of the FPL is not “near the poverty line.”
Not really. States get to set their own limits. Here in Maryland it’s at 300% of FPL. In New Jersey, it’s 400%. Those limits cover people who are very, very well-off.
There you make a wrong assumption. The poor and near-poor are already covered by the program. There is push back by those who don’t want to help the upper middle class and rich.
There is also the question of how many uninsured kids are already eligible for the program but their parents just don’t sign up. If I recall correctly, most uninsured kids fall into this category.
It also need to be pointed out that many states are using SCHIP money to cover adults in addition to kids. So that is driving up the cost of the program, too.
Actually, I’ve been advised by medical professionals that even drinking diet sodas (which I do, in vast quantities) has its drawbacks: It can cause kidney/renal problems; and the carbonation aggravates irritable bowel syndrome if you have it to begin with.
No, it isn’t more complex. If you consume 100 more calories than you use every day, then over a year you gain about 10 lbs. It is not more complex than that.
However, the way the human body works, you use more calories at rest when you weigh 200 lbs. than you do when you weigh 180. And more at 300 lbs. than you do at 200. So once you get fat enough your body uses up so many calories just to get by on a daily basis that it starts to get very difficult to consume a 100 calorie surplus every single day.
I’m not the one who brought up the idea of taxing cans of Coke. That was someone else. I’m not opposed to taxes on any and all junk foods. I’m a conservative, free-market type. However I believe in making people pay for externalities. A company that creates tons of pollution should have that pollution taxed, because otherwise they do not have to deal with the costs of the pollution, which is a problem.
It isn’t about behavior modification, it is about making people shoulder the costs of externalities when they are responsible for them. In a completely free market, where the government did not subsidize health care at all, I would oppose tobacco and liquor taxes, as well as taxes on junk food. Because in such a market society would not be responsible for rising health care costs. We do not have such a society in the United States.
As with anything, we have to work with what is reasonable. It isn’t reasonable or necessarily feasible to tax sloth. We can easily levy excise taxes, however. And they serve a good purpose in our particular market/government situation.
I actually don’t care if you live an unhealthy lifestyle. I do care if you live an unhealthy lifestyle and some of my money goes to subsidize your health care. In such a scenario it is only fair to levy excise taxes on things that, by their nature, are clearing creating negative externalities for society (in any society where health care is subsidized.) When you buy a soft drink or a pack of cigarettes, both buyer and seller benefit, but you may be hurting third parties, and you should have to compensate those third parties in some manner.
We have to do what is reasonable and feasible. For various reasons an escalator tax wouldn’t be a good way of making people pay for the costs they are creating for society. Levying excise taxes works, an escalator tax probably wouldn’t, because there isn’t a clear link between escalators and obesity. There is also evidence that escalators provide a more convenient shopping experience and promote greater consumerism, which probably offsets any costs escalator use might create.
Maybe you’ve accepted that, I haven’t. I think when there is a transaction between two parties that is clearly shown to cause a negative externality for a third party, taxes can be a viable method for making the two parties shoulder said costs.
